Anglo-Saxon Cinerary Urns at Kettering Museum
First posted: 15th January 2016 In Collections It was only when I read the interpretation that I realised the significance of the unassuming ceramic pots I was about to clean. Inside several of the pots are charcoal fragments: the remains of cremated bodies from the 6th Century. Similar urns have been discovered at Anglo-Saxon sites across England, but the tradition is familiar to many cultures. Pottery urns dating from 7000BC have been found in China. In Bavaria, a urn similar to Kettering’s would have held the heart of a King. The shape, a bellied pot with a narrow neck, is common in many cultures across the globe, including those as seemingly distant to Kettering as the Mayan civilisation. (6) In his article, Pottery and Other Finds from the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Sandy, Bedfordshire, David Kennett describes one of Kettering’s urns alongside those at the British Museum, the Ashmolean and Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Ethnolo...