ANGLO-SAXON OXFORDSHIRE

AMEY'S PIT, DORCHESTER - AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY

During the summer of 1947 volunteers from Birmingham, London and Oxford Universities, under the direction of Miss A MacKenzie, Miss N.K. Sandars and Mr R.J.C. Atkinson , excavated the site of Amey's Pit in Dorchester.

Alongside a group of Mesolithic and Bronze Age sites, they excavated nine burials around the periphery of a Middle Bronze Age round barrow. This type of burial is known as a secondary burial since the site was not originally Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxons have been known to reuse many earlier barrow sites as cemeteries.

Copper alloy scaper from grave 2 (AN1947.417) and copper alloy finger ring (AN1947.415) from the Anglo-Saxon graves

Unfortunately most of the bodies from this site had entirely disappeared form the graves, but the finds from the site are now held by the Ashmolean Museum.

REFERENCES:

Oxoniensia, XI-XII, 1946-47, p164.

A. MacGregor and E. Bolick (1993) A Summary Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Collections (Non- Ferrous Metals), BAR British Series 230.