This Claw Beaker was buried with a Saxon woman who lived in Eastbourne in the 6th century and died when she was between 18 and 25 years old. Only two complete beakers have ever been found in Sussex, both in Eastbourne and this is one of them.
This young woman’s burial was probably the richest discovered in this cemetery. She was adorned with three gilt copper brooches, one of which was in the form of a ‘S’ with two animal heads boasting red garnet eyes. This type of brooch is rather rare and usually found on the continent or in Kent where there were strong links to the Frankish culture. She also had a stunning gilt pin with a bird motif, again decorated with red garnet that may have been imported from as far away as India. This was found next to her skull and is almost certainly the fastening for an elaborate headdress, which itself seems to have had intricate gold thread work. More spectacular still was the magnificent glass ‘claw beaker’ buried alongside the lady, again a very rare and presumably valuable object at the time. Perhaps these grave goods indicate that she was one of the ruling elite of a group of people? Her diet would seem to have been very similar to the other locally raised individuals (having a high marine content) and she suffered from fairly bad teeth.
By the Saxon period, it had become less common to use glass to make bottles or other tableware. Glass cups or drinking vessels were usually simple shapes with round or pointed bases. Claw beakers like this one are the exception. Two glass claw beakers were found in the excavations of the Saxon cemetery on St Anne’s Road and they are the only complete examples to have been found in Sussex. Thin glass threads decorate the glass, wound in a spiral around the beaker’s neck and irregularly beneath the bottom row of claws, with eight spirals at the top and seven at the bottom. Claw beakers like this have previously only been found in Kent where they are thought to have been made.
Saxon Bird Headdress Pin from St Anne's Road
