The Gold Medalet of Leudard the Bishop - Archaeologia Cantiana

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES: Dark Age Burial on Barham Downs Continued

else I have examined, and the specimen may therefore reasonably be referred to the Saxon period.
    The parts available comprised:
(1) An imperfect male sacrum, showing the interesting
         anatomical variation known as sacralization of the
         last lumbar vertebra;
(2) A portion of the left hip bone (more precisely the
         hinder part of the iliac crest);
(3) An imperfect cranium. This last is rather thick-walled,
        and exhibits male characters. The norma verticalis
        presents a smoothly ovoid outline; in norma lateralis
        the brow is broad and low, and there is distinct

        obelionic flattening of the vault and a corresponding
        fullness of the occipital region. The frontal and
        sphenoidal air sinuses are capacious and fully
        developed, and the state of suture closure would
        indicate an age at death of between 30 and 50 years.
       There is no sign of anti-mortem injury or disease,
       nor anything anatomically unusual in the specimen.
       Maximal cranial length is 118 mm., maximal breadth
      137 mm.; the cephalic index being 75·6 (i.e. the
      cranium falls just within the category of the
       mesaticephalic).
                                                                  A. J. E. C.

THE GOLD MEDALET OF LEUDARD THE BISHOP—THE OLDEST ENGLISH GOLD COIN

IN 1844 Mr. C. Roach Smith reported to the Royal Numismatic Society that an interesting find of gold coins, hung on a string, had been made in St. Martin's Churchyard; where exactly, we do not know, possibly on the rising ground to the S.E. corner of the church or to the S.W., where the bank has been cut away for later graves. At first he described three of them, and the following year gave a complete list, including three others.
Our present concern is only with one of them, the second on his list, the coin, of which, by the courtesy of the Royal Numismatic Society, we are allowed to reproduce this illustration. It is described as a gold medalet weighing,

with the loop, 27 grains.
Through a misreading of the inscription by Mr. C. Roach Smith, the real meaning and value of the coin was not recognized at first. The coin has on the obverse side a head surrounded by an inscription; on the reverse a two-barred cross with a border of V's, two at the top and three at the bottom, and on either side some characters which may be only ornament or may be the name of the place or of the moneyer who struck the coin.
Mr. Roach Smith thought the first letter of the inscription on the obverse was E and read it as Eupardus, and attributed it to Eupardus,