Finglesham Anglo-Saxon cemetery

Finglesham Anglo-Saxon cemetery is a place of burial that was used from the sixth to the eighth centuries CE. It is located adjacent to the village of Finglesham, near Sandwich in Kent, South East England. Belonging to the Anglo-Saxon period, it was part of the much wider tradition of burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England. Finglesham was an inhumation-only cemetery, with no evidence of cremation. Many of the dead were interred with grave goods, which included personal ornaments, weapons, and domestic items, and some had tumuli erected above their graves. Coming under threat from chalk quarrying, the cemetery was first excavated by local archaeologists W.P.D. Stebbing and W. Whiting in 1928–29. After it was revealed that deep ploughing was becoming a threat to the site, further excavation took place under the finance of the Ministry of Public Building and Works between 1959 and 1967, directed by Sonia Chadwick Hawkes. What was thought to be the full extent of the cemetery was excavated, uncovering a total of 216 graves.