The Caistor-by-Norwich astralagus is a
roe deer astragalus (ankle bone) found in an urn at
Caistor St. Edmund
Caistor St Edmund is a village and former civil parish on the River Tas, in Norfolk, England. The parish covers an area of and had a population of 270 people in 116 households at the 2001 Census which increased to 289 people by the 2011 Census ...
,
Norfolk,
England in 1937. The astragalus is inscribed with a 5th-century
Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Peri ...
inscription, reading "roe deer". The inscription is the earliest found in England, and predates the evolution of the specifically Anglo-Frisian
Futhorc. As the urn was found in a cemetery that indicated some
Scandinavian influence, it has been suggested that the astragalus may be an import, perhaps brought from Denmark in the earliest phase of the
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain.
[ pp. 389-91.] The inscription is an important testimony for the
Eihwaz rune and the treatment of
Proto-Germanic ''*ai''. The
''h'' rune has the Nordic single-bar shape , not the Continental double-bar which was later adopted in the Anglo-Frisian runes.
References
Further reading
*Bammesberger, A. 'Das Futhark und seine Weiterentwicklung in der anglo-friesischen Überlieferung', in Bammesberger and Waxenberger (eds.), ''Das fuþark und seine einzelsprachlichen Weiterentwicklungen'', Walter de Gruyter (2006), , 171–187.
*Hines, J. 'The Runic Inscriptions of Early Anglo-Saxon England' in: A. Bammesberger (ed.), '' Britain 400-600: Language and History'', Heidelberg (1990), 437–456.
5th-century inscriptions
Runic inscriptions
Archaeological discoveries in the United Kingdom
Archaeology of the kingdom of East Anglia
Anglo-Saxon runes
1937 archaeological discoveries
{{UK-archaeology-stub