Fragment of a Bone Lyre from Saxton Road, Abingdon, Oxfordshire: 6th or 7th century AD

This is one of several regularly pierced curved strips of bone found buried with an adolescent boy in the Anglo-Saxon cemetery just south of central Abingdon. The excavators of the cemetery were unable to identify the object, which has since been identified as the remains of a home-made stringed instrument which had been placed alongside the boy’s left foot.

The more complete remains of a lyre, a Classical Greek instrument in origin, have been identified in the grave of an East Anglian king, perhaps Redwald, at Sutton Hoo.