ABSTRACT
One exception to the general trend concerning the anonymity of the original placing of Anglo-Saxon sculpture is the polychromed fragment from Lichfield, face down, under what Warwick Rodwell has identified as the site of the Anglo-Saxon shrine of St Chad. The carved stone monuments of Anglo-Saxon England took the form of highly coloured sculptures, inset with glittering metal and paste glass, easily visible to those moving through the landscape. Thus, regardless of specific functions and the manner in which each cross was envisaged as performing as an individual monument, this shared aspect of their planting in the landscape is one phenomenon that remains true for almost all of them as sculptural stones. The manner in which the motif of the plant-scroll was almost exclusively associated with these sculptural monuments in the pre-Viking art of the Anglo-Saxons suggests that it was considered particularly appropriate to the monumental form of the high cross.
