 Christianity discouraged the burial of grave goods so that, at least from the Anglo-Saxons, we have a larger number of pre-Christian survivals than those from later periods.The majority of examples that survive from the Christian period have been found in archaeological contexts that suggest they were rapidly hidden, lost or abandoned.There are a few exceptions, notably portable shrines ("cumdachs") for books or relics, several of which have been continuously owned, mostly by churches on the Continent—though the Monymusk Reliquary has always been in Scotland.