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Anglo-Saxon objectives at Sutton Hoo, 1985

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

M. O. H. Carver
M. O. H. Carver
Affiliation:
The University of Birmingham
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Extract

A modern field project in archaeology is a co-operative enterprise serving an extensive and diverse public. We can no longer afford to disturb the bones of our ancestors under the mantle of serendipity or academic intuition. The archaeologist, as the one person destined ever to see the evidence at first hand, strives for the virtue of enlightened impartiality, and sets off like an explorer, constrained by communal responsibilities and armed with a list of questions furnished by a wide variety of clients. Since Sutton Hoo has been hailed as the most vivid and instructive set of archaeological evidence for the seventh-century yet identified, Anglo-Saxon questions dominate this lengthy agenda. What was the status of the great ship burial discovered there in 1939? What was the role of the cemetery in which it lay? Why was it sited in that particular place, on a scarp above the River Deben in south-east Suffolk (see pi. V)? Was it the burial ground of kings, and were they kings of East Anglia? Was it a national centre or an overdeveloped version of the local mortuary culture? Is it diagnostic of a formative kingdom, or out of joint with the times, the outstation of a religious and political affiliation alien to the hinterland? What was its connection with Scandinavia and the Scandinavians? Were its people Anglo-Saxon, or Anglian or Saxon or British or multi-racial? Was it typical or unique?

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 15 , December 1986, pp. 139 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse, ed. Whitelock, Dorothy (Oxford, 1967; corr. repr. 1975), p. 162Google Scholar. ‘Therefore a man cannot become wise before he has a share of years in the earthly kingdom. A wise man is patient; he is not too passionate nor too hasty in speech, neither too feeble a warrior nor too rash, nor too timid nor too jubilant nor too avaricious, and never too ready to boast ere he has full knowledge.’ (Trans, from English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, Dorothy, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), no. 211, pp. 870–1.)Google Scholar

2 The definitive discussion of the ship-burial and its interpretation is Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S., The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, 3 vols. (London, 1975–1983)Google Scholar. lam grateful to Mr Bruce-Mitford for his generous assistance and advice.

3 For a discussion of the ideas in this section, see M. O. H. Carver, ‘Sutton Hoo in Context’, forthcoming in Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull' alto mediocvo.

4 See Bruce-Mitford, , Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1, 488–577Google Scholar; for the possibility of a translation, see Carver, ‘Sutton Hoo in Context’.

5 See Bruce-Mitford, , Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1, 345–435.Google Scholar

6 The initial research design was published in Bull. of the Sutton Hoo Research Committee 1 (1983).

7 For summaries of work in 1983–5, see Bull. of the Sutton Hoo Research Committee 2 (1984), 3 (1985) and 4 (1986).

8 See Longworth, I. H. and Kinnes, I. A., Sutton Hoo Excavations 1966, 1968–70, Brit. Museum Occasional Paper 23 (London, 1980), esp. 7 (cutting III).Google Scholar

9 The surface mapping, metal detection and field-walking were conducted by A. Copp and C. Royle of Birmingham University; the resistivity survey by A. Walker of Geoscan Ltd.; the magnetometry by A. Bartlett and M. Gorman; and the soil-sounding radar by M. Gorman of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. I am grateful to M. Newman and Dr A. Ellison for their assessment of the context and character of Sutton Hoo's prehistoric predecessors.

10 The earthworks were implied by a thickening of strata between twin palisades and beside ditches.

11 For Basil Brown's 1938 excavation in mound 2, see Bruce-Mitford, , Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1, 100–36.Google Scholar

12 For a cremation and inhumations excavated in 1966–70, see Longworth and Kinnes, Sutton Hoo Excavations, and Bruce-Mitford, , Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1, 1–99.Google Scholar

13 For the programme and results of the Suffolk Archaeological Unit's field survey, see Bull. of the Sutton Hoo Research Committee 1 (1983), 18–20; 2 (1984), 11; and 5 (1985), 23.

14 For interim reports by Dr Warner, see ibid. 2 (1984), 7–9, and 3 (1985), 16–21.

15 Hope-Taylor, Brian, Yeavering: an Anglo-British Centre of Early Northumbria, Dept. of the Environment Archaeol. Reports 7 (London, 1977).Google Scholar

16 See Bruce-Mitford, , Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1Google Scholar; Longworth and Kinnes, Sutton Hoo Excavations; and Carver, ‘Sutton Hoo in Context’.

17 ibid.

18 See Fenwick, Valerie, ‘Insula de Burgh: Excavations at Burrow Hill, Butley, Suffolk, 1978–81’, ASSAH 3 (1984), 35–54Google Scholar; and Wade, K., ‘Sampling at Ipswich and the Origins and Growth of the Anglo-Saxon Town’, Sampling in Contemporary British Archaeology, ed. Cherry, J., Gamble, C. and Shennon, S., BAR Brit. ser. 50 (Oxford, 1978), 279–84.Google Scholar

19 I would like to offer my thanks to the members of the Sutton Hoo Research Committee for their thoughtful advice, to the Suffolk Archaeological Unit and the Scole Committee, to Ray Sutcliffe of the BBC's History and Archaeology Unit, to the staffof the project and to Sutton Hoo's many friends and students, who have freely offered their reactions and opinions to the present work, and in particular to Rupert Bruce–Mitford, whose generosity towards me is only the latest of his patient services to this great site.