This book is about Rendlesham in the Deben valley, West Suffolk, not far from Sutton Hoo, in the context of East Anglia in the period ad 400–800. Rendlesham was identified by Bede as a residence of the kings of East Anglia in the seventh century, the place where King Swithhelm of the East Saxons was baptised. There was little archaeological evidence to support Bede until illicit metal-detecting caused the landowner, Michael Bunbury, to call in Jude Plouviez, FSA, of Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service (SCCAS). Jude initiated the detector survey that demonstrated the importance of the site, and also the value of controlled detecting for archaeological fieldwork. The project grew over the years, including survey of all kinds and selective excavation, involving so many people and organisations that the acknowledgements in this book occupy almost two double column pages. From the many names might be highlighted the four detectorists, Roy Damant, Robert Atfield, Terry Marsh and Alan Smith; Chris Scull, FSA, the director of the project; Faye Minter, of SCCAS, and Stuart Brookes, FSA, who created most of the many excellent maps and plans. The results of both survey and excavation have been well publicised to a wide range of audiences: site visits, an exhibition at Sutton Hoo visitor centre, webpages, lectures, reports in general news media, popular archaeological magazines and scholarly journals. Perhaps most successful are the series of recorded lectures given by different specialists in 2020, hosted by Suffolk County Council and still available on YouTube via https://suffolkher.esdm.co.uk/rendlesham-behind-the-scenes (accessed Sept 2025).

This is the detailed account of the Lordship and Landscape project, which it should be noted did not include the excavation results: that was the topic of another project and is the subject of another report, currently in preparation. This is a reverse approach to the traditional archaeological site report, where geology, landscape and history occupy chapter one of a volume otherwise devoted to stratigraphy, bones, stones and pottery. Here we have the landscape given full attention, especially through the mapping of finds recorded by the PAS, in several regions across East Anglia, with more detailed detector, geophysical, aerial and LiDAR surveys at Rendlesham.

The volume is substantial in several senses: it is large, heavy and full of illustrations of artefacts as well as maps; it provides a detailed account of the archaeology of the landscape of Rendlesham and other selected case study regions within East Anglia in the late Roman to medieval periods; methodology and theory are rigorously defined and discussed; and the implications of its findings are a significant contribution to one of the perennial debates in British history – what happened when the Roman empire fell apart?

The immediate result for Rendlesham was to confirm the account by Bede. The finds and their distribution showed this to have been a large elite centre with connections around eastern Britain and beyond. Excavations, not published here, confirmed the status and complexity of the site, justifying its description as ‘royal’ in early medieval terms. It flourished from the late Roman through to the eighth century ad, especially during the ‘long seventh century’ across Migration, Early Anglo-Saxon and part of the Middle Anglo-Saxon periods. It does not fit neatly within traditional time slices: its start is not clearly related to a break with Rome, and its end comes well before recorded Viking attack. Instead, it was driven by development and change in political and economic structures both local and regional. Whoever controlled the local region from Rendlesham, whether inheritors of Roman authority or incoming leaders, they created and maintained a sophisticated centre of power, a hierarchical place where people had different statuses and skills, from the king in his hall to the slave in her hut, warriors, craftsmen, traders and farmers. Large numbers of people lived and worked here, building large and small houses, producing subsistence and luxury goods; there is evidence, too, for precious metalworking, the creation of artefacts some of which can be compared to the gold and garnet equipment buried at Sutton Hoo. Coins, bracteates and dress fasteners demonstrate overseas connections.

Embedded in the volume, as well as the detailed information about Rendlesham and the other case study regions, are contributions to a range of topics. These include Barbara Yorke, FSA, on the historical record; Tom Williamson and Eleanor Rye on landscape and place-names; Eleanor Blakelock and others on metallurgy, and substantial discussions of early medieval coinage by Andrew Woods, FSA. It is to be hoped these will reach their specialist audiences: there is a tension in publication between large inclusive volumes such as this where the specialist contributions might be lost, as opposed to papers in specialist journals where it is the context that can be missed.

The approach in this volume is one of building up from detailed evidence to construct a pointilliste picture, rather than fitting the evidence to a pre-existing theoretical or historical framework. This is counter to both media and academic current practice, where clear simple stories are demanded and uncertainty or fuzziness are edited out. It is true this makes parts of the book, notably the final chapter, difficult to read: it is a complex account of a complex mass of detail, not always providing firm answers to questions where the evidence does not provide an answer. This is academically admirable but even the summary of the conclusions on the last page would leave me unclear about what it all means if I had not previously had the advantage of visiting the site and the exhibition, as well reading many of the earlier, simpler, publications.

So, what is the conclusion about the middle centuries of the first millennium ad in eastern Britain? It is complicated; the past and its presentation in this book are not simple, which is a good counterpoint to the usual biased simplifications, but makes any ready summary of the subject difficult. Convincing but non-specific statements appear: ‘societies of the late fifth to middle sixth centuries were more sophisticated … than has been allowed in the past’ (p 426); ‘the processes of settlement and accommodation (between native and incomers) were complex’ (p 422).

What I take away so far is, first, that while there were indeed incomers from regions around the North Sea, they came into a land that had established social and political structures, continuing from late to post-Roman periods. Interaction between local people and incomers probably took different forms and had different results – although it is clear that in later centuries the dominant mythology of the ruling families mostly stressed their descent from continental or Scandinavian ancestors or deities, implying a successful takeover. Second, that the decline of Rendlesham during the eighth century was bound up with economic and political developments that led to the growth of Ipswich and other trading centres around the North Sea, also the development of the kingdom of East Anglia and its relationships with other kingdoms. It is surprising that no trace of Rendlesham’s early medieval importance survives in later documentary sources.

Overall, this is the presentation of a dramatic centre of power that can take its place among the early medieval centres around the North Sea, especially in Scandinavia. Rendlesham can be added to Gudme (Denmark) and Uppåkra (Sweden) – discussed most recently by Dagfinn Skre (Reference Skre2024), and reviewed elsewhere in this volume – as a place of dynamic activity and elite display of wealth, with active local, regional and long-distance connections. The publication of the excavation, already presented in summary (Scull et al Reference Scull, Everett and Minter2024) will confirm this.