Dan Snow's History Hit - Sutton Hoo

Episode Date: February 7, 2021

The release of The Dig has brought the story of the Sutton Hoo dig to the forefront of people’s minds of late. The real hero of that story though is not the people involved but rather the stunning archaeology discovered in Suffolk as the Second World War loomed. Sue Brunning joins me on the podcast to talk all thing Sutton Hoo. The history of the excavation, who might have been buried at the heart of it and what it tells us about Early Medieval England. Sue is an archaeologist specialising in Early Medieval material culture and is the curator of Early Medieval Europe Collections at the British Museum where many of the artefacts from Sutton Hoo are housed. 

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. A lot of people watching The Dig on Netflix. Good luck to them. I don't mind people going over to their competitor every so often, Netflix. They're doing a decent job.

It's good to see them embracing some vaguely historical topics. But let's be honest, the hero of The Dig is not the attractive people that hung out in a field in Suffolk as the clouds gathered before the Second World War. No, here at the dig is the extraordinary material culture, the archaeology, which was found during that excavation. And I'm talking all about that today on the podcast. If you've watched the dig, come here for your real info. Sue Brunning is an archaeologist. She specializes in early medieval material culture,

particularly swords. She loves a sword. She's the curator of the early medieval Europe collection at the British Museum. That's where most of the objects recovered from the Sutton Hoo excavation are currently housed. I've been to see them. It's heavenly. It seemed so natural at the time, walking in, looking at glass boxes with beautiful things inside. Now that feels like some halcyon dream of the past. But we may see those days again. Let's hope so. Now let's talk about the excavation.

Who might have been buried at the heart of it and what it tells us about early medieval England. Pretty exciting stuff. If you want to watch documentaries about the departure of the Romans, the arrival of the Europeans, the Saxons and others at the beginning of the medieval period, all you got to do is go to history.tv. It's like a history channel. There's no aliens on it. So it's pretty good.

And you go there and you can watch all sorts of wonderful documentaries. So please head over there and do that. But in the meantime, here is the excellent Sue Brunning. Enjoy. Sue, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Well, you know, everyone's talking about the dig, but it strikes me that no one's talking about what actually matters about the dig, and that is the dig. What was at the bottom of that wonderful hole

that they were all having their human dramas around? Well, at the bottom of the hole was an early 7th century grave. But to describe it as a grave is to sell it a little bit short, really, because what we're talking about here is the most spectacular intact burial to survive from early medieval Europe so far. So the burial focused on a 27 metre long ship, and inside the middle of the ship was a burial chamber. And inside the burial chamber was just an array of the most astonishing artifacts the likes of which had never really been seen before so we're talking about

gold dress accessories that had been inlaid with shimmering garnets that had probably come from India or Sri Lanka also fine feasting equipment so a pair of drinking horns some beautiful bottles and flasks that have been trimmed with silver gilt mounts. There's a musical instrument, a lyre with strings that had probably been used to sing songs in the Great Hall. Other vessels from the Great Hall as well, so a series of quite enormous cauldrons and buckets and tubs. There were some silver vessels, exotic ones that had come all the way from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Byzantine Empire, and of course an array of glittering war gear, so a fine sword with a pattern-welded blade that had a. And of course, an array of glittering war gear. So a fine sword with a pattern welded blade that had a golden garnet handle, a coat of mail armour that's

still unique from this period, actually. A great big shield marked with these predatory beasts as decoration. And then of course, the iconic helmet, which really, I think, is the thing that most people think about when they think about Sutton Hoo. It is just one of the most amazing archaeological sites in Britain, and particularly because of the period that it's from, about which we know so little. But I want to come on to that in a sec. Can you just give me the geography? Because the River Deben is quite important, isn't it here? It's on the banks of the River Deben, one of the great rivers of the east coast of the southeast. What's the geography tell us about that world? Yeah, well, East Anglia is quite a watery place. If you've ever been there, there are lots of waterways which kind of break

up the land a little bit. But these also provide a means of getting around if you have a watercraft at your disposal. But if we think of East Anglia too, as it looks on the map, it's kind of this lump of land that juts out into the North Sea. And it's actually quite close to the continent. It's closer, in fact, to the continent than it is to some parts of inland Britain, for example. So it's quite interconnected with those lands across the North Sea, and therefore with access from those sorts of areas to those great rivers of Europe. So places like the Rhine, which were really great highways of their time. So when we realise this, I think it's no surprise that we see so many things from different places represented in the Sutton Hoo

burial. This region really was connected with the wider world, or at least with routes into the wider world. Which brings us to the ship. Listeners know that I love ships, or at least, well, in this case, evidence of a ship. Well, the first thing to say is that it was really big. So it was about 27 metres long. That's about three London double-decker buses end to end. And there was space for about 20 oarsmen on each side. What's less clear is if this was a riverine craft made for rowing up and down rivers, or if it had a sail and was able to sail out on open water. And that's because any evidence of a mast had been removed to install the burial chamber in the middle of the ship.

We can also say that the ship was not made specifically for the burial and that's because evidence of repairs were found when the ship was excavated. So, for example, there are signs where rivets had been added in order to shore up the planking. And the other thing I should really say is that it's amazing that we know this much at all about the ship because the main part of the ship, the wooden part of the ship, didn't actually survive. What we see in those amazing excavation photos is actually kind of like a ghost ship. It's like an imprint of the ship in the form of compacted sand where the ship was positioned, but actually those pieces of wood

did not survive. The soil there is very acidic, and so organic material like wood and bone just doesn't do very well in that kind of soil. But what did survive were the many iron rivets that held those planks together, and they survived also in their original position. So when we look at those images, we see the imprint of the ship with lots of kind of dots running along its length. And those dots are all of those original iron rivets. So it's really kind of ironic that the one thing that we do not have surviving from the ship burial is the actual ship itself. But we can still call it a ship burial, can't we? Yes, yes, we definitely can. And I'm glad to say a hardy band of reconstructing shipwrights is going to put that right,

which I'm proud to be playing a tiny, tiny part in. So we've got the geography there. We've got a little bit about the site. Let's get into the history. I mean, I know we don't use the term Dark Ages anymore. It's early medieval period. But the 5th and 6th century in what is now, let's say, the Isle of Britain, it was a bit dark, wasn't it?

Like it was not a happy time. Well, I think it depends on what you mean by dark. It's true that this period is still one of the most challenging to understand, but I think things really are starting to change. There's been lots of research over the last decade or so. Lots of experts have really made some inroads into understanding this period and also, crucially, in how to study this period. It's a time before we have really good, dense written records. We're relying a lot on archaeology and other methods really to try to get a handle on this. But things like different scientific methods, for example, are starting to help us create a richer picture of what was going on. So I don't really think it was as dark, perhaps, in terms of knowledge as it once was. No, I agree. It's not a completely unknown period,

but it wasn't a happy time. Tell me about what we know about the history of the politics, society in the former province of Britannia, the Roman Empire. What was happening at that time? Give me 200 years, like take me from the departure of the Romans up to Sutton Hoo. Oh gosh, okay. Well, it's quite complicated, but I'll give it my best shot. Yeah, so at the end of Roman rule in Britain, so that's traditionally dated to kind of like the early 5th century, we start to see changes in the archaeological record. So we start to see new methods of burying the dead, new types of structures and dwellings appearing, and also changes to material culture and dress. The explanation for this, and actually

the chronology for this has been quite fiercely debated for quite a long time amongst experts from all sorts of disciplines, actually. I say the chronology is debated as well because although we have this date for the end of Roman rule in Britain, the archaeological changes that we're seeing, they kind of have been getting a bit earlier over the course of the last sort of few years or so with the research that's doing. It seems that these changes have a slightly different chronology. It's not just something that happens immediately after the Romans withdraw. So the received wisdom for explaining these kinds of changes is that we're seeing migrations from areas in the North Sea region,

coming to England across the North Sea, settling in the lowland parts of Britain, and eventually forming themselves into kingdoms that themselves, a couple of centuries later, coalesce into larger kingdoms, and then finally into a unified England. But I should also say that this is a really complicated question. And there has been a lot of debate over exactly how this is happening, why this is happening, how many people might be involved if it is some kind of migration, that kind of thing. And as I've mentioned, one of the things that is helping us to try to understand what's going on is scientific analysis, things like ancient DNA, isotopes, those sorts of things, examining the burials of people who are being buried in this different way to what was being practiced before. These sorts of things are

helping us to create a more nuanced picture of these changes. So for example, some of these changes could be explained by the previous received wisdom of large scale migrations of people from somewhere else to somewhere else. And that explains the changes. But they could also happen with fewer people and be combined with cultural influences. So a smaller number of people might come, might settle, and then their way of doing things might influence the other people that are around them that are already living there. And that could also explain a spread that we see. But at the very extreme, there are even some people that argue that perhaps, you know, the majority of this could have come about by cultural influence. As I mentioned earlier, there are these very strong connections, quite straightforward connections between England and the North Sea region across the North Sea on the continent.

So actually, maybe, you know, cultural influence played a larger role itself than we'd previously perhaps appreciated. And that's because people travel, but also ideas travel. So you don't necessarily need people to come over in order to explain all of the changes that we're seeing in the archaeological record. And I know, right, that that's really complicated. over in order to explain all of the changes that we're seeing in the archaeological record. And I know, right, that that's really complicated. And I find it complicated as well. But we can try to perhaps understand this by looking at an example from our own experience. So the one that I tend to use is that I have a set of Japanese knives, right, really nice Japanese cooked knives. So if I'm buried with the knives, which I would actually quite like to be, and nothing survives of my bodily remains, but only my knives survive,

then you can see where we might start to run into issues when we're assuming that maybe I've come from Japan, when obviously all I have is a set of Japanese knives because that's what I like to cook with. So I think that hopefully helps to slightly explain how we might try to understand what we see in the archaeological record at this time. My own view, I think, is that it's probably a bit of a mixed model, right? So it's involving the movement of people and influences from across the North Sea, because we know that both people and influences and objects were moving freely in both ways as well. So I think that we're probably going to see some exciting new perspectives coming out of that work that I mentioned that's being done on exactly these kinds of questions. Well tiptoed through that minefield. But we do think that there are the establishment of

smaller kingdoms within what we now call England at this time, and Sutton who might be a reflection of a local lord, a local monarch or king. Yeah, so there were a number of smaller kingdoms laid out on the territory that's roughly equivalent with England as we understand it today. We think they start to develop in the 6th century and then continue to develop into the 7th century. But what I think we shouldn't really imagine is a map of England with lots of neatly intersecting blocks and each block has a kind of label on it, which is the name of the kingdom. I think the reality was a bit more messy than that. So we kind of have our big rocks,

which are those main kingdoms. And then in between them and all around them, we have your kind of gravel, which are these smaller kingdoms, smaller places, smaller areas that are kind of doing their own thing. So I think that more patchworky image is what we have particularly at that earlier time. And it's only later that we start to see those larger rocks kind of coalesce into bigger blocks,

and then eventually, of course, subject for another podcast, perhaps into a unified kingdom of England. But returning to Sutton Hoo, whether there could be a king buried in the mound in the ship, yes, that's certainly the popular view. And there are a number of pieces of evidence really that would support that view. So for example, the quality of the grave goods we've spoken about, the sheer amount of precious metals and wonderful things that are buried there. The quantity of material as well, the multiples of drinking cups, the multiples of spearheads, that sort of thing. It's just a sheer amount of things buried there, just completely by far and away above what we would find in a regular burial, even a regular well-furnished burial. Also, the investment of

labour in the ship burial. So the fact that it would have taken a lot of people to drag that enormous ship into position, to dig the trench to put that ship inside, to erect the burial chamber, to select all of the objects for the burial chamber, to lay them all out beautifully and meaningfully, and then of course to cover everything over with a huge earth mound. I mean, that's a massive undertaking. That would have been a huge piece of theatre that would have involved a lot of people, would have generated a lot of memories, would have been something to be remembered. So those sorts of things as well show us that perhaps the person buried here was someone important or was being presented in death as somebody very important.

Royalty also could be suggested by some of the objects in the burial that are unique. There are one or two things in there that we don't fully understand what they mean, but they seem to be possibly connected with symbols of power. One of those is the famous whetstone, which is kind of like a long rectangular stone bar that has human faces carved at each end. And this looks a little bit like some scepters that we see in Roman imagery. And it's possible that this could be sort of an echo of that kind of thing. So some kind of symbol of power. I should also mention nearby to Sutton Hoo is a place called Rendlesham, which is described in Bede's writings

as a vicus regius. And that means that this is a place where the king might have a palace, would certainly be spending some time and might do things like dishing out justice and doing the admin and giving rewards and that sort of thing, throwing feasts. So we have a place, a settlement with a royal connection just about five kilometres or so up the road. So again, that could be in Sutton Hoo's favour for being a royal burial. So what kingdom do we think might be attached to Sutton Hoo? What is the material culture, the objects found at this excavation? What do you think they tell us about the kingdom that it might have been a reflection of? The Sutton Hoo is within the kingdom of East Anglia at this time. And just like today,

that's focusing on the region of Norfolk and Suffolk. And we know from the writings of Bede, who was writing about 100 years later, but seems to have been very well informed, had good records, so it's quite a good account, that at the time that the burial went into the ground, so we're talking about the early decades of the 600s. East Anglia seemed to have been quite powerful in the south of England. It was enjoying some influence and some control over kingdoms that were around it. And this could chime with what we see in the burial. So as I've mentioned, we have this really top quality metal work, this gold work and garnet work, these sorts of things suggesting that the people in East Anglia at this time

had access to the best resources, the best metal workers, they were able to commission the best pieces. And again, referring to what I was talking about a bit earlier, that interconnectedness, the fact that this is a region at this time that's plugged into the wider world. And that's not just across the continent, that's at home in Britain as well. The hanging bowls, these wonderful copper alloy vessels that we have from Sutton Hoo, they've probably come from somewhere else in Britain, so outside of England, maybe in kind of Western Britain or Ireland or Scotland, something like that. These wonderful bowls with these beautiful enameled mounts. Some of the war gear could have come from Scandinavia and Northern

Europe. The coins in the burial come from the Frankish region, so just across the North Sea in the sort of region of modern day France and Germany. And that silver that I mentioned that's come all the way from the eastern Mediterranean that's been exchanged across those vast distances, all the way from the Byzantine Empire to find its way into Suffolk. So we can say at least, I think, that the orbit of the person buried at Sutton Hoo was at least doing quite well based on what we can see from the historical and the archaeological sources. You're listening to Dan Snows History. I've got Sue Brunning on the podcast to talk about Sutton Hoo,

a.k.a. The Dig. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores, Thank you. Spire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit.

Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. The goods from the Graver are of the highest quality, aren't they? Does that imply this was a particularly important, perhaps dynamic... I mean, my friends in Suffolk and Essex would say nothing's changed, but do we know anything about in relative terms that kingdom of East Anglia? Oh, yes. I mean, this was indeed a dynamic society, not just in East Anglia, but across the rest of these kingdoms as well. As I've mentioned, this is a period when those

kingdoms are still developing. We see also society becoming more stratified. So the emergence of elites, for example, who are competing with each other for power. They're employing the types of artifacts and the symbols that we see at Sutton Hoo as part of that competition. And it's also, let's not forget, the period of conversion to Christianity and to Christianization. And this is happening right at that contemporary period with Sutton Hoo going into the ground. So it's really such a fascinating moment in time. And I really do think that we're so lucky to have a burial like the Son Hu ship burial to really give us a window on it. It's really, really quite precious.

What about the goods? What do they tell us about the society culture? Is this a pagan society? What does it tell us? What do we learn about the people back then? Well, I mean, where do you start? Quite honestly, there's so much that we can take from it. Before I start mentioning a few ideas, I'd like to start with a little bit of a disclaimer if I can. And that's just that interpreting burial archaeology from this period is just really hard. So funerals at this time, and especially this one, which was so spectacular, these were kind of like pieces of theatre. They have their own props in the form of the grave goods. They have a kind of cast of characters who are the mourners and the person who's buried in the grave. And the rituals that are enacted are kind of like the scenes of a play

almost. So we're not really dealing with reality. It's kind of like a heightened version of reality. And these burials are kind of speaking to us almost with a bit of a forked tongue. And archaeologists have for a long time been aware that grave goods might not accurately reflect the dead person's lived reality or identity. This material culture is something that can be kind of manipulated and selected and created to make a desirable or a useful identity in death that doesn't necessarily kind of match with the identity that that person had in life. And it's that old adage of the dead don't bury themselves. And to kind of make an analogy with historical texts, perhaps, that in this respect, archaeology can sometimes be an unreliable narrator. So we just have to be mindful of that. But I don't really think we should let it put us off. We just have to kind of have one eye on whether what we're seeing is really what the meaning is and to look for the context and what we can learn from amassing all of those clues together. But in terms of what we can learn from the burial about this period and

about people that are living at this time, there's lots of things. So for example, the nature of power in the early 7th century. We see the lavish weaponry that I've mentioned a few times, the martial paraphernalia, those swords and the shield and the helmet. These things suggest to us that power in the early 7th century was related to warfare rather than things like trade and agriculture. It's related to violence and warriors. And this is something that echoes again those writings of Bede and also the famous poem of Beowulf, those descriptions of warring kings of kingdoms, kind of exchanging supremacies and fighting with each other, vying for power. But the other thing I'm going to add another sort of vague disclaimer in here about that warrior status, but it's something actually that I think is really

interesting and important to think about. And that is the definition of what a warrior was at this time, because based on my own research and the research of other people in this area, I think there was actually a broader definition of what a warrior was at this time in the early 7th century. I think we would normally interpret that meaning as someone who fought with weapons, probably a man, let's face it. But I think based on research, as I've said, I think in this period, that category might have been a little bit more inclusive and it might have encompassed other types of individual as well, and perhaps could be better described as someone who owns or displays weapons

rather than someone who necessarily fights with weapons. And that's because we see a series of burials where we find individuals buried with weapons who would be described by us perhaps as being too young, too old, maybe too female, or perhaps having some kind of physical impairment that we would think would preclude them from participating in armed combat. But I think what this might be telling us is that perhaps this category of warrior was perhaps broader than we might interpret it today and admitted other people that we might exclude. And that fits with a society that's quite violent. In a violent society, weapons might acquire a broader symbolism than just being as physical weapons, and therefore they might have a wider acquisition and relevance to more people. So it's quite complicated, but I think really,

really interesting. Also relating to the nature of power in this period, we have a glimpse of the seat of power as well in that hall and feasting paraphernalia that we see that I've mentioned already. So those enormous drinking horns, the huge cauldron, the cauldron itself is very interesting. Unfortunately, in the gallery, it's one of the objects that people tend to pass by because it's kind of brown and lumpy. It doesn't glitter like the gold work does. But what's important about it is that that chain is about three and a half meters long. And that gives us the dimensions of that timber hall that this person that's buried at Sutton Hoo may have held court in. So it's three and a half meters long. That building's probably going to be much higher than that to enable that cauldron to be suspended above a fire.

So we start to build this amazing picture of power of this person with their glittering weaponry and their seat of power in that great timber hall. You mentioned beliefs as well in your question to me there, and that is certainly something else that we can learn about from the burial at Sutton Hoo. And when we think about the conversion period that I've already mentioned, this is a very interesting dynamic period. We see Christianity arriving in southern England, being introduced here by Roman mission from about 597. And then in the north, we see missionaries from Ireland doing their work in the early 7th century. I should say Christianity was in Britain

beforehand during the Roman period, but seems to have receded and these missions in the early 7th century. I should say Christianity was in Britain beforehand during the Roman period, but seems to have receded and these missions during the early medieval period revive it and cause it to spread again. What we see from the St. Hugh burial is that this process was incredibly complex. And one of the enduring questions about the burial is, is this Christian or not? And that's because we see a lot of mixed messages amongst the material culture. So the Byzantine silverware that we find, these dishes that have crosses emblazoned on them, pair of spoons, which in the past have been identified or interpreted, I should say, as baptismal spoons, but less so these days. So those seem to provide a kind of Christian

flavour. But the very act of ship barrel itself is something that traditionally has been interpreted as something that's very pre-Christian in nature so it's something quite traditional. Again this is very complicated but I'll do my best to break it down because again I think it's really interesting. So if we look at that ritual of ship burial first of all there is actually a debate over whether this method of burial, furnished burial with grave goods is inherently pre-Christian in flavour, or if other concerns could also have contributed to this type of ritual. Of course, it's true that this type of furnished burial was practised and performed in the pre-Christian period, and we see it fall out

of use later in the Christian period. But it was also in decline before the conversion took place, before Christianisation, and in some places continued after Christianisation had taken place in some regions. So that suggests that there were probably other motivations beyond that sort of belief system that's underpinning why people are burying people with grave goods at this time. So the ritual at Sutton Hoo is not necessarily a deal-breaker in telling us whether this is a pre-Christian or a Christian society. But what about those Christian grave goods that I mentioned? Well, the Byzantine silver, for example, that's travelled from a Christian culture, the Byzantine Empire, but its presence at Sutton Hoo doesn't necessarily

have to signify Christian practice of the person who's buried there or the mourners that buried that person. So that Christian meaning or the Christian function need not actually have travelled with the items from the Christian culture of the Christian function need not actually have travelled with the items from the Christian culture of the Byzantine Empire, if that makes sense. There's also a really interesting flip side to this in that the gold buckle that we have from the burial, very famous, is completely covered with these intertwining creatures, normally interpreted as traditional interlacing zoomorphic animal ornaments. So that's often seen as, you know, almost like the pinnacle of pre-Christian art. But the problem is that this is the type

of buckle that's also a box. Similar box buckles that we know from the continent actually functioned as Christian reliquaries. So what does that mean? Again, it means that this is not necessarily inherently pre-Christian, this type of ornament. It could have had a relevance also in the Christian period. I make no apology for this being really complicated, but I think in the terms of the Christianisation period, I don't think this is very, very surprising at all. I think it really reflects the spiritual reality of the time, this conversion period. It's a period of experimentation, of symbolic kind of mutability, for want of a better word, the transference of symbols between Christian and pre-Christian uses. And this is, I think, something that we would absolutely expect to see reflected in a burial

like Sutton Hoo, that it would have these mixed messages because it's taking place at this time of great change. And this is something, again, that we see glimpses of in Bede. We see, for example, one of the favoured candidates for Sutton Hoo, the King Radwald in East Anglia, having two altars, one pre-Christian and one Christian altar in his great hall. And the Mercian King Pender, who's often been associated with the Staffordshire Horde, practising religious tolerance, even though he himself continued to be pre-Christian. So I have to say that while this is one of the enduring questions about Sutton Hoo, it's not one of the ones that keeps me awake at night. Do we have any idea if, I should have asked this at the beginning,

but does this extraordinary burial and all these objects, do they centre on one individual? Is this one person's grave? Because it's a very complicated site, isn't it? Oh, well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? And I always feel a little bit like a party pooper when I say, well, we don't really know for certain and it's likely that we will never know exactly who it was who was buried here. What we can say is that this is likely to have been just one individual rather than a few individuals buried in the same ship. There's kind of a human-sized shape left in the burial surrounded by the grave goods. So I think it's room for one, but probably not room for one more. So I think we're talking about one person,

but the problem comes when we try to identify or name that person. So how far can we get? So we have the coins from the burial, which provide us with a rough dating of between around 610 and 635. And if we can trust the royal chronologies that we have and the works of people like Bede again that gives us a few candidates so the popular one is Radwald who died in the 620s I can't remember the exact date he's also very popular as I mentioned because he is the king who has the pre-christian and the christian altar in his hall so it's thought that his kind of hedging of the spiritual bets there matches the sort of mixed spiritual messages that we find in the ship burial. But that chronology also includes at least one of his sons as well.

So if we are looking at a king here, we could have one of those individuals. But it's really, unfortunately, sorry to say, impossible to know for certain. Just lastly on the material culture, you've got to work with it. You know it better than anybody, much of it in your museum, as I understand it. What can you just say about how fine this would have been in the world of the early 7th century? Oh, well, incredibly fine. The metalwork in particular remains the best that we have from England and arguably from Europe during the early medieval period as a whole. I'd say that a few pieces in the Staffordshire Hoard come close, but I think it's still fair to say that nothing really quite surpasses what we

have from Sutton Hoo. So to give an example, the shoulder clasps, and I'm obviously going to give that example because those are the pieces that inspired me to study the early medieval period in the first place when I was an undergraduate visiting the museum. These are made with the so-called cloisonné technique, which basically involves an intricate network of tiny gold cells creating carpet-like or zoomorphic patterns. Each one of these cells is inlaid with a wafer-thin red garnet, and each one of these garnets has underneath it a pattern gold foil, equally thin, and this functions by reflecting the light back through the garnet and making it sparkle and glow.

The best analogy I have for this technique, which I think was from one of the people working on the Staffordshire Horde, was that it kind of works a bit like a bike reflector. So it's that kind of effect. And we have to remember that all of this is being achieved without the use of precision jewellery tools such as we have today. It's being done without sophisticated magnifying methods, without artificial light. So the achievement in light of those challenges is just completely superlative. And if that wasn't impressive enough, there was some new research done in the last few years by a researcher called Ellie Blakelock, a scientist working on the Staffordshire Hoard again. And she

was able to show with her analysis that smiths were even able to make the gold they were using look more gold and they did this by removing silver from the gold alloy at the surface level and that this created a kind of more lustrous gold effect so you know there's really amazing techniques that were developed and used this technique has been identified i should mention not just in the staffordshire hall but also on the sutton who metal work. So this is something that they were able to do and that they were doing for this high status metalwork. And it's really quite mind boggling. But I'd just like to mention also, because it's something that I find just completely beguiling about this period, and that this metalwork, this art is not just fine on a technical level, but also in terms of the

imagery that we find as well. So those animal motifs that I've repeatedly mentioned, those are incredibly intricate. They're like magic eye puzzles. You look at them and you see a kind of mass of bodies and you think, well, I'll never be able to disentangle all of that. But if you put the time in, then the design resolves itself and you kind of get this moment of revelation. And I think that's part of the point. That's part of the reason why these images were made like that is so that, you know, you had to scrutinise them and then you kind of got your reward. So I think that's kind of like a long-winded way of saying,

yes, in short, the Son Who Finds are still very much the best that we have. It's so exciting. We've had on the podcast in the last year, we've had the talk about the Prittlewell burial, which is on the Thames Estuary in South Essex today. So exciting there. Is there more of this stuff? Are we going to find more from this wonderful period, but it's going to help illuminate it even further? Yeah, I think it could absolutely happen. I mean, the Prittlewell burial in itself shows us that these kinds of burials are still out there to be discovered, even though we think

that something like Sutton Hoo is so spectacular that there can't be that many of them out there, surely. It shows that maybe there will be, maybe we will find something else. And for example, the Staffordshire Hoard, that turned up in 2009 and kind of changed our map of understanding again overnight. It increased that kind of high-status metalwork of the type that we have at Sutton Hoo, thought that maybe there wasn't that much of it out there. Then a whole mass of it turns up in one place as part of the Staffordshire Hoard. So it really does show that these things are potentially out there for us to find. And I absolutely think that we will have something else to look at and enjoy in the future, at least I hope so. Sue, how can people, once this state of lockdown is over, how can people look at the remarkable finds from Sutton Hoo?

Yeah, so once lockdown is finally over, people will be able to visit and view the Sutton Hoo finds at the British Museum. They can find it in room 41, which is called the Sir Paul and Lady Ruddock Gallery of Sutton Hoo and Europe. And you can't miss Sutton Hoo because it's right in the middle of the gallery. So when you enter through room 40, the medieval gallery, you're met with the face of the Sutton Hoo helmet. So you can put that on your list for once lockdown is over and we can all safely be outside again. But in the meantime, we are doing the best that we can at the museum in order to make information about Sutton Hoo available. You can visit the gallery virtually. If you go to our website, you'll be able to find the links there. And also with some extra information about Sutton Hoo, a couple of blogs that I've written also, and some links to videos in our Curator's Corner series on YouTube. I've done one about the Sutton Hoo sword and one recently about the Sutton Hoo helmet, which was tremendously exciting for me and people seem to be enjoying. I should also mention that you can

visit the burial site itself at Sutton Hoo. The site there is run by the National Trust. They have some walks through the estate at the moment, which are open, but obviously check the website in case there are any changes. And they also have a great website too, with lots of information about Sutton Hoo. So for the time being, there are lots of things you can do virtually, and then eventually you'll be able to come and actually have that personal connection with the finds again. You certainly can. You don't even have to turn on Netflix.

Sue, thank you so much for coming on the pod. Pleasure. Thanks very much for having me. Hi everyone. Thanks for reaching the end of this podcast. Most of you are probably asleep, so I'm talking to your snoring forms, but anyone who's awake, it would be great if you could do me a quick favour, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars, and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do.

Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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