Short History Of... - The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial

Episode Date: August 27, 2023

The discovery at Sutton Hoo of the ship burial of an Anglo-Saxon king and his lavish treasure is one of the greatest archaeological finds on English soil.  But who was the man considered worthy of such a splendid burial? Why was there no trace of human remains? What lies beneath the other mounds on the site? And why bury a body in a ship?  This is a Short History of the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial. Written by Nicola Rayner. With thanks to Gareth Williams, curator at the British Museum and author of Treasures From Sutton Hoo. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is May the 11th, 1939, just before midday. On a country estate in Suffolk, eastern England, three men are at work excavating. They have dug a trench just over a meter wide that cuts across a small, grassy hillock, the biggest of almost 20 mounds of various sizes on the sandy heathland that rolls down to the River Deben. The estate is known as Sutton Hoo. In Old English, Sutton means a southern farmstead or settlement, and a hoo is a high spur of land. A stone's throwaway stands a large, pale Edwardian house. From time to time, its owner, Edith Pretty, glances through the bay windows

to try and catch a glimpse of her employees' progress. In charge of the group is Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist. He is a slight man, wearing a battered trilby and smoking a bubbling pipe. He is helped by a gardener, John Jacobs, and William Spooner, a game pipe. He is helped by a gardener, John Jacobs, and William Spooner, a gamekeeper. It's warm work in the May sunshine. Brown's mind has started to drift to thoughts of lunch,

but then a sharp shout interrupts his daydreaming. The gardener is calling out that he has found a bit of iron. Brown rushes over to Jacobs in time to stop him from removing his find from its position in the sandy soil. It's a rusty rivet, a large mushroom-shaped nail for holding together pieces of wood. Brown calls a pause to proceedings. Carefully, with bare hands and a small trowel, he begins to explore the area nearby and discovers five more rivets in a neat row. They are too evenly spaced for coincidence, so they must have been part of something else,

holding some long-perished material together. He takes a step back and an image comes to him. The shape of the wooden hull of a vanished ship. Keeping his excitement to himself for a moment, he decides to change his technique, widening the trench to encompass the emerging hollow of the vessel. As he works, Brown becomes familiar with the tell-tale sign of a rivet, a pink patch in the yellow sand. Each time, he dusts the sandy soil away delicately with a pastry brush, revealing a reddish piece of corroded iron.

New rivets appear at such regular intervals, around 15 centimeters between each, that Brown can predict their appearance and leaves a protective coat of sand over them. Soon his hunch about the outline of a ship is confirmed. The curve of the wooden craft is delicately imprinted in the sand. You can see where the planks, the ribs, and even some of the tholes or pins for the oars would have been. But nothing remains of the timber vessel itself. It is a fossil. A ghost. Pausing from his work for a moment to relight his pipe,

Brown has a hunch that the discovery of this ghost ship will be the find of his life. If there is a burial chamber intact within it, perhaps there will be even better to come. But nothing in this moment could prepare him for the bounty that would be uncovered at Sutton Hoo that summer. that summer. The discovery at Sutton Hoo of the ship burial of an Anglo-Saxon King and his lavish treasure is one of the greatest archaeological finds on English soil. It has been compared with the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and called Page One of British History. The treasure, including the famous Sutton Hoo helmet, now resides at the British Museum and has shone a light on the era once known as the Dark Ages.

But who was the man considered worthy of such a splendid burial? Why was there no trace of human remains? What lies beneath the other mounds on the site? And why bury a body in a ship? I'm John Hopkins and this is a short history of the Ship Burial of Sutton Hoo. It is 410 AD, and Britain is at a crossroads after three and a half centuries under Roman rule. The city of Rome is under attack, and its soldiers return home to defend it, leaving the empire at the point of collapse. Roman Emperor Honorius writes a farewell letter to the people of Britain.

Fight bravely and defend your lives, he tells them. You are on your own now. Without Roman protection, the island is now vulnerable to invaders, traveling across the North Sea from northwestern Europe and entering via the estuaries of the east coast. Their small, fast boats make their way up through the rivers of the Fens, the low-lying, marshy regions of eastern England. The first to arrive are mercenary Germanic troops, paid by local rulers attempting to maintain an element of Roman authority. But later arrivals aren't just here to conquer. They want to settle. Whole families come

and build villages of wooden houses and thatched roofs. They grow crops and keep animals. They also work metal into beautifully wrought jewellery and weapons. The Anglo-Saxons, as we now call them, aren't a single people, but a loose grouping of tribes who arrive from southern Scandinavia, northern Germany and the Netherlands. Gareth Williams is a curator at the British Museum and author of Treasures from Sutton Hoo. Sutton Hoo is generally labelled as an Anglo-Saxon burial. It's important to recognize that the people responsible for the Sutton Hoo burial would not have identified themselves in that way. It's a label that comes slightly later. It is a historic label applied to the people of England in the early Middle Ages. But it's a composite.

The people who settled England were divided into different groups. And the venerable Bede, writing a little over a century after the Sutton Hoo burial is thought to have taken place, talks of three groups coming into England from the continent, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. So they're not all the same people, they're coming from different Germanic tribes. As the newcomers arrive during the 5th and 6th centuries, the former inhabitants of eastern England often flee west to safety. The indigenous British maintain control in the northwest and southwest of England and in Wales. But where the Saxons now dominate, they leave their mark by renaming entire kingdoms. The Saxons give their names through some of their

only kingdoms to places like Essex, the East Saxons, Middlesex, the Middle Saxons, Sussex, the South Saxons, and Wessex, the West Saxons. North of the Thames, we predominantly see the Angles, and that's still preserved in East Anglia, the kingdom of the East Angles, where Sutton Hoo was situated, in turn divided into the North Folk and the South Folk, or Norfolk and Suffolk. The kingdom of the East Angles, known today as East Anglia, is one of the most powerful.

The leaders hold court in large timber halls, where their warriors feast and pledge allegiance in the kind of scenes described in Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English. the kind of scenes described in Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English. In the year 599, a new king comes into power. Radwald was one of the most successful kings of the time, king of the East Angles, but accepted as a sort of over-king in other parts of England as well, which probably meant exacting tribute from the other kings, them acknowledging his superiority, probably providing warriors when he went to war at his demand. Radwald's most famous victory is at the Battle of the River Idle in 616 or 617. Though he loses his son in the fight, at the end he defeats his closest rival.

Prior to that, the dominant king had been the king of Northumbria, Æthelfrith. But a rival claimant, Edwin, had fled from Northumbria, taken refuge with Radwald, and Radwald had marched north and following his success in battle, the Battle of the River Idle, established Edwin as king of Northumbria, but as a client king under Radwald's domination. But though for a while he controls this large territory, extending much of the way up the east coast. His reign can't last forever. It is the year 624 AD, a somber day in the kingdom of the East Angles. A few miles from the sea,

the procession is making its way up a slope from the river Devon. Accompanied by musicians, a widowed queen walks proudly alongside a huge ship. It is traveling overground on its final odyssey. Teams of men heave it up the shallow hill. It's back-breaking work, but it's for a noble cause. Dressed in long tunics and trousers, some pull the ship with ropes from the front, others push from behind or get right under it. Wooden runners positioned underneath, made of logs split lengthways with their flat sides on the ground, make the task easier. The rounded top halves act as rollers, greased with oil and the remains of fish to reduce the friction. Progress is slow, but after a while it approaches its destination. The queen leads the women and the royal family, dressed in long woolen gowns with exquisitely

wrought brooches holding the fabric in place. On the other side of the ship is a line of warriors, each carrying a lance and oval shield. And right at the back of the procession is the coffin of the great warrior-king Radwald himself. A chosen few stare ahead as they carry the giant tree-trunk coffin on their shoulders. It is the honor of their lives. Up ahead, an advance party waits at a vast pit which has been dug on a flat area. The trench is 28 meters long and 6 meters wide, descending to more than 3 meters. Two spoil heaps stand beside it, but the queen has requested that plenty of space be left around the grave. That way, everyone can gather to pay their respects, admire the treasure that will be laid with him, and add gifts of their own. Over the next few days, she is expecting luminaries from all over this land,

as well as visiting dignitaries from Denmark and France. There may even be a bishop from Canterbury, though the pagan queen is unsure how she feels about that. Finally, the ground levels out and the procession slows. They have arrived. Leaving the soldiers to prepare to maneuver the ship into the pit, the queen goes over to a makeshift workshop where the burial chamber is being crafted. Made from tree trunks, it will be the shape of a gabled hut and fit into the center of the ship.

Laid out near to where the craftsmen are preparing the structure are the tributes with which she will decorate her husband's final resting place. She inspects the textile preparing the structure are the tributes with which she will decorate her husband's final resting place. She inspects the textiles to be hung on the walls, the carpets for the floor. Pausing beside a chest, she unhooks the catch and lifts the lid to reveal his favorite weapons, each one polished and sharpened. favorite weapons, each one polished and sharpened. Other boxes hold feasting equipment and regalia, piles of bold yellow cloaks to be thrown over his coffin.

But it is beside the last box that she lingers the longest. Here are her dead husband's spare shoes and clean linen. She lifts a shirt to her face and inhales his scent before noticing his shaving knife nestled at the base of the box. And it is this last item that almost causes the Queen to lose her steely composure. It takes a significant effort to orchestrate a ship burial such as Radwald's. But why bury him in a ship at all? It tells us something about the status of whoever's buried there.

But also, and this applies to all the treasure in the burial as well, it tells us a lot about the person doing the burying, that they can control these resources, they can afford to give up all the material that goes into the ground and then to get the labour together to drag a ship. were also symbolic of a journey to the afterlife and that some of the items may also have been deliberately provisioning for the afterlife. Hence, particularly the presence of food and drink and eating and cooking vessels. Is that equipping the dead person with what he would need with the ship to take him there?

We don't know for certain. Much later, it will be discovered that Radwald was neither the first nor the last to be buried here. But for now, the dead sleep peacefully at Sutton Hoo. During the Middle Ages, a strong superstition prevails about disturbing burial mounds, and they remain undisturbed. But the advent of the Tudor era marks a change in the relationship between God and man. Determined to divorce his first wife and marry his second, King Henry VIII declares in 1534 that he, not the Pope, is the head of the Church in England. It is a move that sparks the English Reformation and the dissolution of the

monasteries, in which monastic land and property are seized and sold to those sympathetic to the King's cause. Those friends of the King who receive the estates of the abbeys are keen to make the most of their newly acquired properties. With a license from the crown, they can excavate treasure, and any valuable objects found are melted down and shared between the finder and the sovereign. Historians believe the Mather family of Howe Farm near Sutton Hoo are likely the first to investigate the burial mounds. But fortunately for later archaeologists, their search is not exhaustive, leaving plenty undisturbed for the future. In 1860, more treasure hunters try their luck. Gentleman collectors excavate a quantity of rivets from the site, but they don't realize their significance.

When a considerable number of iron screw bolts is found in one mound, they're sent to a local blacksmith to be recycled into horseshoes. In 1926, a couple move into a large Edwardian house on a sprawling estate at Sutton Hoo. Colonel Frank Pretty is local, a retired commanding officer of the 4th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. His wife, 42-year-old Edith, grew up in a distinguished engineering family in the north of England. Edith Pretty came from a wealthy industrialist family, Edith Pretty came from a wealthy industrialist family. So she was, as a result of that wealthy background, quite well educated and also in a position to travel. And that was not necessarily typical of all women at that time.

While living in the north of England with her father, he had carried out excavations near their home. So again, that would have helped stimulate that interest in archaeology, which was then enhanced by her travels in Egypt. Edith Pretty spent much of the First World War volunteering at a Red Cross hospital in France, attending to casualties of the Western Front, and married Colonel Pretty relatively late in life. She was a mature woman by that stage, although she'd known him since they were both much younger, and had a child very late at the age of 47.

And her husband died only four years later. After the death of her husband, Edith Pritty withdraws from society. But her interest is piqued by the 18 earth mounds that she can see from the south facing bay window of her home now i think it would have been apparent to edith pretty that these were burial mounds but burial mounds occur in very different periods there are prehistoric burial mounds actor saxon burialaxon burial mounds, Viking burial mounds. I don't think that she would have known necessarily which was the case here or have any particular suspicions. There are stories that Edith Pretty is inspired to excavate the mounds by spiritualism,

the belief, fashionable at the time, that it's possible to communicate with the dead. It is said friends experienced visions of soldiers marching around the mounds and treasure beneath them. Certainly she gave financial support to the local spiritualist church in Woodbridge, which is the nearest town, but she's not known ever to have attended it. There are rumours that seances took place at Sutton Hoo House, as it was then called, where she lived. It's not impossible, it's not even particularly unlikely. Whether inspired by a seance or earthly curiosity, Edith Pretty contacts the nearby Ipswich Museum.

Its curator puts her in touch with archaeologist Basil Brown, a local man deeply familiar with the Suffolk landscape and soil. Having left school at 12, he is a self-taught expert whom one colleague describes as a terrier when it comes to sniffing out antiquities. It's important to recognize that at this time, archaeology as a science was still in its infancy. There were academic archaeologists based at universities and museums, but a lot of archaeology was done on a less formal basis. Now, Basil Brown seems to have taught himself actually to a very high standard. It was one of a number of interests. He was an amateur astronomer as well. And to make ends meet, he also did assorted labouring and manual jobs. So it wasn't something that he could do formally.

He didn't have the academic credibility of a university or museum-based archaeologist. But he was nevertheless highly respected in the area and well known and valued for the work he did. Arriving at Sutton Hoo on his bicycle at 11 o'clock in the morning on June 20, 1938, Brown introduces himself to Mrs. Pretty. He makes his case and soon they come to an arrangement. She will pay him 30 shillings a week to excavate the burial mounds on her land, as well as accommodation in her chauffeur's cottage.

Brown gets to work. Mrs. Pretty is keen that he begin with the largest mound, but he persuades her that this one is likely to have already fallen victim to previous treasure hunters. With her consent, he begins to excavate three of the smaller mounds. During that phase, they uncovered two cremation burials. They also found traces of a ship burial. Now, this is not the famous ship burial. It's a second one.

And this one didn't yield the same level of material because it had already been robbed in the past. The first phase of the excavation in 1938 is promising, though not conclusive. Even so, Mrs. Pretty invites Brown to return the following summer to excavate the largest mound, her first choice. There are signs of disturbance dating from the 16th or 17th century, but time will tell whether those early excavators found what they were looking for. Working with Mrs. Pritty's gardener, John Jacobs, and William Spooner, a gamekeeper, Brown digs a test trench across the largest mound. On May 11, 1939, Jacobs finds a rusty rivet.

Leaving it in place, Brown finds more of them in a line which he follows until the ghostly shape of a ship's bow is revealed. which he follows until the ghostly shape of a ship's bow is revealed. The wood had gone, so what there was was lines of rivets still in situ, and the imprint, because it's sandy soil, that's quite acidic, so organics were not well preserved, but metal much better so. Other ships that have been found elsewhere, it's the opposite way around. Clay soil is great for preserving the wood, but not the metal. So, for example, Viking ships from Scandinavia have got a lot of timber, but not the rivet. Throughout the month of May,

the investigation confirms the outline of a substantial vessel, 27 meters long and four and a half meters wide. There is also evidence of earlier intrusion. Fragments of pottery linked with that intrusion show that this had taken place in the 16th century. So whoever was trying to dig into the grave at that point had presumably had a picnic and the remnants of that were left there. Analysis is made of the vessel's construction. It's clinker built, meaning that

it's made of overlapping planks of wood secured with metal rivets, something that it shares with Scandinavian shipbuilding techniques. So the initial assumption is that this is a Viking ship. Word begins to spread in the small world of archaeology. Guy Maynard, the curator at Ipswich Museum, makes inquiries, and soon Charles W. Phillips of Cambridge University pays a visit. On June 6th, Phillips visited Maynard at Ipswich Museum, discovering that there was something of interest so close. They then visited the site. He realised immediately the importance of this,

although he was still also thinking about it, that this was potentially Viking. The follow-up meeting involved representatives of the British Museum and also of the Office of Works, which was the government department at the time with overall responsibility for archaeological work. And by the end of June, the Office of Works had taken over oversight of the whole thing. They invited Phillips as a university-based, reputable professional archaeologist to lead the excavation and to take it over. Brown isn't one to be much awed by authority so he continues with

his dig nonetheless after weeks of painstaking work he identifies the location of the collapsed burial chamber a rectangle of dark peaty earth right at the center of the ship previous treasure hunters seem to have missed it that evening alone on the mound at dusk, Brown discovers an iron ring on the edge of a decayed wooden box. He knocks on it, then pushes his finger into what he discovers to be a hollow cavity. Though he knows it's possible it will contain only bones, before he can find out he is demoted to assistant, with Phillips taking the helm in early July.

In the course of July, additional archaeologists were brought in from around the country, in some cases pulled off other excavations, because they saw the potential that this had to be something really important. And it is a race against the clock. It is July 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. For a find of this significance, Phillips needs all hands on deck. Archaeologists Stuart and Peggy Piggott respond to the call on holiday, soon to be joined by others from the ordnance survey. More experts assist on an ad hoc basis during crucial points in the excavation.

Phillips is a heavy man and is concerned that the burial chamber should be spared his weight, so he leaves the work of excavation to be done by his colleagues. So he leaves the work of excavation to be done by his colleagues. Working away quietly on the morning of July the 21st, carefully troweling and brushing, it is Peggy Piggott who encounters the first piece of jewelry. As she unearths the small gold and garnet pyramid, a wave of excitement moves through the site. But it will turn out to be a mere amuse-bouche for the feast of golden splendor that will follow over the next few days piece after piece is pulled from the burial chamber when the archaeologists return in the evening to the bull hotel in the nearby town of woodbridge their pockets are stuffed with gold

In the nearby town of Woodbridge, their pockets are stuffed with gold. A few things sprang out as finds of particular interest. There are a number of buckles, but there's one which is solid gold. It's got interlaced designs along the front. It actually opens. It's a little casket in the form of a buckle. And it weighs altogether one Roman pound. It's a huge thing. It's not really a very practical belt buckle for just holding your clothes together. It's a display of wealth and status on a massive scale. The archaeologists also uncover intricate shoulder clasps of gold inlaid with garnet and glass, a purse containing coins and gold ingots, and a pattern-welded sword with a jeweled hilt. instrument again with some decorative plates but traces of the lyre itself survive which is unusual and very fortunate given the poor state of other organics on the site so to have the wood

surviving there at all is is very valuable drinking horns other eating vessels and storage vessels a whetstone with metal decorations on top, which may have functioned as a scepter. And last but not least, the fantastic helmet made of iron, but decorated with silver plates and gold and garnets. It's a fantastic piece. The famous helmet, which has become the symbol of Sutton Hoo, is found in fragments, a puzzle to be solved later. In total, no fewer than 263 items are uncovered. Made of gold, garnet, silver, bronze, enamel, iron, wood, bone, textile, even feathers and fur. The treasure reveals that this was a world with widespread connections to a variety of different cultures. It is likely the garnets have come from

the Indian Ocean. The gold was probably imported as either Frankish or Byzantine coins, which would have been melted down and reused. The silver vessels look back to the Roman past, so does the armor, while other elements have parallels with Scandinavia. And yet, there is no trace of the well-traveled individual who was buried with all of this treasure. This quantity of gold, there was nothing like that previously known anywhere in england and again with the tendency of archaeologists i think it must be said now as well as then to light the bling it was a massively exciting find what the dazzling metal work and the coins in the purse revealed to the

experts is that the treasure and the burial itself belong to the early 7th century. It is not a Viking ship after all, but a significantly rarer Anglo-Saxon one. Among the most intriguing pieces are a pair of Byzantine silver spoons. One is inscribed with the Greek inscription, Solus, or Saul. The other bears the name, Paulus, or Paul. Now, what's interesting with Saul and Paul is the biblical story of St. Paul, originally called Saul, converting to Christianity, having been vehemently anti-Christian prior to that, and then his road to Damascus conversion to become one of the fiercest proponents of early

Christianity and promoting it. So it's been suggested that these are perhaps baptismal spoons. That is significant because the early 7th century was a period in which Christianisation was spreading across southern England. And it's been particularly suggested that it may relate to the religious beliefs of the individual in the grave. It must be said, however, that the pattern as a whole of burial, of a ship burial with vast amounts of grave goods, is not in itself a particularly Christian thing. So this doesn't look like a Christian burial, even though it has some items in which may originally have had Christian significance.

have had Christian significance. The dating of the coins suggests the burial occurred between 610 and 640 AD. As Radwald was an over-king at that time, he is considered the most likely person to have been buried in the great ship, assuming there was a body. What's also significant is Radwald's relationship to the Christian church. He is someone who first accepted Christianity and then retreated from it, which would be consistent with the presence of Christian items,

but a basically non-Christian form of burial. So the evidence is all consistent with Radwald being buried, while not conclusive. But the questions about the legal ownership of the treasures remain. Later in the summer, an inquest is held at the local parish hall to establish whether the find should be officially classified as treasure trove. If so, it will become the property of the crown. The billiards table in the hall is moved for the occasion, and the gold and silver items are put on display. A jury of 14 local men includes a blacksmith and the secretary of the local golf club. The key that was there in the old law of treasure trove, which is no longer there under the Treasure Act,

is that it should be something that was deposited with intent to recover. And a burial is assumed to be placed there for posterity and therefore not with intent to recover. So anything that was deemed to be treasure trove would be the property of the crown. But because it was felt it wasn't deposited with intent to recover, the ownership reverted to Edith Pretty as the landowner. But in an act of remarkable generosity, five days later, Edith Pretty donates the treasure to the British Museum. She refuses any financial reward for her gift, and will later even turn down a CBE. With another global conflict looming, the grave goods are packed in a van

and taken to London as a matter of urgency. On September 3rd, Britain declares war on Germany. For its safekeeping, the Sutton Hoo treasure is buried again, this time in the London Underground between Holborn and Aldwych stations. The burial site at Sutton Hoo is covered with bracken, but not refilled. The site was taken over by the Ministry of Defence and various things were put in place to stop enemy aircraft landing there. And it was used for training exercises.

There's a real risk, I think, that had the excavations not already taken place, the entire site could have been destroyed in the process of war work. The Sutton Hoo Treasures spent the war in the London Underground. So the British Museum itself had a station in those days which no longer exists and a lot of material was packed down there

where it was felt it would be safe from bombing. So it wasn't really until the end of the war that having been tantalised by this amazing discovery that the experts could actually get to grips with it.

Sadly, before this can happen, Edith Pretty suffers a stroke and dies in 1942 at the age of 59. In the summer of 1951, six years after the end of the Second World War, the Festival of Britain is held. It's intended as a tonic for the nation, a cheering cultural celebration to raise the spirits of a country still in the grasp of austerity and rationing. More than 8 million people visit the main festival site on London's South Bank, which includes an exhibit on the findings of Sutton Hoo.

The newly reconstructed helmet, painstakingly assembled from more than 500 fragments, is the star piece. Two decades after the war, in 1965, a team returns to the site to answer one of the most pressing questions. Why were no human remains discovered in this most famous of ship burials? This time, with the help of chemical analysis of the sand below the burial chamber, they find the answer. The high phosphate levels indicate that a body did decompose there. It also confirms that the acidic nature of the soil must have dissolved the human remains as well as the timber

of the ship. Meanwhile, in London, there's a growing sense of unease about the helmet. In the reconstruction that appeared at the Festival of Britain, the sides of the wearer's face and throat would remain exposed. It's an unlikely shape for a warrior's helmet. It's an unlikely shape for a warrior's helmet. Eventually the decision is made to dismantle the whole thing and try again to reconstruct it. It is 1971. Nigel Williams, a bearded conservator in his twenties, is having a tough day. On the workbench in his room at the British Museum in London lies the famous Sutton Hoo helmet in fragments. There are more than 500 in total.

The process of dismantling the iconic piece has been, in the words of one of his colleagues, like opening a little box of horrors. It now falls to Williams to reassemble the helmet correctly. Williams has started bringing the pieces together, pinning them onto a plasticine head. The task has been compared with putting a jigsaw together without the picture on the box to follow. An optimist by nature, Williams thought the job might take a matter of weeks. A few months ago, he made a crucial discovery. In an unpacked box at the museum marked, Head, Williams found the bronze jaw of a dragon head, which resembles those at either end of the crest of the helmet. But he still hasn't found a place for it.

Though he now knows the colour and shape of every fragment, the differences in their curvature, thickness and texture, the puzzle itself is still far from solved. It is a task of such importance that Williams must consult other experts at every stage. But he has come to dread the sound of a knock at his door. He needs some silence to let his brain do its job. Hearing footsteps in the corridor outside,

he decides to escape another interruption and take a coffee break. Slipping out of his room, he makes his way to the museum's staff canteen. He sips a coffee, hoping the caffeine will recharge his tired brain. Where could that dragon's head sit on the helmet? Glancing across the canteen, Williams exchanges a nod with a colleague on the other side of the room. As he notes the man's heavy eyebrows that almost meet in the middle, an idea occurs to Williams. It's like a crossword clue that emerges the moment you step away from the puzzle. Standing up abruptly, he leaves the rest of his coffee and heads back to his office.

The dragon's head is still sitting on the workbench, as if waiting for him. Williams lifts it up and places it between the eyebrows on the mask of the helmet. It fits perfectly. More than that, it acts as a key to the puzzle, unlocking the other elements. Now the gilt eyebrows become the wings of a dragon. The nose and moustache appear as the creature's body and its tail. Now, the gilt eyebrows become the wings of a dragon. The nose and moustache appear as the creature's body and its tail. The result is mysterious and terrifying.

Williams can almost see the eyes of the warrior that would have worn it on the battlefield. Because, even with all the adornment, the face of the helmet is distinctly human, staring back at him from across the centuries. The helmet, more than any other piece, has become a symbol not only of Sutton Hoo, but of the Anglo-Saxon era. The helmet is a remarkable piece. We have very few surviving early medieval helmets at all, and this is one of the better preserved. What I think is particularly significant is it has a face to it.

So it's a type of helmet derived ultimately from late Roman cavalry helmets, which often had masks. There's some debate as to how far these were ceremonial and how far they may actually have been worn as functional helmets. And the same is true of the Sutton Hoo helmet, but it has an extraordinary face to it. It's reconstructed with a combination of the original fragments and modern reconstructed parts. The latter are made of a heavy-duty textile that's covered with plaster and painted the same shade of brown as the iron.

It's a fragile material used so that the helmet can be taken apart again if necessary. A replica is created to show the helmet in its former glory. It would have been covered with tinned bronze plaques, giving it a silver appearance, stamped with a series of repeated designs. The three most common designs show interlaced serpentine patterns, and another of a mounted warrior riding down an enemy on foot, derived from a late Roman coin. The third design comprises two dancing figures with bird heads

that emerge like horns from their helmets. Now this may be related to the god Woden, as the Anglo-Saxons knew him, or then for the Vikings, with the two ravens thinking and remembering that brought him news of everything that was happening around the world. And these two figures don't appear to be fighting, it appears more of a ritual dance. So is this some form of religious worship of the cult of Woden? We can't say that for certain, but it seems likely. In 1983, archaeologist Martin Carver returns to the burial ground at Sutton Hoo for further excavation. Although attention tends to focus on the one great ship burial, there are, we think, 18 mounds in total.

Not all of those have yet been uncovered. There was a later phase of excavation carried out at the end of the 20th century, led by Professor Martin Carver. And the idea there was to get a better picture of the cemetery overall. Returning to Mound 2, initially explored by Brown in 1938, Carver's team deduces that it was likely to have contained a rich ship burial of someone comparable in status to Radwald himself. Though the grave had been previously robbed and subsequently excavated by Brown, some fine objects remain. There are two decorated gilt bronze discs, a bronze brooch,

and a silver buckle. A decade of investigation follows. Mound 14 is revealed to have been the only discernible high-status burial of a woman so far discovered in the royal burial ground. Could this be a queen? Or perhaps Radwald's widow? It endures as one of the many unsolved mysteries of Sutton Hoo. At Mount Seventeen, Carver's team discover that previous seekers have missed another important find. Two graves side by side. One holds the remains of a young man buried in a tree trunk coffin, with his weapons and other grave goods, including a harness and some lamb chops. Next to him is a second grave, containing the skeleton of his horse.

But Carver's team doesn't only examine the mounds. When they start to explore the spaces between, the outlines of more graves appear. Meticulous excavation reveals human outlines where the original bodies have once again dissolved as areas of harder, darker sand. darker sand. These sand bodies, as they become known, often lie in distorted positions. There are sinister signs of bound legs and ankles, broken necks and severed heads. Numbering 39 in all, these individuals have not been ceremoniously buried, and their ends seem to have been violent. But why? The answer lies, perhaps, in the discovery of post holes found nearby, which are thought to be the location of the uprights of an early gallows. As paganism waned, the laws of the new Christian administration

helped keep control for the kings that followed Radwald. Capital punishment was part of that order. The revered burial ground for pagan kings seems to become the resting place for those denied a Christian internment. Not everyone buried here, it seems, has been treated with the dignity afforded to Radwald. Some of the burials seem to be later and intrusive. It's been suggested that some of these are execution burials. So far from the high-status honorific burial that we see with the Mound 1 ship burial, that these are criminals being buried after an execution.

It's been suggested that Mound 5 may have had a gallows on it. This is thought to be because the same prominence visually in the landscape that led the site to be selected for the burials would also have been prominent for the display of punishment. Looming above the river, the Sutton Hoo site is visible to those on lower land. Gallows there would be very visible as a reminder to people as the penalty for lawbreaking. And even if this then took place probably slightly later, 8th or even 9th centuries, then at that point it would probably be in a Christian context, and therefore the traditional burial ground wouldn't have the same sanctity

that perhaps it had once done under pre-Christian tradition. In 1998, the site at Sutton Hoo is donated to the National Trust. The burial ground is open to the public, as is Edith Pritty's former home, now known as Tranma House. Digging in preparation for the visitor center at Sutton Hoo in 2000, uncovers a second Anglo-Saxon cemetery, 500 meters to the north of the famous burial ground. A final resting place for the parents or grandparents, it has been suggested, of the royal family there. The story of Sutton Hoo remains one of the most exciting in British archaeology,

but so many questions remain. Will we ever be sure of the identity of the person in the great ship burial? Is his wife interred at Sutton Hoo? How many people are buried on the site in total? And how and why did it change from a revered royal burial ground to a place where others seem to have been punished with a violent death. And yet Sutton Hoo has answered questions too, illuminating the era once known as the Dark Ages, between the end of Roman rule in Britain and the Norman conquest in 1066. Sutton Hoo is often described as shining a light on the Dark Ages,

which is a label for this period which those of us who work on it really hate. It's a label imposed by classicists who historically tend to rather sneer at anything between the end of Rome and the Renaissance in the early modern period as being barbaric and somehow inferior. I think what the workmanship of the material in Sutton Hoo demonstrated was a level of craftsmanship that equaled anything that the Romans could produce. The quality of the metalworking, and although it's a very different aesthetic to classical or Renaissance, the quality of what's there and the splendor of it really forced people to re-evaluate that very dismissive view.

It is hoped by archaeologists such as Professor Martin Carver that there will be more to discover at this site. The decision was quite consciously made to leave some of the graves untouched. Martin was very conscious of the fact that he was able to make use of archaeological techniques that were unknown at the time of the original excavations in the 1930s and that there might be equally dramatic developments in archaeology in the future. With a little luck, there will be more stories to come from Sutton Hoo. And future archaeologists will be able to ask new questions of their own.

Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of Marilyn Monroe. I think that what's made Marilyn an icon is that everybody sees her in different ways. There are people who love Marilyn as an actress, and there are people who love Marilyn as a person, as a trailblazer. Then there are people who just love to look at her posters and things like that. She's something for everybody. And I think the fact as well that she had such a hard life and a hard childhood and yet became this most famous woman in the world.

That's so inspiring for everybody who loves her. That's next time. you