East of England

OPPOSITE Overlooking the remains of an Anarchy period smithy excavated by Headland Archaeology. Once a vital asset to Cheveley’s 12th century villagers, today its outline is preserved through foundation trenches and post holes.

Iron in the time of Anarchy: investigating a smithy site forged in 12th-century civil war

When Headland Archaeology excavated a site in Cheveley, Cambridgeshire, there was every expectation that the medieval village would yield archaeological remains. What was found far exceeded the team’s anticipation, though, as they unearthed the remains of a 12th-century smithy surrounded by both the objects and waste material that it had produced. It was the site’s date, and that of its abandonment, which proved the most compelling part of the story, however, suggesting a connection to a dark period in the history of the Fens. Julie Franklin reveals more.

Opposite A recreation of the Sutton Hoo excavation and the imprint of the ship as it appears in The Dig. above Basil Brown, discoverer of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

This week on The Past: The Dig

Welcome to The Past, the brand new website that brings together the most exciting stories and the best writing from the worlds of history, archaeology, ancient art and heritage.

 

The big talking point here this week has been The Dig, the new Netflix movie of the Sutton Hoo story starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes. Who would have predicted that a drama about the 1939 excavation of a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon burial mound would become one of the stand-out hits of lockdown? Or that it would plug so directly into modern concerns about the representation of women on screen?

Opposite A recreation of the Sutton Hoo excavation and the imprint of the ship as it appears in The Dig. above Basil Brown, discoverer of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

Sutton Hoo Quiz

At what event did Edith Pretty, Sutton Hoo’s owner, get chatting with historian Vincent Redstone, a meeting that began the chain of events which led to the site’s excavation?

Below Individuals buried at the Hospital of St John the Evangelist had the lowest incidence of fractures, possibly because the inmates of the hospital were too ill to participate in risky activities.

Life and death in medieval Cambridge

Analysis of more than 300 human skeletons, recovered from three different medieval burial sites across Cambridge, has provided interesting new details of the city’s inhabitants, and the individual risks they may have faced based on their position in life. The…

The Dig: ‘poetic licence aside’

This is no high-octane adventure romp, but a slow, almost meditative period piece that focuses more on the people involved in the investigation and on the looming threat of the Second World War than it does on the astonishing artefacts that were recovered from Suffolk’s sandy soil.

Image: © Colchester Museums/Douglas Atfield

News in brief: Dealing with dates

A Roman ring revisited A Roman intaglio discovered in 1995 in Colchester, UK, pre-dates the Roman invasion of Britain, research for the new online database for Colchester + Ipswich Museums suggests. Engraved with the image of Mars, the Roman god…

Above Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown, Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty, and Archie Barnes as her son Robert, at the recreated Sutton Hoo mound in The Dig. right Ben Chaplin and Lily James play archaeologists Stuart and Peggy Piggott.

A Riveting Tale

Netflix has just released The Dig, a major film about the Sutton Hoo excavation. Lindsay Fulcher unearths the story of how Basil Brown uncovered the splendid Anglo-Saxon ship burial and illuminated the so-called ‘Dark Ages’.

Above More than 17 roundhouses were uncovered within a defensive enclosure at Cressing, near Braintree in Essex.

Evidence of Roman reprisals in Essex?

A recently revealed Iron Age settlement in Cressing, near Braintree in Essex, appears to have been almost completely destroyed during the second half of the 1st century AD. Dating to around the time of the Boudican uprising of AD 60/61,…

Left A NLHF grant allowed the team from the Caistor Roman Project to continue with their work last year while following strict COVID 19 safety measures.

Caistor Roman Project gets a boost

Caistor Roman Project (CRP) – a community archaeology group centred around the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at present-day Caistor St Edmund in Norfolk – received an unexpected morale-booster in August: an emergency grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund,…