Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
Sutton Hoo is best-known for its ‘royal’ Anglo-Saxon cemetery, where the remains of finely furnished graves have been found, including an elaborate ship burial that was excavated in 1939. The site’s story stretches back much further than the 7th century, however – and the latest instalment of a partnership between Time Team and the National Trust has now added another chapter.
Although today the famous mounds appear to stand in splendid isolation on a promontory overlooking the River Deben, they are not the only evidence of funerary practices in the immediate area, nor the earliest. Twenty years ago, Suffolk County Council archaeologists working ahead of the construction of the site’s Exhibition Hall uncovered part of another burial ground about 500m to the north (see CA 180). This comprised a mix of around 30 cremations and inhumations, some of which appeared to reflect high-status individuals including a woman whose cremated remains had been placed in an elaborately decorated bronze bowl, and a number of ‘weapon burials’ accompanied by spears, shields and, in two cases, swords. Significantly, radiocarbon dating revealed that these burials pre-dated the ‘royal cemetery’, beginning c.AD 520-585 and ending around the turn of the 7th century. Might this upwardly mobile community have included the ancestors of the dynasty that would go on to establish its own cemetery close by?
The Exhibition Hall excavation also offered clues as to why early medieval individuals may have been attracted to the site in the first place, as some of the burials were clustered around a much earlier funerary monument: a Bronze Age barrow. This was far from the only evidence of prehistoric activity identified at Sutton Hoo, however: in the 1980s and 1990s, Professor Martin Carver led excavations at the royal cemetery itself, revealing that the mounds had been built on top of traces of much-earlier settlement, including Bronze Age roundhouses, pits containing Beaker pottery, and ditches picking out extensive networks of Bronze Age and Iron Age enclosures (CA 118).
It was with the aim of adding more detail to this wider view of the Sutton Hoo estate that Time Team and the National Trust began their two-year partnership, the latest instalment of which concluded with a month-long excavation this summer. A large trench opened in Garden Field, just beyond where the 6th-century cemetery was found, and a series of test-pits dug down by the Deben set out to interrogate a series of intriguing anomalies that had been picked up in geophysical surveys undertaken by Time Team and National Sutton Hoo geophysics volunteers in 2021 and 2022 (see CA 383).
The main trench was excavated by FAS Heritage, working with Time Team archaeologists and National Trust staff and volunteers, as well as more than 80 amateur enthusiasts coming from as close-by as the local primary school, and as far afield as the USA and Australia, as well as from the Restoration Trust (which offers cultural therapy to people living with mental health challenges). Some of those who took part were veterans of the 1980s excavations – among them Justin Garner-Lahire of FAS Heritage, who also directed this year’s excavations, and Time Team’s Dr Helen Geake – while many more former diggers visited the project on 22 June as part of a special day marking the 40th birthday of the Sutton Hoo Society (which was established in 1984 to support the investigations).
Extending the cemetery
As work on the Garden Field trench progressed, the excavation team quickly realised that the area’s archaeology had been severely disturbed by deep ploughing, probably when the land was used for growing asparagus before it was acquired by the National Trust. All had not been lost, however: as I stood beside the trench with Helen Geake, Angus Wainwright (National Trust Regional Archaeologist), and Laura Howarth (Sutton Hoo’s Archaeology and Engagement Manager), they pointed out distinctive dark smudges that stood out in the sandy soil amid a web of plough scars. These were traces of Anglo-Saxon cremation burials, some of which still contained the bases of plough-severed urns, and they were thought to belong to the same cemetery as that which now lies beneath the Exhibition Hall.
It has long been suspected that this burial ground had extended beyond the excavated portion, not least because of a previous discovery hinting at the presence of more high-status cremations in the immediate area. In 1986, a farmer’s harrow brought fragments of an enigmatic metal container to the surface, about 60m from where the Exhibition Hall would later be built. Now known as the Bromeswell Bucket, this 6th-century vessel is thought to have been made in Antioch in modern Turkey, and is decorated with images of a North African hunting scene, together with an inscription in Greek. Excitingly, this summer’s excavation recovered further metal fragments decorated with figures matching those on the Bucket, and X-Ray Fluorescence analysis of these, as well as other pieces in the National Trust’s collections that were found in 2012, has confirmed that they all come from the same artefact. Traces of solder identified during this study also hint at the Bucket having been repaired at some point during its lifetime.
The entirety of Garden Field was metal-detected during the project, and all finds have been recorded in 3D before being sent for processing and cataloguing away from the site. When excavations resume for Phase 2 next year, the plan is to extend the main trench into a large L-shape, in order to investigate a big circular feature that can be clearly seen in the geophysical survey results. The project’s full findings will be revealed in a documentary special, presented by Sir Tony Robinson, which will be screened at a date yet-to-be confirmed via the Time Team Official YouTube channel (see ‘Further information’ below). Watch this space for a more detailed exploration of the Sutton Hoo story in a future issue of CA once the documentary has aired.
Further information
• Originally shown on Channel 4 between 1994 and 2013, Time Team relaunched on YouTube in 2021 (CA 375), and you can find many episodes, old and new, at http://www.youtube.com/@TimeTeamOfficial. Time Team’s investigations are now supported via an online platform called Patreon, where fans pledge regular donations in exchange for access to exclusive additional content. For more information, see http://www.timeteamdigital.com and http://www.patreon.com/TimeTeamOfficial.
• Sutton Hoo is in the care of the National Trust; for more information about the site, and about visiting, see http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/suffolk/sutton-hoo.
