Letters from CA – August 2021
Your view on past Current Archaeology issues.
Early Medieval
A Viking Age family reunion
It is believed that this group may represent a Viking population who had settled in Oxford for some years.
Finds tray – Anglo-Saxon gesture figurine
This is a 7th-century gesture figurine of a man, made of copper alloy. It was found by a metal-detectorist last December in the parish of Kintbury, West Berkshire.
The last laugh
Furnished graves smacked of paganism, along with the idea that worldly goods should be laid in the grave for the use of the deceased in the afterlife.
Iona’s archetype? A concrete replica of the Cross of St John speaks
The Isle of Iona, located off the south-western coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, has been described by the poet Robert Crawford (b. 1959) as a place where ‘spirit, imagination, and physical exertion mingle’. Iona’s assemblage of early medieval carved stones and grave slabs constitute a special part of the island’s magic, forming a collection of early medieval art for which there are few parallels in the rest of Europe. The importance of one cross in particular – the 8th-century Cross of St John – has only recently been realised, in part because of a study of its concrete replica, as Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reveals.
Illuminating a far-travelled vessel
The image shown here represents a fire altar with a triple-pointed crown in the flames as a central motif, surrounded by plant scrolls containing stylised leopards and tigers.
Metal-detectorist unearths Viking coin hoard in Isle of Man
The Irish and Manx coins depict the profile of King Sihtric Silkbeard, who served as Norse King of Dublin around AD 989 to 1036.
Anglo-Saxon cave dwelling identified in Derbyshire
It may be ‘the only intact domestic building to have survived from the Saxon period.’
Fashioning the Viking Age
The designs of these outfits are based on two high-status graves, which contained some of the best-preserved Viking Age textiles in Denmark: a male burial from Bjerringhøj, dated to AD 970-971, and a female grave from Hvilehøj, dated to the late AD 900s.
Medieval church built for Otto the Great found in Germany
Otto the Great possessed significant influence over the papacy, and to revive Catholicism throughout central Europe ordered the construction of many lavish churches.
River Kings: a new history of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
The sleepy village of Repton in south Derbyshire seems like an unlikely starting point for a voyage halfway around the world. But it is here that Cat Jarman begins her brilliant new history of the Vikings. In 873, Repton was…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles
• Paths of Fire: the gun and the world it made
• Pathfinders
• The Viking Great Army and the Making of England
• SBS: Silent Warriors
• The Confidence Men: how two prisoners of war engineered the most remarkable escape in history
• Blood and Ruins: the Great Imperial War, 1931-1945
Integrating art and archaeology: Eastbourne, East Sussex
In this new interactive work of art, titled Walking through the town I followed a pattern on the pavement that became the magnified silhouette of a woman’s profile...
Sailing ahead: the latest news from the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company
A project working to reconstruct the famous Anglo-Saxon ship excavated at Sutton Hoo in 1939 continues apace. Philip Leech brings us up to date on the latest progress.
Reopening graves a widespread practice in early medieval Europe, research reveals
The practice appears to have begun in central Europe sometime before the 6th-century AD, and then spread across the continent before reaching its peak around two-hundred-years later.
Lost and found: Bjerringhøj burial
Textile traces Sometime in the late 19th century, the remains of an elite individual that had been excavated from the Viking Age burial mound at Bjerringhøj, Denmark, in 1868 were lost. According to a recent paper in Antiquity, Charlotte Rimstad…
Secrets of the Galloway Hoard
With a large amount of gold and Anglo-Saxon objects otherwise unseen in Scotland, the Viking Age hoard discovered in Galloway in 2014 is unusual in a number of ways. What do we know so far about this complex hoard? And what more might its contents tell us? As the Galloway Hoard goes on display in a new exhibition and research continues, Martin Goldberg explores the answers, and the new questions, the enigmatic assemblage offers up.
Dating the Cerne Abbas giant
New dating research has revealed that, rather than being an ancient fertility symbol or depiction of the mythical hero Heracles, the giant is in fact medieval.
Bringing an Anglo-Saxon brooch back to life
Given the prominent location of this woman’s grave, overlooking the Ock valley, and the elaborate items she was buried with, it is likely she was a member of a leading family.
Latest dating evidence for the Cerne Abbas hill figure
Analysis of sediment samples taken from the Cerne Abbas Giant has shed new light on the origins of the Dorset hill figure, suggesting that the chalk outline may have been created in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts reports.
50 Finds of Early Medieval Coinage
In this latest publication in the ‘50 Finds’ series from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, John Naylor draws on a selection of 50 early medieval coins from the 10,000 recorded in the PAS database to present a sweeping yet engaging history…
Excavations at Stoke Quay, Ipswich: southern Gipeswic and the parish of St Augustine
This monograph provides a detailed report on the major excavations by Oxford Archaeology South and Pre-Construct Archaeology at the site of Stoke Quay, Ipswich (2011-2012), covering 1.2 acres of the Saxon and medieval town. Ipswich is one of England’s oldest…
Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard: secrets of a Viking Age collection from south-west Scotland
Buried c.AD 900, the Galloway Hoard is thought to be Scotland’s earliest-known Viking Age hoard. In the years since its discovery in 2014, wide-ranging research has illuminated its eclectic and often unique contents. As a new exhibition opens, exploring the story so far, Martin Goldberg takes us through some of the latest findings.
This week: Hoards
No one knows for certain why Viking Age people chose to bury their most treasured possessions underground. According to one 13th-century source, the influential Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson, they did it because Odin – the Norse god who oversees Valhalla – had decreed that a man will have the use in the afterlife of any treasure he buried while still alive. More recently, however, archaeologists and historians have preferred more earthbound explanations for the presence in the British Isles of so many Viking Age 'hoards'.
Cerne Abbas Giant is an Anglo-Saxon creation, study confirms
Is the Cerne Abbas Giant a prehistoric creation honouring a fertility god, or perhaps even a crude representation of Oliver Cromwell?
A detective story: rediscovering elite Viking burial remains
The grave goods included two iron axes, a bronze kettle, and metres of lavish textiles embroidered with silver, gold, and silk threads, all suggesting this was the grave of a high-status, elite individual.
Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the birth of England
Assembling an extensive patchwork of evidence, Livingston tries to recreate the ‘facts’ of the Battle of Brunanburh – the major battle between King Æthelstan’s English forces and an alliance of Vikings and Scots in AD 937. While he makes some…
Sutton Hoo helmet in LEGO
'We really need the public’s help to make the LEGO Sutton Hoo helmet an official LEGO set that anyone can buy and build.'
River Kings: a new history of Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
It all began with a bead: a small piece of carnelian recovered during the excavation of a Viking Great Army mass grave at Repton in 1982. Thirty-five years later, it fascinated Cat Jarman, who was examining artefact archives for the…
A wealth of Viking finds
Dated to c.AD 950 on stylistic grounds, the hoard contains three significant pieces of jewellery deposited in a single event, possibly by a wealthy individual.
The women of Sutton Hoo: tracing female stories at a celebrated cemetery
Sutton Hoo is best known as the location of an astonishing ‘princely’ Anglo-Saxon ship burial – but the site has compelling stories to tell about women too. Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts explores the lives of five fascinating females linked with the 7th-century site.
Anglo-Saxon feasting finds?
Scientific analysis of some enigmatic burnt features found in several Anglo-Saxon settlements across the east of England has provided new insight into early medieval cooking practices.
Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries: kinship, community, and identity
It has been more than two decades since Sam Lucy’s seminal book The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death, and in the intervening years new cemeteries, methodologies, and mortuary archaeology theory have advanced to the point that we are due a sequel.…
Mounds and monasteries: burials in late Iron Age and early medieval Ireland
The Irish archaeologist Barry Raftery (1944-2010) wrote: ‘Death represents the ultimate confrontation between the human and the supernatural worlds. The surviving burial remains and the associated funerary monuments thus provide us with the clearest and most tangible surviving evidence of religious beliefs and practices’. With this as her theme, Elizabeth O’Brien has studied every excavated Irish burial dating from the period c.200 BC to c.AD 800. She found great diversity and one common strand – burial in close proximity to ancestors or to people regarded as saints, as Chris Catling reports.
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?
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?