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REVIEW BY CH
The latest issue of Ash-sharq includes a particularly thought-provoking contribution by Dr St John Simpson, senior curator in the British Museum’s Department of the Middle East, which focuses on artefacts from Anglo-Saxon England.
Among the lavish grave goods of the ‘princely’ burials at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk), Taplow (Buckinghamshire), and Broomfield and Prittlewell (both Essex), a number of objects have eastern Mediterranean origins. They are traditionally interpreted as trade goods or diplomatic gifts, but Simpson argues for a more direct route, setting the artefacts in the context of the late 6th-century wars between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, and wondering whether they might be souvenirs brought back by Anglo-Saxon mercenaries.
Simpson’s discussions include detailed references to Dr Helen Gittos’ forthcoming paper (in The English Historical Review) on the same topic, combined with insightful analysis drawing on his own excavations and expertise in the Sasanian Empire’s material culture. He highlights how the mundane materials of many of the eastern artefacts seem at odds with their elite burial context, highlighting in particular a copper-alloy flagon from Prittlewell (he includes an interesting and well-illustrated comparison of its imagery with Sasanian artistic traditions); a small, lop-sided bottle from Sutton Hoo (the only clay item in Mound 1’s famous ship burial); and lumps of Syrian bitumen from the same grave, which he compares with examples from his own excavations in Iraq.
Taking a wider view, Simpson also considers intaglios found in Kent, Sussex, and Anglesey, which he interprets as Sasanian seals and possible battlefield trophies; Sasanian coins that have been recorded in England and Wales by Caitlin Green; and the eight Byzantine coins from Rendlesham, a high-status settlement close to Sutton Hoo – evidence of foreign trade, or loose change from the pay packets of mercenaries?
Other papers in this eclectic collection comprise a well-illustrated discussion of 24 previously unpublished lead miniature vessels from various museum collections in Turkey (by Ergün Laflı and Maurizio Buora), and transcripts of two lectures in French, one by Rita Dolce, about the ‘Victory Panel’ from Ebla, the other by Laura Battini, exploring the architectural context of the palace of Adad-Nitari I.
Ash-sharq: Bulletin of the Ancient Near East
Vol.1, No.8
Archaeopress Journals (£10 online only, £30 print/online)
ISSN 2513-8529
