She came from an affluent family and traveled the world in her youth, and had a life-long interest in history and archaeology. THE SUTTON HOO INVESTIGATION BEGAN WITH SOME MYSTERIOUS MOUNDS.įormer World War I nurse Edith Pretty moved with her new husband Frank to Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in 1926. Sutton Hoo Ship Burial Treasure 12 Incredible Facts About the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial Treasure 1. The site is important in understanding the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia and the early Anglo-Saxon period, as it illuminates a period that lacks historical documentation. Scholars believe Rædwald of East Anglia the most likely person to be buried in the ship. One cemetery had an undisturbed ship burial with a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artifacts most of these objects are now held by the British Museum.
Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, England, is the site of two early medieval cemeteries that date from the 6th to 7th centuries. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938. When they make a historic discovery, the echoes of Britain’s past resonate in the face of its uncertain future. Now, the story of its discovery is being told in the new Netflix film The Dig, starring Ralph Fiennes as an archaeologist who embarks on the historically important excavation of Sutton Hoo in 1938.Īs WWII looms, a wealthy widow (Carey Mulligan) hires an amateur archaeologist (Ralph Fiennes) to excavate the burial mounds on her estate. Over the next few years, an incredible array of Anglo-Saxon treasures were uncovered, revealing dozens of gold and jeweled items and transforming our knowledge of early medieval England. Where’s the Treasure? The King’s Mound treasure is displayed in Room 41: Sutton Hoo and Europe, AD 300-1100 at The British Museum, London, where it can be seen in the context of the seismic changes taking place across Europe in the Early Medieval period.One of the richest troves of buried artifacts ever found, the Sutton Hoo ship burial was discovered in 1938 in Suffolk, England, just as World War II broke out. Whose land was the Sutton Hoo treasure found?Įdith May Pretty (née Dempster 1 August 1883 – 17 December 1942) was an English landowner on whose land the Sutton Hoo ship burial was discovered after she hired Basil Brown, a local excavator/amateur archeologist, to find out if anything lay beneath the mounds on her property. When it was unearthed in 1939, any bodily remains were claimed by the acidic local soil to leave only a human-shaped gap among the treasures within. Sutton Hoo was in the kingdom of East Anglia and the coin dates suggest that it may be the burial of King Raedwald, who died around 625. They all come from the kingdom of the Merovingian Franks on the Continent, rather than any English kingdom, although coin production had started in Kent by this time. ‘We suspect that seafaring was rooted in the hearts of the Angles and Saxons that made England their home. The Sutton Hoo artefacts are now housed in the collections of the British Museum, London, while the mound site is in the care of the National Trust. The land and Tranmer House has been owned by the National Trust since the 1990s and there is now a large exhibition hall, cafe, walks and a shop near the site, with a viewing tower currently being built to look over the mounds. It disintegrated after being buried in acidic soil for over a thousand years. The 27 metre long ship no longer exists.Ĭan you see the original burial ship and helmet found at Sutton Hoo? Sadly no.
Scholars believe Rædwald of East Anglia is the most likely person to have been buried in the ship.Ĭan you see the original burial ship and helmet found at Sutton Hoo? Sadly no. Most of these objects are now held by the British Museum. One cemetery had an undisturbed ship burial with a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts.
Most of these objects are now held by the British Museum.Īrchaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938. Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, England. In the poem, Scyld Scefing is buried in a boat surrounded by goods such as drinking horns, textiles, musical instruments, and money. When the Sutton Hoo ship burial was found, scholars recognized that the site had striking similarities to a burial depicted in the 8th-century epic poem Beowulf. Where are the medieval cemeteries in Sutton Hoo? How is the Sutton Hoo ship burial similar to Beowulf?