In 1939, archaeologist Basil Brown and a team from the British
Museum excavated a burial mound on the river cliff at Sutton Hoo
in south-east Suffolk (location map). What they discovered was
the richest early English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) grave yet discovered
in Britain, a magnificent unrobbed ship burial dating from the
early seventh century. Whose grave was it? (This post is in
answer to a question raised by Steven Till in an earlier
discussion on King Raedwald of the East Angles.) The ship burial
The burial contained a full-sized wooden ship 90 feet long,
recognisable by the positions of the rows of rivets that had
held the planks together along the length of the hull.
Amidships, roughly where the mast would have been, a wooden
burial chamber had been constructed, containing a wooden coffin
and furnished with magnificent grave goods, including: - a set
of silver bowls and a silver dish from Byzantium, the dish dated
to the reign of Emperor Anastasius (491-518 AD); - gold and
garnet jewellery of astonishingly ski