Were the people buried at Sutton Hoo really royal? Scientist suggests alternative theory for 1,400-year-old Suffolk cemetery
Nearly 100 years after its discovery, Sutton Hoo cemetery in Suffolk was believed to be the resting place for a high-ranking royal.
Of the 20 or so burial mounds at the site, the most famous is said to contain the remains of a 100-foot ship and a man – possibly a king – surrounded by lavish treasures, including a decorated helmet, gold coins and an iron sword.
However, a researcher has now come up with an alternative theory.
Dr. Helen Gittos, a historian at the University of Oxford, believes the graves belonged to British men who fought for the Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was a powerful civilization based in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).
These early medieval soldiers were killed in 575 AD. recruited from Britain into the Byzantine army and fought against the Sasanians, the ancient Iranian dynasty.
“Those who returned brought with them metalwork and other goods that were current and distinctive, and not the kind of things that were part of normal trade networks,” she says.
‘This opens up a surprisingly new view of early medieval English history.’
The Sutton Hoo helmet is a decorated Anglo-Saxon helmet found during a 1939 excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial
Photo by Trustees of the British Museum showing the discovery of a gold and garnet shoulder clasp from the ship burial mound at Sutton Hoo
The burial of the Sutton Hoo ship dates back to approximately AD 610 and AD 635, when the site belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia.
In the year 575, the Byzantine army ‘urgently’ needed more troops because of the renewed war with the Sassanians, the academic emphasizes.
Justin II, the Eastern Roman emperor from 565 to 578, conducted a major recruitment campaign of troops from Western Europe.
Dr. Gittos states that this included men from Britain who were attracted by the ‘allure of adventure and reward’.
“After all, we know that connections between Byzantium and Britain already existed,” she adds.
Dr. Gittos analyzed all the evidence from Sutton Hoo and other notable English sites, including Prittlewell Cemetery, near Southend in Essex.
Previously described as ‘work of the highest quality’, the Sutton Hoo objects include Byzantine silver spoons, copper alloy vessels, shield and sword, a lyre, a silver plate and the famous Sutton Hoo helmet.
The man buried on a ship at Sutton Hoo had not only silver and copper dishes from the eastern Mediterranean, but also chunks of bitumen and textiles from Syria.
Pictured: A pair of hinged gold clasps, decorated with garnet and mosaic glass, each with a chained mounting pin in the shape of an animal head, found at Sutton Hoo
This decorative silver plate now in the British Museum was among the 1,400-year-old treasures unearthed from the Sutton Hoo ship
Of the 20 or so burial mounds at the site, the most famous contained the remains of a 100-foot ship and a man – possibly a king – surrounded by lavish treasures. Pictured: a burial mound at Sutton Hoo
Meanwhile, at Prittlewell, a man was buried in a wood-paneled room with a copper flask, originally from the shrine of St. Sergius in Sergiopolis, Syria.
And at Taplow in Berkshire a man was buried with a bowl on a pedestal, so rare that only three similar examples are known, all from Egypt.
These tombs – commonly known as ‘princely burials’ in reference to their grandeur – share a number of features.
‘They usually contain objects made in the eastern Mediterranean that were current rather than ancient when they were buried, and were of very unusual types,’ says Dr Gittos.
‘Their funerals were carefully orchestrated and included exotic objects imported over great distances.
‘The graves themselves were monumental, in the sense that they were designed to be a permanent part of the landscape.
“The desire to mark the extraordinary lives and official military status of these men may have been one of the factors that led to this generation being buried in such unusually ostentatious ways.”
It is commonly believed that one person was buried with the Sutton Hoo ship, along with the lavish grave goods, but it was the site of several burials, as evidenced by the numerous mounds.
Amateur archaeologist Basil Brown famously discovered Sutton Hoo in 1939, when he cleared the ground in Suffolk at the request of local woman Edith Pretty. He discovered evidence of an epic funerary monument: a 25-meter-long ship with a burial chamber containing luxury goods. The ship’s wood rotted away in the acidic soil over the course of 1,300 years, leaving only an imprint
This photo from Trustees of the British Museum shows landowner Mrs Edith Pretty viewing the excavation of a burial ship from an Anglo-Saxon burial mound at Sutton Hoo in 1939
In her article, published in the magazine The English historical overviewDr. Gittos argues that the people buried at Sutton Hoo and Prittlewell were all soldiers, offering ‘a surprisingly new look at early Anglo-Saxon history’.
“The evidence presented here indicates that the shadow cast by the Eastern Roman Empire in the West was longer – and less shadowy – than we tend to think,” she concludes.
It was in 1939 that amateur archaeologist Basil Brown discovered Sutton Hoo, when he was clearing the ground in Suffolk at the request of local woman Edith Pretty.
He discovered evidence of an epic funerary monument: a 25-meter-long ship with a burial chamber full of luxury goods.
The ship’s wood rotted away in the acidic soil over 1,300 years, leaving only a ghostly imprint.
Later analyzes discovered phosphate in the soil – an indication that a human body was once at rest there.
The alkaline human bones were corroded, meaning we will probably never know who was buried there.
The people buried here left no written records, so it is impossible to know exactly who they were, but historians have long claimed that Sutton Hoo was the burial place for East Anglia’s royal dynasty, the Wuffingas.
It is said that a king or great warrior of East Anglia was buried surrounded by his treasures – possibly King Rædwald, according to the National Trust.