Sutton Hoo
archaeological site near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, UK
Sutton Hoo is the site of two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. Archaeologists have excavated the site since the discovery of a previously undisturbed ship burial containing a wealth of artifacts in 1938. Sutton Hoo illuminates the culture of the Anglo-Saxons during a period that lacks historical documentation.
The site was first excavated by Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist, under the auspices of the landowner Edith Pretty. When its importance became apparent, national scholars took over. The artefacts found in the ship's burial chamber included a suite of dress fittings in gold and gems, a ceremonial helmet, a shield, a sword, a lyre, and silver plate from the Eastern Roman Empire. The ship burial has prompted comparisons with the world of the Old English poem Beowulf, which is in part set in Götaland in southern Sweden, a place that has archaeological parallels with some of the Sutton Hoo artefacts. Scholars believe that Rædwald, the first king of the East Angles who was an actual historical figure, is the most likely person to have been buried in the ship.
During the 1960s and 1980s, the wider area around the ship burial at Sutton Hoo was explored by archaeologists, and other burials were revealed. A second burial ground, situated on a hill-spur about 500 m (1,600 ft) upstream of the first mound, was discovered and partially explored in 2000, during preliminary work for the construction of a new tourist visitor centre.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sutton Hoo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.