Ancient Mysteries

Magnus Magnusson ilsPects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology (Sutton 1100 and Other Discoveries) Rupert Bruce-Mitford (Victor Gollancz £12.50)

It is now thirty-five years since that halcyon !Wilmer of 1939 when British archaeology 'oUnd its own Tutankhamun: Sutton Hoo. The Million Pound Grave! The Greatest Find Ever Made In Britain! No superlatives, it seemed, i

could adequately express the supreme mportance of this richest of all archaeological discoveries in England. Here it was: treasure beyond the dreams of avarice — and the first onplundered boat-burial on a par with the spectacular windfalls that Scandinavian archaeology had fallen heir to. . And yet, thirty-five years later, the superlatives and the exclamation marks are seen to have been understatements. With the passing of the years, Sutton Hoo has proved itself to have been even more important than its dazed, be,wildered excavators had believed at the time. ine increasingly sophisticated techniques of modern scholarship have indicated a significance far beyond the superficial richness of the treasure objects found in the burial mound. The 'treasure' has been invested with a new value.

The Sutton Hoo ship was an Anglo-Saxon war-galley of the early seventh century, which had been dragged inland and interred in a mound. It was presumed to be the grave of a ting, or at least of royalty. Nothing of the ship itself remained, apart from a ghostly image Which its vanished timbers had left imprinted ofl. the soil, and the rivets that had held the original timbers together. Nothing of the body of the honoured dead remained, either, it eemed: only the costly trappings of his life that 'lad been consigned to the grave with him, his weapons, his personal possessions, his regalia, ,the cerements of his death. Eyes were dazzled oy the glittering brilliance of the objects that came to light on the burial mound at Sutton Hoe in Suffolk during that shadowed summer of 1939.

Because of the war, the recovered treasure had to be hidden again, in some safe vault to Protect it from enemy attack. The excavated site had to be hurriedly filled in with bracken (it ‘‘'aS later used as a tank-training ground). Serious study of the significance of the finds had to be, for the most part, suspended until the end of the war.

Since 1945, an immense amount of research has been done into the individual objects that e to light. 'Beowulf's Harp,' which was nailed so enthusiastically when it was reconstructed in 1948 from the warped fragments that had survived, was re-constructed as a lyre a few years ago. The giant 'whetstone' with its Moulded human faces has been given a new significance as a sceptre. The iron helmet, restored in 1945, has been dismantled and The in the light of later discoveries. ,1 he iron stand, originally interpreted as a nambeau or lamp stand, has been reinterpreted ,a8 a standard based on representations on 'clinan coins. The craftsmanship of the Magnificent jewellery has been exhaustively studied, and striking new ideas about its Provenance have been advanced.

For thirty years, in effect, Sutton Hoo has

heeri like one of those classic unsolved detective stories in which the case was never closed. In many parts of the world, keen minds were still turning over the possible implications

of the scanty clues that had survived. Every year, almost every month, in some obscure journal, a new theory would be propounded, a new light cast. Every year, the Sutton Hoo file grew thicker. For the layman, it was difficult to keep .abreast of the many subtle developments that were taking place, for they appeared in the most diverse publications. For many years, we have been awaiting the definitive publication by the British Museum on the Sutton Hoo Ship-burial; we knew that Dr Rupert BruceMitford, Keeper of Medieval and Later Antiquities in the British Museum, had been labouring long over it, in between contributing countless papers to learned journals. He hoped to see the first volume in print this year — but now, it seems, we must wait until the spring of 1975 before the first of the four projected volumes makes its appearance.

Instead, we can welcome this imposing volume, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, as a stop-gap!..1p_Iiis Preface, Dr Bruce-Mitford modestly offers it as "a device to simplify footnote references in the volumes of the British Museum definitive publication"; but it does very much more than that. It is effectually an updating of all the latest material on Sutton Hoo, an assembly of Dr Bruce-Mitford's own papers, for the most part substantially re-written, along with four previously unpublished papers; and since Dr Bruce-Mitford is not only the curator of the treasure but the foremost authority on its interpretation, this magnificent and lavishly illustrated book must be treated as the authoritative summary of what will appear in the definitive publication.

This does not mean that he claims that the picture of the Sutton Hoo burial emerging at present is a definitive one. But many things that once were puzzling are becoming clearer.

Take the Swedish Connection, for instance. One of the most intriguing aspects of Sutton Hoo was the number of objects — helmet, shield, and sword, for instance — which seemed to have a clear Swedish provenance. Yet there is no historical reason to believe that at the time of the burial (c.625-640) there was either a Swedish conqueror ruling East Anglia, or a great Swedish ally who might have died there and been buried with full royal honours. But how else can one explain those Swedish-looking artefacts? Especially when Beowulf enshrines so many echoes of an Anglo-Swedish connection? Yet the mode of burial itself is not specifically Swedish (no sacrificed animals, for example); and many of the suggestive Swedish motifs in the jewellery found in the grave have a clear overlay of Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship. Dr Bruce-Mitford produces a possible interpretation that is very hard to dismiss: that the East Anglian dynasty of the Wuffingas had been founded by a Swedish family at least a century before Sutton Hoo, and that Sutton Hoo represents the cultural offspring of the

cross-fertilisation of Swedish and Anglo-Saxon traditions and craftsmanship. In any good detective story, it is the identity of the killer that must be revealed. In the Sutton

Hoo Case, it is the identity of the dead man that haunts the attention. No body was found in the ship, and apparently no trace of any body. So it was automatically assumed at first that it must be a cenotaph. But whose cenotaph? Despite the advances of scientific technological aids in archaeology like radio-carbon dating, a grave as comparatively recent as Sutton Hoo cannot be dated with any precision; dating can only be inferred from the circumstantial evidence of artistic styles and coins. The numismatic• evidence now seems to point to a date between 625 and 640 AD; and this is reinforced by the peculiar blend of pagan and Christian elements in the burial. Sutton Hoo is a pagan burial — but amongst the personal possessions of the dead man were specifically Christian objects, like a pair of spoons that can hardly be interpreted otherwise than a baptismal present to celebrate his Conversion. Ergo, since the Royal House of East Anglia was Christianised at about this time, are we looking for an apostate? An apostate, moreover, who died in battle and whose body was never recovered? Or can the apparent contradictions be resolved by presuming a pagan-Christian king who died at a uniquely transitional period?

While the cenotaph theory held sway, it was customary to seek the identity of the Sutton Hoo king amongst the more obscure branches of dynastic genealogy. But after the classic re-excavation of the Sutton Hoo site by Dr Bruce-Mitford (1965-69), scientific analysis of the soil under the burial area revealed traces of phosphate — the kind of traces that the skeleton of a decomposed body might leave. This seemed to dispose of the cenotaph theory, and scholarly opinion seems to have settled upon the figure of Raedwald (died 624 or 625), who had been converted to Christianity on a visit to Kent but who became a backslider.

But, it seems, it is only laymen who insist on pinning historical names to. archaeological finds. Scholars are much too cautious for that.

Dr Bruce-Mitford refused to cast overboard entirely the cenotaph theory to which he, like most other scholars, once adhered: phosphate, he points out, can be left in the soil from bone or ivory artefacts, or animal bones, as well as human bones — and there is at present no way of distinguishing it.. . .

Meanwhile, however, the publication of this fine book gives us all a chance to play amateur archaeological detective to our hearts' content, without the drudgery of sifting through the mass of material on our own. It's got Ellery Queen and Denis Wheatley beaten to a frazzle.

Magnus Magnusson is the presenter of the television programmes Chronicle and Mastermind.