Bogucki P., Crabtree P. Ancient Europe 8000 B.C.-A.D. 1000: Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. Volume 2

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this general pattern should not obscure the fact that

in most areas, cremation and inhumation rites were

practiced simultaneously, often in the same ceme-

tery, and that cremation continued into the seventh

century.

From the end of the sixth century, a marked

change occurred in burial practices. This transition

is now believed to have connected with structural

changes in the political system and in the religious

and economic authorities as sources of power shift-

ed from kinship to kingship. Many existing cemeter-

ies were abandoned, and new burial grounds were

established. Weapons occurred less frequently in

male burials and, when found, were concentrated in

well-furnished graves, suggesting that weapon buri-

al shifted to an index of social, rather than “ethnic,”

concerns. For women, the regional dress styles ap-

parent during the sixth century were replaced dur-

ing the seventh century with a neoclassical “nation-

al” costume inﬂuenced by the Frankish kingdom.

Throughout the seventh century and into the early

eighth century, the appearance of elite, generally

isolated graves, interred under newly constructed

barrows or inserted into prehistoric monuments

and furnished with weapon assemblages, jewelry of

gold, silver, and semiprecious stones, and feasting

paraphernalia suggest the development of an in-

creasingly ranked society with territorial interests.

The symbolism expressed through burial rituals and

furnishings at rich barrow cemeteries such as

Taplow (Buckinghamshire) and Sutton Hoo may

have asserted an independent pagan ideology. At

the same time, unfurnished, west-east-oriented su-

pine inhumations became increasingly prevalent.

Although associated by past archaeologists with the

dictates of Christian burial, these unfurnished

graves may represent factors such as the cessation of

competitive display as a result of the consolidation

of political authority or the transfer of wealth from

deposition in graves to the more worldly payments

required by political or religious authorities.

The inﬂuence of Christian beliefs on cemetery

location and burial ritual becomes apparent from

the seventh to ninth centuries. While interment in

rural cemeteries continued, the new construction of

early minster or monastery churches accommodated

burials. In the late Anglo-Saxon period (c. 850–c.

1066) the eternal blessings of Christianity were

sought by interring the dead in proximity to the

church. While a range of burial types—including

charcoal burials; interment in wooden chests or cof-

ﬁns, or sarcophaguses, or under grave covers; and

graves with stone packing—have been encountered

at some churches, other religious foundations, such

as the cathedral cemetery at North Elmham (Nor-

folk), manifest uniformity in burial practice. In the

countryside, the fragmentation of large estates from

the late ninth century produced a new wave of cem-

eteries, often associated with churches or chapels,

that was complementary to the established pattern

of small burial plots within or adjacent to settle-

ments.

Execution cemeteries that served as repositories

for those prohibited from burial in consecrated

ground appear in the late ninth century. At these

sites, perhaps most notably Stockbridge Down (Suf-

folk), the bodies appear to have suffered violence

before or immediately after death. At Banstead

Common (Surrey) and Goblin Works, Leatherhead

(Surrey), the reuse of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries

may have been an explicit statement in later times

of the condemned’s exclusion from Christian

churchyard burial.

AGRICULTURE

Although the Roman system of food production

and distribution is assumed not to have survived the

withdrawal of imperial authority, zooarchaeological

evidence indicates that the Anglo-Saxon immi-

grants followed agricultural practices similar to

those of Romano-British farmers. In general, the

existing coaxial ﬁeld systems continued in use, and

it is postulated that some local Roman estates were

transferred intact to their British or Anglo-Saxon

successors. At West Stow (Suffolk), a rural settle-

ment in use from the ﬁfth to seventh centuries,

Anglo-Saxon plant and animal husbandry evidence

indicates a mixed agricultural economy. Plant culti-

gens included barley (naked and hulled), oats,

wheat, rye, hemp, ﬂax, woad, vines, and possibly

beans. Although at West Stow sheep or goats nu-

merically predominate, cattle provided the major

meat source by weight. Pig and horse were also

present.

The Middle Saxon period (c. 650–c. 850) intro-

duced changes in agricultural practices, including

new cereal crops, use of water mills and meadows,

farming of open ﬁelds, production of animal sur-

ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

ANCIENT EUROPE

491

pluses, and adoption of the moldboard plow, which

enabled the increased production of agricultural

yields.

SETTLEMENTS

Settlement evidence suggests a range of forms from

clusters of small sunken-featured huts (Gruben-

häuser) to communities of longhouses or halls to

royal complexes with public buildings. Building

types in early Anglo-Saxon England have been par-

alleled by those excavated at contemporary conti-

nental sites such as Feddersen Wierde, near Bre-

menhaven (Germany), Wijster (Netherlands), and

Vorbasse (Denmark).

Evidence from the early Anglo-Saxon complex

at Mucking suggests that rural communities were

small, dispersed, and impermanent. At West Stow,

roughly contemporary hall buildings, surrounded

by sunken-featured huts, are interpreted as single

family farmsteads. Finds of loom weights and evi-

dence for animal stalling in the sunken-featured

buildings suggest that the general domestic activi-

ties conducted in the halls were complemented in

these outlying structures by specialized tasks such as

textile production or livestock housing. Population

estimates for the settlement at West Stow at any

time range from twenty to forty individuals.

Bede’s account of the villa of ad Gefrin, the

royal residence of the Northumbrian king Edwin in

the late 620s (Ecclesiastical History of the English

People book 2, chap. 14), provides a context for the

archaeological discoveries at Yeavering (Northum-

berland). The earliest buildings at Yeavering include

posthole and plank-in-trench structures similar to

those at West Stow and Mucking Subsequent con-

struction of timber halls, a livestock enclosure, and

a curved grandstand indicate a change in site func-

tion and importance. Yeavering appears to have

served as a royal estate center, a type of settlement

governed by a peripatetic ruler who received trib-

ute, hosted feasts, and settled disputes during his

residence. At Yeavering, the investment of labor and

resources in residential and ritual structures implies

a belief, if not a reality borne out by the documenta-

ry record, that kingship was a permanent ofﬁce.

Middle Saxon high-status estates also served as

industrial and trading centers. Excavations at Flix-

borough (Humberside) and Brandon (Suffolk)

have produced evidence for large-scale textile man-

ufacture, carpentry, bone working, leatherworking,

and metalworking. Finds of nonlocal goods indicate

that these types of settlements, strategically posi-

tioned to exploit local and interregional communi-

cations, controlled extractive and exchange net-

works. The ability of these sites to serve the joint

interests of ecclesiastical and political powers may

explain the ecclesiastical tenor of some Middle

Saxon “productive” sites. In this context, the legiti-

matization and sanctiﬁcation of royal authority of-

fered by the Christian church may have facilitated

the control of trading networks and the consolida-

tion of land and resources under ambitious rulers.

More important than estate centers were royal

centers described as civitas or urbs. From the sev-

enth century, former Roman towns such as York

(Yorkshire) and Canterbury (Kent), functioned as

royal centers. Evidence for a diversity of urban set-

tlements appears as early as the late seventh and

eighth centuries with the cathedral town of Canter-

bury, the minster town of Reading (Berkshire), the

possibly fortiﬁed towns of Cambridge (Cambridge-

shire) and Hereford, and trading centers (emporia)

at London, Hamwic (Southampton, Hampshire),

Ipswich (Suffolk), and York. The population of

Hamwic is conservatively estimated to have num-

bered two thousand to three thousand.

In rural areas, charter evidence indicates the

practice of open-ﬁeld agriculture, with crop rota-

tion and cultivation of narrow common ﬁelds, as

early as the tenth century. The nucleated villages at-

tributed to this time and earlier are implicit in the

communal labor requirements of the open-ﬁeld sys-

tem and archaeologically attested by the increase in

concentrations of late Saxon pottery. While this set-

tlement shift may have been stimulated by soil ex-

haustion and population pressures, nucleation may

also indicate the attempts of Anglo-Saxon lords to

maximize production from their lands. Defended

Late Saxon manor houses, such as those at Sulgrave

(Northamptonshire) or Faccombe Netherton

(Hampshire) anticipate the later fortiﬁed Norman

manor houses and castles. The development into

parish churches of village churches serving the spiri-

tual needs of estate laborers accounts for the fre-

quent corollary between later ecclesiastical parishes

and tenth and eleventh century estate boundaries.

Although dispersed rural settlements continued

to exist into the Late Saxon period (c. 850–c.

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

492

ANCIENT EUROPE

1066), urban settlements assumed increasing im-

portance. While some urban sites developed from

ecclesiastical or economic stimuli, a group of forti-

ﬁed towns (burhs) were founded in the late ninth

century to protect the interests of the West Saxon

king Alfred (r. 871–899) against Viking incursions.

These planned towns, as listed in the Burghal Hid-

age, include reused Roman walled towns, such as

Winchester (Hampshire), newly founded towns lo-

cated on open sites, such as Oxford (Oxfordshire),

and new towns sited on promontories, such as Lyd-

ford (Devon) and Lewes (East Sussex). Use of these

fortiﬁed towns in the early tenth century enabled

Edward the Elder (r. 899–924) to conquer the

Danelaw lands to the north and to unify the king-

dom of England. As well as providing security, these

fortiﬁed towns structured trade through a network

of regional market centers. Towns, such as London,

developed a distinctive architecture of timber build-

ings fronting on graveled streets. The Domesday

Book, an assessment roll enumerated under

William the Conqueror, indicates that by the late

eleventh century as much as one-tenth of the popu-

lation lived in towns.

TRADE AND EXCHANGE

Anglo-Saxon England was incorporated into larger

and overlapping cultural spheres centered in the

Frankish kingdom and Scandinavia. The appearance

from the late ﬁfth century onward of Anglo-Saxon

metalwork in Continental Frankish graves indicates

the maintenance through intermarriage, immigra-

tion, and trade of close cross-Channel links. Com-

petition for trade goods produced conﬂicts between

local groups and facilitated the concentration of

power in the hands of successful leaders. Rulers who

could control access to and redistribute luxury im-

ports, exploit relationships with Continental elites,

and successfully manipulate the symbolism of new

ideas were best placed to promote their own expan-

sionist concerns.

The development of commercial trading cen-

ters (emporia) in the seventh and subsequent centu-

ries was one consequence of the increasing sociopo-

litical elevation and territorial control of the ﬁfth-

and sixth-century leaders. Each major Anglo-Saxon

kingdom controlled at least one emporium. The rise

of the emporia presupposes an integrative process of

extracting, processing, and distributing agricultural

products that would have been impossible in the

fragmented political circumstances prior to the sev-

enth century. The goods that passed through the

emporia were linked to local markets or exchange

sites at smaller, probably nonurban settlements. Ar-

chaeological ﬁnds demonstrate that the Continent

supplied Anglo-Saxon England with prestige goods

such as precious metals, gemstones, ceramics, jewel-

ry, textiles, glassware, and weaponry, as well as more

utilitarian lava quern stones and soapstone vessels.

Documentary sources suggest that in exchange the

English provided slaves, lead, honey, and textiles.

By the late seventh century, many members of

the Anglo-Saxon elite had also adopted a Roman

Christian ideology from the continent. A mutually

beneﬁcial patron-client relationship existed be-

tween the Anglo-Saxon kings and the Christian

church. The church promoted the image of the En-

glish people in insular literary sources for the pur-

poses of political and religious cohesion. In the late

eighth century, the church formalized the sacral role

of kingship through ritual anointing and synodic

degree. West Saxon and Mercian kings, seeking sup-

port for their dynastic ambitions, gave gifts of land

and other resources to the church.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the scale

of settlement and disruption effected by the Vikings

from the second half of the ninth century, the raids

realigned and even enhanced systems of exchange.

York, captured by the Vikings in 866, developed

into a prosperous market town during the Viking

period that produced crafts and traded locally and

internationally in raw materials and luxury goods.

Documentary accounts identify Danish merchants

in York, as well as visits to other late Anglo-Saxon

towns by merchants from Ireland, northern France,

and Germany.

Early Anglo-Saxon England lacked a coin econ-

omy, as Roman coinage did not enter in bulk after

the early ﬁfth century and, during the sixth and early

seventh centuries, imported Continental coins were

valued as ornaments or bullion. The striking of gold

thrymsas in the southeast, most notably at London,

in the seventh century was superseded in the late

seventh century by the circulation of debased silver-

rich pennies, or sceattas. From the late eighth cen-

tury, particularly during the reign of Offa of Mercia

(757–796), coins often served as potent propagan-

da by incorporating the name of the issuing king

ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

ANCIENT EUROPE

493

and his people. Edgar’s (r. 959–975) major coinage

reform, marked by a uniform currency and periodic

recoinage, established minting practices that lasted

through the Norman Conquest. By c. 973, money-

ers at over sixty mints produced a national coinage

used for the payment of taxes, ﬁnes, and other trans-

actions.

TERRITORIES AND BOUNDARIES

From the late ﬁfth century, the political structure of

early Anglo-Saxon England was characterized by

groupings that were ﬂuid both in extent and au-

thority. By the late sixth or early seventh centuries,

however, archaeological and textual sources indi-

cate that these popular confederations had allied

into larger units, presaging the formal kingdoms of

the later Anglo-Saxon period. Philological evidence

suggests the decline of regional dialects of Old En-

glish by 600 in favor of a more uniform English lan-

guage. The development from popular to territorial

concerns may be indicated by the construction of

physical boundaries.

The reuse of ancient monuments as early

Anglo-Saxon burial sites has been associated with

the process of kingdom formation. Initial associa-

tions of ancient monuments with large ﬁfth- and

sixth-century cemeteries suggest that monument

reuse was relevant to the construction of communal

concepts of ancestry and identity. During the late

sixth and seventh centuries, however, the increasing

exclusivity of monument reuse suggests that elites

appropriated existing attitudes about the past in

order to identify themselves as heirs to a mythically

established legacy, thus legitimizing their more

worldly political strategies. During later Anglo-

Saxon times, ancient monuments continued to be

reused as boundary markers.

The modern notion of coherent political units

circumscribed by static boundaries is anachronistic

in early Anglo-Saxon England. Because, during the

seventh and eighth centuries, political authority was

vested in individual rulers, the extent of a “king-

dom” waxed and waned with the king’s career.

Central to any consideration of Anglo-Saxon politi-

cal geography is the putative tax register, the Tribal

Hidage, believed to have been compiled for the as-

cendant Mercian overlords in the seventh century.

Attempts to reconstruct the political geography of

early Anglo-Saxon England generally employ top-

onymic, or place-name, evidence to assign the social

units of the Tribal Hidage to speciﬁc locations.

During the Middle Saxon period (c. 650–c. 850),

the numerous polities cited in the Tribal Hidage

had been subsumed by the dominant kingdoms of

Mercia and Wessex.

From the eighth and ninth centuries, documen-

tary and archaeological evidence indicates the devel-

opment of political units whose integrity was not

dependent upon personal authority and which out-

lived the death of their ruler. The obligation to pro-

vide men and material for military service and civic

constructions appears in eighth-century Mercian

charters. The massive linear earthwork known as

Offa’s Dyke, which runs along the modern English-

Welsh border, exempliﬁed the process of consolida-

tion exercised by the Mercian king Offa (r. 757–

796). At Offa’s Dyke, the labors of individual work

crews, identiﬁed through archaeological excavation,

demonstrate the community discharge of obliga-

tions.

THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF

ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

Bede, writing in the second quarter of the eighth

century, used Latin to describe the powerful men of

Anglo-Saxon England. Only a few relevant docu-

ments, including some Mercian charters and the

laws of the Kentish kings, appeared in the vernacular

prior to the ninth century. Most Old English texts,

such as the laws of Alfred (r. 871–899), the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle, and the translation of the Ecclesias-

tical History of the English People, originated in Mer-

cian or West Saxon contexts during the late ninth

century.

Three status levels may be inferred from Bede’s

account: overlord, rex (king), and princips. At the

apex were the overlords, who ruled over many men,

including reges, or kings. Bede (Ecclesiastical History

of the English People book 2, chap. 5) enumerated

seven overlords who, each in turn, had held sway

over the English south of the Humber: Ælle of Sus-

sex (probably late ﬁfth century), Caewlin of Wessex

(560–591/592), Æthelbert of Kent (560–616),

Rædwald of East Anglia, Edwin of Northumbria

(616–633), Oswald of Northumbria (634–642),

and Oswy (642–670). This list of overlords reap-

pears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where they are

described with the problematic term, “rulers of

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

494

ANCIENT EUROPE

Britain” or “wide rulers” (bretwaldas, or possibly

brytenwaldas). In Bede’s account, below the over-

lords were the reges of the major kingdoms of

Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, East Anglia, Sussex,

and Kent. Bede most frequently described the lesser

potentates, who formed the third rung on the lad-

der of authority, as princeps.

Recognizing that political organization was

grounded in ﬂuid patron-client relationships can di-

minish the confusion presented by kingship termi-

nology. The same conditional relationships, in

which a ruler’s power and prestige grew through his

patronage of less-powerful client leaders, character-

ized relationships between the polities. The success-

ful leaders of the larger extended families expanded

their inﬂuence—through alliances, exchange, con-

quest, asylum, and intermarriage—over ever-wider

areas. These polities eventually reached such size as

to be characterized by contemporaneous writers,

such as Bede, as “kingdoms” and “subkingdoms”

and their leaders as higher- and lower-order kings.

Among the Anglo-Saxons of the sixth and sev-

enth centuries, a king did not assume his kingdom

borne on a well-oiled mechanism of succession. In

order to be considered for the throne, contenders

had to demonstrate legal title through real or ﬁcti-

tious descent. Gift exchange, motivated by social

consumption and extolled in saga literature, struc-

tured early medieval society through systems of re-

ward and loyalty. Historical records indicate that by

the late eighth and ninth centuries, rulers such as

the Mercian king Offa (r. 757–796) exploited gene-

alogical connections and patronage to secure and le-

gitimize their authority. By the tenth century, a

monarchy descended from a single lineage and in-

vested with sanctity, whose authority was supported

by military force and taxation, heralded the Anglo-

Saxon state.

See also Emporia (vol. 1, part 7); Ipswich (vol. 2, part 7);

Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (vol. 2, part 7); Spong

Hill (vol. 2, part 7); Sutton Hoo (vol. 2, part 7);

West Stow (vol. 2, part 7); Winchester (vol. 2, part

7); Viking York (vol. 2, part 7).

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tions at Six Dials. CBA Research Report 109. London:

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Bassett, Steve, ed. The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms.

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Bruce-Mitford, Rupert L. S. The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial.

Vols. 1–3. London: British Museum, 1975–1983.

Campbell, James. The Anglo-Saxon State. London and New

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ENEVIEVE FISHER

■

SPONG HILL

Spong Hill lies on the southern edge of the parish

of North Elmham in central Norfolk, East Anglia,

England. It is the site of an early Anglo-Saxon cem-

etery, known since ﬁnds from the site were ﬁrst re-

corded in 1711. Following small-scale investiga-

tions in the 1950s and in 1969, complete

excavation of the cemetery site was carried out be-

tween 1972 and 1981 by the Norfolk Archaeologi-

cal Unit, funded by English Heritage and its pre-

decessors. The project was directed by Peter Wade-

Martins, Robert Carr, and (from 1975) by

Catherine Hills, with support from many people, in-

cluding especially Kenneth Penn and Robert

Rickett. A team from Warsaw University participat-

ed in the early seasons. The site is published in the

series East Anglian Archaeology Reports, and the

ﬁnds are the property of the Norfolk Museums Ser-

vice.

In addition to the Anglo-Saxon burials, features

of prehistoric, Roman, and medieval date were also

excavated. Several contemporary buildings lay with-

in the cemetery, and part of a settlement immediate-

ly to the west was excavated by Andrew Rogerson

in 1984. It is likely that other scattered settlements

in the region used this cemetery as their central

focus. A prehistoric barrow in the same ﬁeld may

have inﬂuenced the choice of site.

The signiﬁcance of the cemetery lies in its size

and near-complete investigation. At the end of the

twentieth century it was the largest such site in En-

gland to have been fully excavated and published.

Although many burials were damaged or incom-

plete, the overall size, extent, and internal organiza-

tion of the cemetery can be reconstructed. A mini-

mum of 2,400 cremations, from an estimated

original total of more than 3,000, and 57 inhuma-

tions were excavated. The original population has

been calculated as between 446 and 768 individuals

at any one time. The cemetery was in use from the

later ﬁfth century and probably throughout the

sixth century

A.D. There was some chronological

zoning, with some early groups of burials in the

middle of the site surrounded by later burials in a

partly radial development. For a limited period

some of the dead, possibly an elite group, were dis-

tinguished by being inhumed, buried together on

the northeastern edge of the cemetery.

The inhumations survived in the acid sand

largely as dark stains with occasional bone frag-

ments but with preserved grave goods, mostly

weapons and jewelry. Two large ring ditches, proba-

bly originally around barrows, surrounded respec-

tively a pair of inhumations and a single large burial

within a timber and turf chamber containing a

sword, shield, spear, and bucket. Several apparently

female burials were set into the ring ditch.

The cremations were contained in handmade

decorated pots, apart from a few deposited in boxes

or bags or placed directly in a pit. Analysis of the

bones by Jacqueline McKinley showed that many

could be aged and sexed. McKinley also recon-

structed the cremation and burial ritual. Women’s

bodies had been laid out for cremation as for inhu-

mation, dressed and wearing jewelry. Men, howev-

er, were cremated without the weapons found in a

proportion of inhumations. In some cases whole an-

imals, often horses, had also been cremated; in

other cases only parts of animals were included, per-

haps as food offerings. A selection of the cremated

bones had been collected from the pyre, together

with the partly melted remains of jewelry and dress

fastenings, bags, spindle whorls (large beads, made

most often of bone or ﬁred clay, put on the ends of

spindles), and glass or metal vessels. Miniature ra-

zors, tweezers, and knives, mostly unburned, as well

as combs and playing pieces were also included,

often but not exclusively with male burials.

Through careful sieving many identiﬁable frag-

ments of objects were retrieved. These ﬁnds at

Spong Hill, where grave goods were found in about

70 percent of burials, transformed ideas as to the

prevalence of grave goods in cremations. Previous

distribution maps of early Anglo-Saxon ﬁnds were

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

496

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biased against East Anglia, where cremation was

common.

Some cremations were buried singly, but many

were in pairs or groups. Some pairs contained the

shared remains of one individual, whereas in others

more than one person, often an adult and a child,

had been put into one pot. Some paired burials con-

tained human bones in one pot and mainly animal

bones in the second pot.

A majority of the pots were decorated with lin-

ear and plastic designs. These included distinctive

stamped patterns; some stamps were in the form of

animals or runic letters. Many of the stamped pots

can be grouped into series related by identical stamp

impressions and so identiﬁed as contemporary

products of individuals or workshops. Some Spong

Hill pots can be linked to pots from Lincolnshire

and Yorkshire, conﬁrming broad regional connec-

tions among East Anglia, the areas around the

Wash, and Northumbria.

Analysis of the ﬁnds shows clear connections

with the regions of northern Germany that the Ven-

erable Bede, the Anglo-Saxon scholar, described as

the homelands of the Anglo-Saxons, although the

connections are not exclusively with the Angeln re-

gion (approximately modern Schleswig-Holstein)

that is claimed as the home of the Angles, who are

said to have migrated to East Anglia during the ﬁfth

century. Many of the brooch types do ﬁnd their

closest parallels in Angeln, but stamped decoration

on pots, common at Spong Hill, is very rare north

of the Elbe, whereas it does occur in Lower Saxony.

Exact parallels for material from Spong Hill can be

found around the whole of the North Sea zone,

from the Netherlands to Denmark and beyond,

from the ﬁfth and sixth centuries

A.D. Ivory at the

site came ultimately from Africa, via the Mediterra-

nean and probably southern Germany. These con-

nections lasted for generations, suggesting ongoing

contact rather than a simple transfer at any one

point in time.

Relationships between material culture and eth-

nicity are complex and not easily unraveled. Peoples

and pottery styles cannot be neatly deﬁned and

equated. Long-term trading and cultural contacts

across the North Sea and the spread of religious be-

liefs and practices were more important as mecha-

nisms for change than replacement of one popula-

tion by another. Successful immigrant leaders

would have brought their immediate followers from

home and would have encouraged others to join

them, but they may then have imposed their culture

on a population that was still substantially native—

and most likely they adopted aspects of native cul-

ture themselves. It is probable that some, maybe

many, of those buried at Spong Hill had Continen-

tal ancestors, whether “Angle,” “Saxon,” or “Jute,”

but others—however “Anglo-Saxon” their jewelry

seems—may in fact be descendants of Romano-

Britons.

See also Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (vol. 2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hills, Catherine M. Origins of the English. London: Duck-

worth, 2003.

———. “From Isidore to Isotopes: Ivory Rings in Early Me-

dieval Graves.” In Image and Power in the Archaeology

of Early Medieval Britain: Essays in Honour of Rosemary

Cramp. Edited by Helena Hamerow and Arthur Mac-

Gregor, pp. 131–146. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2001.

———. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North

Elmham, Norfolk, Part I. East Anglian Archaeology, re-

port no. 6. Norfolk, U.K.: Gressenhall, 1977.

Hills, Catherine M., and Kenneth J. Penn. The Anglo-Saxon

Cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elmham, Norfolk, Part

II. East Anglian Archaeology, report no. 11. Norfolk,

U.K.: Gressenhall, 1981.

Hills, Catherine M., Kenneth J. Penn, and Robert J. Rickett.

The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elm-

ham, Norfolk, Part V. East Anglian Archaeology, report

no. 67. Norfolk, U.K.: Gressenhall, 1994.

———. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North

Elmham, Norfolk, Part IV. East Anglian Archaeology,

report no. 34. Norfolk, U.K.: Gressenhall, 1987.

———. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North

Elmham, Norfolk, Part III. East Anglian Archaeology,

report no. 21. Norfolk, U.K.: Gressenhall, 1984.

Lucy, Sam. The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in

Early England. Stroud, U.K.: Sutton, 2000.

McKinley, Jacqueline. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong

Hill, North Elmham, Norfolk, Part VIII. East Anglian

Archaeology, report no. 69. Norfolk, U.K.: Gressen-

hall, 1994.

Rickett, Robert. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill,

North Elmham, Norfolk, Part VII: The Iron Age,

Roman, and Early Saxon Settlement. East Anglian Ar-

chaeology, report no. 73. Norfolk, U.K.: Gressenhall,

1995.

ATHERINE HILLS

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SUTTON HOO

Sutton Hoo is the name given to a small group of

at least eighteen burial mounds located on a terrace

30 meters above the River Deben in Suffolk, south-

eastern England. It is interpreted as a burial ground

for the pagan leaders of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom

of East Anglia, established in the early years of the

seventh century

A.D. as a reaction to the Christian

missions to Kent.

Sutton Hoo was ﬁrst investigated in 1938 at the

behest of the landowner, Edith May Pretty, by a

local archaeologist, Basil Brown, who trenched

mounds 2, 3, and 4 discovering that each had been

dug earlier and inferring their Anglo-Saxon date

from scraps of metal. In 1939 Brown returned at

Mrs. Pretty’s invitation and dug a large trench

through mound 1, where he deﬁned a ship some 27

meters long with a collapsed burial chamber at its

center. A team of experienced archaeologists led by

Charles Phillips of Cambridge University was as-

sembled hastily; this group recovered 267 parts of

artifacts made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood,

textile, and fur—together constituting the richest

grave ever excavated in Britain.

The study of the ﬁnd (between 1945 and 1975)

by Rupert Bruce-Mitford of the British Museum in-

cluded a second ﬁeld campaign from 1965 to 1971,

which completed the excavation of mound 1, con-

ﬁrmed the existence of mound 5, and endorsed the

presence of an earlier prehistoric settlement, report-

ed by Brown. In 1983 the Society of Antiquaries of

London, in partnership with the British Museum,

the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Suf-

folk County Council, launched a third campaign.

The ﬁeld team led by Martin Carver of the Universi-

ty of York excavated one fourth of the 4-hectare

cemetery, mapped 10 hectares of its surroundings,

and surveyed 10 square kilometers of the River

Deben. In 1998 the site and its surrounding estates

were given into the hands of the National Trust to

be cared for in perpetuity, and a visitor center was

constructed and opened in 2002.

The third campaign offered a new account of

the character, date, and purpose of the Sutton Hoo

cemetery. Use of the site had begun in the Late

Neolithic to Early Bronze Age (c. 2000

B.C.), when

the land was divided into agricultural units. The

production of grain then alternated with stock-

breeding—a pattern typical of agriculture of the

Breckland region (an ancient heath), which contin-

ues to the present day. The Anglo-Saxons inherited

a landscape of earthworks of Iron Age ﬁelds bound-

ed by tracks leading inland from the river. The earli-

est Anglo-Saxon burials in the area are located near

Tranmer House, the site of the visitor center; they

date to the sixth century and include cremations,

one of which is contained in a bronze bowl placed

in the center of small ring ditches.

The Sutton Hoo cemetery itself was a new ven-

ture, which began around

A.D. 600 about 500 me-

ters farther south. The ﬁrst burials were cremations

in bronze bowls, accompanied by gaming pieces

and cremated horses, sheep, cattle, and pigs, placed

in pits beneath mounds about 10–15 meters in di-

ameter, laid out in a line (mounds 5, 6, and 7).

These burials had been much disturbed by later ex-

cavators, but they appear to be the memorials of

young men, at least one of whom had blade injuries.

The next burial is thought to be mound 17, where

a young man was laid in a tree-trunk cofﬁn in about

A.D. 610, accompanied by a sword with a horn han-

dle, two spears, a shield, a bucket, a cauldron, and

a haversack containing lamb chops. At the head of

the cofﬁn was deposited a bridle, saddle, and body

harness equipped with silver pendants and gilt

bronze roundels, pendants, and strap ends. A stal-

lion was buried in an adjacent pit and is assumed to

have lain beneath the same mound.

Two ship burials were added to the cemetery in

about

A.D. 625. In mound 2 a ship about 20 meters

long had been placed over the top of a chamber

grave (2 × 6 × 2 meters deep). The person memori-

alized, probably a man, had lain in the chamber ac-

companied by a sword, shield, ﬁve knives, a caul-

dron, an ironbound tub, a blue glass jar, and

drinking horns. Robbers and excavators had visited

the grave at least three times, and the assemblage

therefore had to be inferred from scraps and a chem-

ical plot of the chamber ﬂoor.

In mound 1 the ship ﬁrst found by Basil Brown

had been positioned in a large trench, and a timber

chamber 5.5 by 3 meters had been erected amid-

ships. The dead man probably originally lay in a

large tree-trunk cofﬁn (although this theory re-

mains the subject of controversy) with a pile of gar-

ments, shoes, and toilet items at his feet. Above him

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Fig. 1. The barrow cemetery at Sutton Hoo as viewed from the east. © MARTIN CARVER AND THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK. REPRODUCED BY

PERMISSION

(perhaps on the cofﬁn lid) were items of personal re-

galia with drinking horns, maple-wood and burr-

wood bottles, and a large Byzantine silver dish

probably carrying food. The regalia included a

sword, a decorated purse, and two shoulder clasps,

all made of solid gold inlaid with garnets imported

from western Asia, and an iron helmet with bronze

zoomorphic decoration. Toward the western end

were stacked spears and an iron stand interpreted as

a standard or a weapon stand, along with a decorat-

ed whetstone, interpreted as imitating an imperial

scepter. Three large cauldrons, one with an orna-

mental iron chain 3.45 meters long, dominated the

eastern end.

After these ship burials, burial continued inter-

mittently at the site during the later part of the sev-

enth century. The chamber grave of a woman, sub-

sequently pillaged, originally was furnished richly

with silver adornments, including a chatelaine, the

symbolic key of a woman of high rank (mound 14),

and two graves of adolescents were accompanied by

a knife and a chatelaine, respectively.

In the late seventh or early eighth century the

Sutton Hoo cemetery was adopted as a place of exe-

cution. Sixteen graves were found around mound 5

and another twenty-three on the eastern edge of the

burial mounds, surrounding the site of a tree that

was replaced by a post-construction probably repre-

senting a gallows. Some of the bodies of the execu-

tion victims had had their hands or feet tied, and

others had been deposited face down, kneeling, or

crouching. Radiocarbon dating suggests that capital

punishment was practiced at Sutton Hoo from

about

A.D. 700 to A.D. 1000, at which point map ev-

idence indicates that the gallows apparently was re-

moved to the site of the new bridge across the

Deben, constructed 2 kilometers north. The site

then was abandoned, apart from sporadic attention

from farmers and warreners, until the sixteenth cen-

tury, when it was heavily plowed and the majority

SUTTON HOO

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499

of mounds robbed by means of a shaft driven from

the top. Most mounds were again trenched in 1860;

only mounds 1 and 17 were spared.

After the discoveries of 1939 the site was inter-

preted as the likely burial ground of the kings of

East Anglia, the territory in which it lay. The occu-

pant of mound 1 was held to be Redwald, who, ac-

cording to the Venerable Bede, an English historian

of the early eighth century, was a major ﬁgure in En-

gland up to his death in about

A.D. 625. The most

recent excavation campaign has broadened this in-

terpretation, showing that Sutton Hoo was part of

a general reaction to Christianization, in which

pagan Scandinavian practices, such as cremation in

bronze bowls and ship burial, were signaled. The

making of the mound 1 ship burial itself has been

reinterpreted by Carver as a multilayered “composi-

tion” in which allusions to contemporary politics

are gathered with the aim of declaring ideological

alliance with Scandinavia against the Christian Con-

tinent. In this sense, the great ship burial is a dra-

matic statement comparable to the Anglo-Saxon

epic poem Beowulf, which describes the deeds and

deaths of ﬁfth- to seventh-century heroes, including

burial in a ship. The pagan alliance failed around the

end of the seventh century, at which point the burial

ground of pagan kings became a place where the

new Christian leaders disposed of dissidents.

See also History and Archaeology (vol. 2, part 7);

Jewelry (vol. 2, part 7); Anglo-Saxon England (vol.

2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruce-Mitford, Rupert. The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial. 3 vols.

London: British Museum Press, 1975–1983.

Carver, Martin O. H. “Burial as Poetry: The Context of

Treasure in Anglo-Saxon Graves.” In Treasure in the

Medieval West. Edited by Elizabeth M. Tyler, pp. 25–

48. York, U.K.: York Medieval Press, 2000.

———. Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

ARTIN CARVER

■

WEST STOW

The excavation of the Early Anglo-Saxon village of

West Stow in Suffolk, England, opened a new chap-

ter in the archaeological study of Anglo-Saxon En-

gland. Although many pagan Anglo-Saxon ceme-

teries and burials were excavated throughout the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, very few settle-

ment sites were investigated archaeologically before

the 1960s. The site of the West Stow village is on

a sandy terrace overlooking the Lark River in

Northwest Suffolk. Under the direction of Stanley

West, almost the entire Early Anglo-Saxon village at

West Stow was excavated during eight ﬁeld seasons

between 1965 and 1972. These excavations shed

new light on settlement patterns and subsistence

practices of the earliest Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of

eastern England.

The West Stow area has long been recognized

as an archaeologically important region. In the mid-

nineteenth century, workers who were seeking bal-

last for barges discovered an Early Anglo-Saxon

cemetery near the village site. Although the workers

collected many Anglo-Saxon artifacts, the cemetery

site was never excavated properly. As a result, ar-

chaeologists currently are unable to determine

which items were buried together. The objects re-

covered from the cemetery include weapons, jewel-

ry, and a stone cofﬁn. In addition, Roman pottery

kilns were found on the site in 1940. The late

Roman site of Icklingham, still under excavation, is

located about 4 kilometers (about 2 miles) west of

the West Stow village. Icklingham is a large open

site that may have served as a market center or possi-

bly as the center of a large Roman estate.

A primary goal of the West Stow village excava-

tions was to understand the plan of the Early Anglo-

Saxon settlement. Excavations at the site revealed

seven small rectangular timber halls surrounded by

about seventy smaller buildings. The smaller struc-

tures are known as sunken-featured buildings

(SFBs), because they were built over roughly rec-

tangular pits that were about 0.5 meters deep. One

to three postholes, which would have held upright

posts, were sunk into the short ends of the pits.

These posts would have supported the roofs of the

SFBs. The halls probably were the main farmsteads,

and the SFBs seem to have served as workshops and

farm outbuildings. For example, large numbers of

loom weights were recovered from SFB 15, sug-

gesting that this building may have served as a weav-

ing shed. Based on the number of halls, the West

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