Sutton Hoo? a Summary

Extract

More than a decade has passed since the ship-burial at Sutton Hoo was excavated, but owing to the war serious study of the finds has been of much shorter duration. Even so, in spite of much intensive research in laboratory and study, all of first-rate quality, certain vital problems still remain unsolved. We still do not know in whose honour the cenotaph was made; though we can say ‘with complete certainty that no body, either cremated or inhumed, ever occupied the “body-space” at the west end of the burial-chamber, where everyone is agreed the primary burial should have been’. Before the king can be identified the date must be determined, and that in turn may depend to some extent upon the coins. Since I first discussed this matter, further pronouncements have been made by coin experts, but there has still been no full and frank statement of the evidence upon which the date (A.D. 650-70) has been arrived at, and it is now long overdue. As a layman who has already somewhat rashly broken a lance with the coin experts, I feel that unless we are soon given something more substantial to discuss, the case for the date 650-70 may be said to have been lost by default. Dr Gordon Ward seems to think that that has already happened. The critical article of his which is printed below assumes a knowledge of Mr Bruce-Mitford's in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology; for this reason, and because of its intrinsic importance, I have summarised it and printed it here. The summary has been submitted to Mr Bruce-Mitford and is approved by him as representing his own views correctly. Some of his arguments assume that the date of 650-70, handed out by the coin experts, must be provisionally accepted. But most of them would be just as cogent, and his main conclusion equally valid, if the date should eventually be put back about a quarter of a century and the cenotaph assigned to Redwald.