Published By The Sutton Hoo Society No. 60 January 2015

Defining KingdomsSociety President Lord Cranbrook welcomed a capacity audience to our 30th anniversary Day Conferenceon Saturday 20 September. Held in the Waterfront Building at University Campus Suffolk, in Ipswich,it was called Defining Kingdoms: 6th to 10th centuries.4Chairman Mike Argent introduces Dr SarahSemple to a packed conference audience.Ah, lunch! (All photos Nigel Maslin)Paul Mortimer chatting before his session onthe Sutton Hoo stone.Introducing the conference, David Gill,Professor of Archaeological Heritage atUniversity Campus Suffolk, reminded ushow the first announcements of the SuttonHoo ship burial in July 1939 spoke of theburial of an ‘Anglo-Saxon chief’, changedwithin the year to ‘a king’s grave’, andeventually to ‘Raedwald’. Kingdoms, hequoted, were ‘made by chaps, not maps’:in other words by alliance and conquestrather than topography.Dr Stuart Brookes of UniversityCollege London, described ‘a period ofintense fragmentation’, with a wide rangeof political units, or ‘polities’, as revealedby plotting the 11th century levies, basedon the 8th century land divisions of the‘Tribal Hideage’ (see opposite), which inturn fragmentarily reflect the realities of6th century political geography.Archaeological theory likes intellectual‘models’. A classic of the literature is ColinRenfrew’s ‘early state model’, involving aparamount chief or king, with sub-kingswho submit to the higher power only intime of war. Such patterns of intensiveand extensive lordship help distinguishthe strong heartlands from the less wellresourced peripheries, providing a basisfor examining the emergence of statestructures and the nature and extent ofgovernment (‘governmentality’).The concept of bretwalda, or ‘highking’ has been disparaged in the literature(eg, Fanning 1991, 26, endorsed byMortimer and Pollington 2013, 76): asMartin Carver has it, it is ‘more imaginarythan real’ (1998, 170). But Dr Brookesdefended the validity of the term as anunderstanding of rank and status amongthe aristocracy, rather than a fixedterritorial reality or permanent office.After coffee, Dr Sarah Semple of theUniversity of Durham discussed ‘theemergence of supra-regional power andidentity’. She noted how selectively reusingprehistoric and Roman monuments helpednew leaders define their territorial power,though not in any uniform pattern.In the wooded landscape of the Woldsof East Yorkshire, the round barrow atUncleby was repeatedly used and extendedby burials in the 6th century, while burialsat Painsthorpe Wold relate to ancienttracks across the landscape. Of the earlymedieval burials in the North Wiltshirelandscapes around Avebury, OvertonBarrows, West Kennet Long Barrow andSilbury Hill, 80% relate to these famousprehistoric features, not Roman ones,whereas burials on the gravel platform ofYeavering, Northumberland, relate to both.The phenomenon can be tracedinto later medieval times with churchsites appropriating powerful barrows.Battles were sometimes fought in theshadow of earthworks, which becamesites of assembly for royal councils(the witan), for military forces like thefyrd, and for judicial execution. Whenlinear earthworks came to be used asadministrative boundaries, the process canbe seen as having provided the beginningsof the political framework in England.Dr Sam Newton had a differentstarting point for his lecture, askingwhere the superb craftsmanship of the‘spellbinding’ cloisonné jewellery of theSutton Hoo treasure originated. Hisanswer began with the Apahida Treasureof c.475, from a village in Cluj county,Romania. The three graves discoveredthere in 1889, 1968 and 1979 werepresumed to be of Gepid kings, rivals ofthe Huns. These Sam compared with aVisigothic burial from Tierro de Barrosin Spain, and with jewellery from anOstrogothic female burial of the 6thcentury from Domognano in San Marino,Italy: all Aryan, Christian peoples.They stand beside other ethnic groupswho invaded the Roman territories between100 and 500, like the Huns and Vandals,as well as the Franks, Angles, Saxons, Jutesand Frisians. Sam pointed to Theodoric theGreat (d. 526), an Ostrogothic regent of theVisigoths, who, like Raedwald, practisedreligious tolerance, and who made peacewith the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius, thesource of the great silver dish in Mound 1.We finally lost sight of Sam diving into aPowerpoint full of the Gothic, Ostrogothicand Visigothic cousins of mainland Europe.The idea of the ancestors bridgedlunchtime with the first afternoonsession, when Paul Mortimer andStephen Pollington considered thesignificance of the Sutton Hoo stone,ringed by its two sets of four male faces.They challenged some of Rupert BruceMitford’s early interpretations (1978,346-7, 370, 373) which saw the stone assomething ‘thoroughly barbaric’, ‘held inthe king’s hand’, or even as a symbol ofthe bretwalda, rather than East Angliankingship per se (1978, 347). Pollingtonlisted more than a dozen differentinterpretations and parallels, beforesettling for ‘holy stone’.For the final session of the conference,Dr Noël Adams, Deputy Curator of theFurusiyya Art Foundation, took us backto the European heartlands to ask whatthe depositions at Tournai and MalajaPereščepina can tell us, beside Sutton Hoo.Those three assemblages are the only earlymedieval burials that can be associatedwith historical figures. The Merovingianking Childeric was buried at Tournai inBelgium in 480/481, but its burial moundwith radial horse burials was ruinedduring excavation, and many of its findswere robbed and thrown into the Seine inthe 18th century, leaving only engravingsas a record. Two solidi of Zeno (425-91)nevertheless provide the basis of 5th-7thcentury European chronology.The cremated remains of Kuvrat, khanof the Turkic-speaking Bulgars from thenorth of the Black Sea region, were buriedat Malaja Pereščepina on the Dnieper nearSaxon 60

Poltava, in the Ukraine, sometime after641-8. A Christian and a godson of theEmperor Heraclius, his five sons wereresponsible for founding Bulgaria in thewest of his kingdom in 679 and VolgarBulgaria in the north of it. Althoughby this point in the 7th century garnetshad disappeared, his burial containeda staggering twenty-five kilos of goldand fifty kilos of silver, represented byByzantine silver bowls, Sassanian vesselsof 3rd to 7th century, silver and goldTurkic vessels of the mid 7th century, 69coins of Constans II (641-668), cloisonnéwork, as well as a set of weapons andhorse harness.With a diameter of 61 cms, thePaternus dish alone weighed 6.2 kilos,and can be compared to the silver dish ofAnastasius I (491-518) from Sutton HooMound 1, the third largest silver dish tosurvive from the period: contra RupertBruce-Mitford, Noël asserted,“It’s thoroughly imperial!”All three burials have comparablegrave goods, and Noël concentrated on thecloisonné ornaments, weapons and vesselsin precious metals. They show what wasthought appropriate to a ruler’s grave,what was available, and particularly thenature of the relationship to the EasternRoman Empire, whose silverware bore thecontrol stamps of its emperors.Closing the day’s proceedings, SuttonHoo Society past-chairman Lindsay Leesaid that the idea of holding a societyconference was first mooted in 1998. “Atthat time it represented a new ventureand a new challenge for the society, onewhich could provide a platform for expertsin their field to explore and present newideas. I am pleased to say the concepthas proved a sound one – this being theeighth successful conference.” She warmlythanked the day’s speakers for “taking usall on fantastic and inspiring journeys ofideas and exploration.”REFERENCESApahida :Treasure of ApahidaCarver, M.O.H. 1998: Sutton Hoo:Burial Ground of Kings? London: BritishMuseum PressFanning, S. 1991: ‘Bede, Imperium and theBretwaldas’, in Speculum, vol. 66, no. 1Professor David Gill talking to Dr Angela Evans. Sam Newton with Jude Plouviez.Beneath the Tribal HidageThe Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdomsof Southern Britain AD 450-650:beneath the Tribal Hidage, by SueHarrington and Martin Welch. Oxfordand Philadelphia: Oxbow Books. 234pp., 10 colour plates, 62 b&w figures,49 tables, 60 ISBN 9781782976127.As reported more than five years ago inSaxon 49, the pilot project of the AngloSaxon Kent Electronic Database (ASKED)was deposited with the Leverhulme Trustin 2009 as part of their wider project,Beyond the Tribal Hidage. Begun in 2006,it ambitiously aimed to bring together allthe evidence for Germanic presence insouthern Britain, from about 400-750.Martin Welch, senior lecturer atUniversity College, London, had long beendeveloping a card index as a forerunnerof a gazetteer, and two of his students,Sue Harrington and Stuart Brookes,developed the ASKED database. Sadly,Martin Welch became ill and died in 2011before all the resulting research questionshad been finalised. The present volumecontains only the maps and secondly theirassociated text, instead of the completework that had been planned. The thirdelement, The Early Anglo-Saxon Censusof Southern Britain, is also being madeavailable to researchers with the rest ofthe data, through the Archaeology DataService (ADS).www.suttonhoo.orgSue Harrington’s completion ofthis compromise volume acknowledgesdifferences with Martin Welch’s viewsover the role of gender in emerging sociopolitical hierarchies, over the survivalof British communities in the west, andover the timing of the first Anglo-Saxonarrivals: Welch saw a discontinuity withRoman Britain until the final quarter ofthe 5th century, while Harrington sees acontinuity in structures and productionareas throughout.The Tribal Hidage itself was a 7thcentury (or later) listing of populationgroups and the tax payable on theirlands, only known from 11th centuryand subsequent copies. Understandinghow far these manuscript sources evercorrelated with political reality is a taskMortimer, P. and Pollington, S. (eds.)2013: Remaking the Sutton Hoo Stone: theAnsell-Roper Replica and its Context. LittleDownham, Ely: Anglo-Saxon Booksfor archaeology: 12,000 burials and28,000 artefacts have been analysed andplotted against topographical features,both natural and built.The first tentative conclusions suggestthat the earliest migrants spread rapidlyacross the south east using the road network,which also helped them access resources andcontrol local trade in agricultural produce,textiles and metals. Iron-working seems tohave been localised, but higher status objectswere made not by itinerants, but by settledsmiths and jewellers.Disused Romano-British sites were notreoccupied, though they were plunderedfor building materials; ancient barrows,cemeteries, trackways and waterwayswere used as signposts to new settlements.The migrants came not as a maraudingforce, but as successors to the Romanadministrators; civil strife only aroselater as aristocratic dynasts clashed.‘In conclusion,’ writes Harrington, ‘thecreation of kingdoms in southern Britainby the seventh century remains a matter ofthe greatest conjecture.’ – N.M.Stuart Brookes, Sue Harrington and AndrewReynolds co-edited a festschrift for MartinWelch on his retirement from UCL in 2010,published as Studies in Early Anglo-SaxonArt and Archaeology: Papers in Honourof Martin G. Welch, Oxford: BritishArchaeological Reports (BAR 527, 2011)xi 174 pp. 38 ISBN 9781407307510.5

The site that keeps on giving“.one of the richest records of élite settlement in 6th century England and a striking testimony to the fact that placesof Anglo-Saxon royal residence could have very deep roots indeed.” – Gabor Thomas, www.lymingearchaeology.orgThe Society’s 2014 excursion struckmetaphorical gold on Thursday 21 Augustwith a visit to a site we have followed inSaxon for the last four years (see nos. 52p.11, 53 pp.8-10, 56 p.10, 59 p.10). We wereshown round the excavations at Tayne Field,Lyminge, near Folkestone in Kent, by thedig director, Dr Gabor Thomas, AssociateProfessor of Archaeology at the Universityof Reading. If you missed that, you must notmiss his Basil Brown Lecture in Woodbridgeon Saturday 23 May (see back page).The five-year excavation has revealeda 7th century ‘feasting hall’, followedby more high status halls in 2013, andlast season by 6th century features thatshow that Lyminge, like Yeavering inNorthumberland, was planted in the heartof an ancestral community.Gabor walked us round last summer’sexcavation of a Bronze Age barrow ringditch, with a series of timber halls partlyoverlaying it, which were dated to the6th century by metal work found in theirpostholes. Then came his prize exhibit: a12 x 14 metre ‘sub-circular geophysicalanomaly’, technically known as ‘the blob’.It is significant because it was formed byAfter leaving Sutton Hoo at 8am and over two hours on the motorway,first stop was Maidstone Museum. (All photos Nigel Maslin)The 7th century Faversham claw beaker in thecollection at Maidstone Museum.6a midden of charcoal, animal bone and aseemingly inexhaustable series of AngloSaxon small finds, more than three metresdeep: 1.4 metres had to be left unexcavatedat the end of the d

In July 1939, Mrs Pretty held a garden party at Sutton Hoo to celebrate the discovery and excavation of the burial ship in Mound 1. 75 years later, National Trust celebrated the anniversary with another garden party, in association with the Sutton Hoo Society. As in 1939, a Spitfire flew over the site on Saturday, courtesy of the