A chamber of treasures for an Anglo-Saxon man
Fifteen years ago we featured a routine excavation in Essex that produced an extraordinary discovery – the grave of a wealthy Anglo-Saxon man. Investigative conservation ervation and intensive scientific analysis s of its contents are now complete.e. Sue
The internationally renowned princely burial from Prittlewell, Southend-onSea, Essex, was discovered late in 2003. mola archaeologists evaluating a site known to have had Roman and AngloSaxon graves serendipitously placed one trench over a large Anglo-Saxon chamber burial, which was fully excavated (feature May 2004/76). It remains the most important such find since the excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939.
The fieldwork was required ahead of controversial road alterations. A protest camp was set up on the site after the excavation had finished (feature May/Jun 2006/88), and remained there until 2009, when it was announced that the roadworks had been scaled down. Planning issues delayed the archaeological project, so full analysis and investigative conservation did not get under way until 2012.
Since then, some 40 experts have worked together to document and understand the burial chamber and its contents, and to put them into historical and archaeological context. The team included archaeologists, conservators, engineers, historians, photographers and illustrators, and specialists in Anglo-Saxon artefacts, ancient glass, archaeobotany, organic materials, soil science, human and animal bone, metal- and woodworking, scientific dating, Raman spectroscopy (for the analysis of precious stones and pigments), and zooms (zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry). All of this is described in detail in new publications (see end note). The finds have returned to Southend, and selected items are now on permanent display in Southend’s Central Museum.
The implications of the find were clear from the start. This was an early Anglo-Saxon ( ad410– 700) princely burial in an underground wooden chamber, originally marked by a mound which would have subsided into the room when the timbers decayed. The body had been laid in a coffin with a lamp standing on one end (News Jul/Aug 2005/83), surrounded by luxury objects. Rare vessels still hung on the walls, with an array of drinking horns, cups, bottles and buckets on the floor. No skeleton survived, but the presence of a sword, shield, two spears and an arrow, and a gold triangular buckle of a type that in England and on the continent is found with male burials, d declared that the deceased was a man; a artefact locations suggest he would have b been about 1.73m (5ft 8in) tall.
The unique occurrence of tiny goldf foil crosses in the probable head area of th the coffin (where, finally, fragments of tooth enamel were discovered in a soil sample) declared him to be a Christian convert. An iron stand probably used as a candelabrum, a folding iron stool and a lyre, as well as feasting equipment, all attested to the individual’s high status – he would have been expected to preside over feasts in a great hall and perhaps dispense largesse to his followers from what might be a gifstol (a gift stool, so named in Beowulf).
Some vital information about the burial, however, was harder won. The organic elements of the chamber were in general scarce and very degraded. At times during analysis their structures were hard to identify, even under an electron microscope. Where they had survived, these were mostly subtle, mineral-preserved traces within iron corrosion or fragments close to copperalloy or silver fittings and objects.
Artefacts or environmental material of animal bone were often too degraded or too incomplete to identify through physical features, but in such cases collagen analysis by zooms proved invaluable for the secure identification of species. This was extremely useful in understanding the nature of a group of gaming counters (below), and a friable and eroded piece of bone lying next to a pair of drinking bottles beside the coffin that proved to be the remains of a cattle long bone – possibly a joint of beef left with the bottles as the dead man’s share of the feast.
Most of the objects or object groups were lifted with undisturbed grave fill around and inside them by conservators working on site with the archaeologists. In the laboratory the soil blocks were x- rayed, or in the case of those containing the lyre and the sword, ct- scanned, before being microexcavated and recorded further as surfaces were revealed. In such ways new objects and information were discovered by conservators in the lab and studied alongside by specialists in early Anglo-Saxon artefacts.
A lyre with history
The result of all this is an extraordinary catalogue of craftwork and wealth. One of the archaeologically most important soil blocks was about 15cm thick, enclosing the stain of the wooden form of a lyre, with a thin layer of surviving remains close to the surface. It is rare for a complete lyre form to be identified in the ground as a distinct soil mark – often they have only been recognised as isolated fragments and metal fittings, difficult to relate to one another.
The outline gave the first approximate dimensions for an Anglo
Saxon lyre while it was still in the ground. x- radiography then demonstrated that the lyre had been lying on its face on the chamber floor. However, because of the density of the block and delicacy of the metal fittings, x- ray images gave insufficient detail. So a ct- scan was carried out at a hospitalbased scanner centre, which produced a powerful digital 3d image capable of bringing out more detail and that could be manipulated on-screen.
New fittings became visible, and their location could be seen in 3d: it was possible to determine, within the thin, compacted layer of fragments and dark staining, which fittings belonged to which side of the instrument. The scans guided further investigation. The surface was lightly cleaned with small hand tools and then digitally photographed at high resolution, some of it in stereo, a measured plan made and the surface laser-scanned. Then we needed to turn the soil block over to investigate the original front face of the lyre: facings and supports were applied to hold the fragments and ephemeral traces of the wood stain in place, allowing us to micro-excavate and record the lyre from the other side.
After extensive recording in the block, the surviving areas of wood around the delicate metal fittings were examined and individually conserved. The lyre was found to be made of maple wood and had a hollow soundbox attached to a frame comprising two arms connected across the top by a “yoke”, where the upper ends of the strings were attached to ash-wood tuning pegs. No trace of a bridge was found, but an iron and leather tailpiece secured the strings to the foot of the instrument. Two gilded copper-alloy disc-headed rivets decorated with interlace and inlaid garnets secured the yoke to the arms; Raman spectroscopy identified the garnets as almandines, probably from the Indian subcontinent or Sri Lanka. At the junction of solid arms and sound box were two silver strip-fittings. Between the arms lay copper-alloy fittings with remains of a leather strap, which was probably looped around the wrist to support the instrument, freeing both hands to pluck and stop the strings.
Graeme Lawson, music archaeologist and expert on the lyre – the most important stringed instrument in the ancient world – had been fully involved from the start of the recording process. Now he could begin to unravel the biography of the Prittlewell lyre, which turned out to have had a complex history. At some point the lyre had evidently suffered a serious structural failure. Rows of repair strips – silver on the front face and gilded copper alloy on the back – had been placed over longitudinal cracks in the front and back of the lyre’s hollow body, and two iron bands were riveted to the outer and inner surfaces of the yoke to repair it. This suggested that the instrument had split apart from top to bottom, then been dismantled and skilfully reassembled.
Hairs found on the lyre suggest it was placed inside an animal-skin bag. The fact that the lyre’s form can be accurately reconstructed makes it the single most important musical discovery of its kind since the lyre in the Sutton Hoo ship burial. In spite of the Prittlewell lyre’s fragmentary condition, it is the most completely preserved of any lyre from the AngloSaxon territories.
Painted box and scythe
Another remarkable survival was discovered during micro-excavation of a soil block containing a silver spoon, a knife, a comb and other items placed within a wooden box (the spoon is Byzantine, from the world of the eastern Roman empire, and is one of three such objects in the burial chamber including a hanging bowl and a flagon). On site, the box appeared as a roughly rectangular soil stain surrounding some metal objects, but investigation in the lab exposed hidden fragments of a painted maplewood surface, lying face down under the spoon.
The base of the box may have been painted, but it seems more likely that the box as found was upside down, perhaps knocked off from a nearby wooden chest when the chamber’s roof timbers collapsed, and that these were fragments of the lid. Leslie Webster, an Anglo-Saxon art specialist, suggests that the restricted range of colours – identified by Raman spectroscopy as earth pigments of red and yellow ochre, and white from gypsum – is similar to that used in some manuscripts. Two elongated oval shapes may be swimming fish, while a yellow ladder pattern resembles the borders of Anglo-Saxon gold-and-garnet jewellery. This unique find is the only known surviving example of early Anglo-Saxon painted woodwork.
In the north-west corner er of the chamber stood a large yew-wood tub with iron hoops, collar and ring handles, of a type known from other burials of high-status men, including the Sutton Hoo ship burial. When the soil inside the tub was excavated in the laboratory, we unexpectedly found three e artefacts within it.
One was a small copperralloy bowl, probably made e in the Meuse valley or the e Rhineland and originally acquired as a piece of fine tableware. It had been repaired, however, and may have seen secondary use as a dipper to ladle out the tub’s contents, perhaps water. The other two objects were an iron scythe blade with a displaced iron wall-hook lying beneath it at the bottom of the tub.
It is likely that the scythe was originally racked on two hooks on the chamber’s west wall, and that its blade fell with one hook into the tub when the wooden handle (traces of which were found on the tang) decayed. The blade’s ridged back and the acute angle of blade to upturned tang all indicate that this was a “long scythe”, an implement used specifically for mowing grass or hay for animal fodder: its presence suggests the ownership of livestock, particularly stabled horses. The scythe blade is an extremely rare find for this period. There are no other British finds of scythes between Roman examples and late Anglo-Saxon hoard finds. The Prittlewell blade is slightly larger than later examples and has a longer tang. In Europe, Joachim Henning sees the Prittlewell scythe as a missing link between fifth- to early sixth-century ad examples, and those dated to the later seventh to themid the mid eighth centuries.
Hanging bowl
The first item to alert us to the fact that mola archaeologists had discovered a burial chamber with vessels still hanging from the walls on iron hooks was the copper-alloy hanging bowl. This proved to be a complex construction with more than 40 components. Originally these had all been soldered to the outer and inner surfaces but, as the solder corroded, had become loose. Conservation required their precise locations to be recorded, their form and decoration clarified, samples taken for analysis and the parts reattached in exactly their original positions.
Hanging bowls formed a part of drinking sets found along the western n frontier of the late Roman empire, and nd continued to be made in post-Roman n Britain. These prestige possessions were made to be suspended when in use and also for display when hung on n a wall from one ring. They may have been used in Christian ritual. The overall ornamental scheme on the Prittlewell find comprises an outer framework of enamelled strips with four ribs springing from a base ring and terminating in suspension mounts s with ring handles. Each rib is framed to either side by a narrow bronze strip. p. To our surprise, trapped in a space between one of the decorated ribs and d a parallel strip were tiny fragments of spiral-wound gold thread (less than half alf a millimetre wide). While gold braid found in the coffin is of a type known from other Anglo-Saxon burials, spun gold thread is a very unusual find at this date and it may have come from the continent. There is no evidence that the thread was attached to the hanging bowl, and its presence may be an accident relating to the bowl’s former use.
The semi-naturalistic style of two pairs of beasts on the central discs on both sides of the base stands out from the largely abstract decorative designs elsewhere on the bowl. Susan Youngs, a specialist in Anglo-Saxon metalwork, , concluded that in style and leaping pose the animals on the Prittlewell bowl most resemble hares stamped on later Mediterranean plates and lamps. Hanging bowls with applied external strips, as here, form a small subgroup of “band bowls” among a larger number r of hanging bowls with enamelled fittings. Though most often found in rich early Anglo-Saxon burials, hanging bowls were almost certainly produced in an elite milieu of northern or western Britain.
Who was in the grave?
Initially there did not seem to be any possibility of obtaining scientific dates from the Prittlewell burial – and thus of identifying the man in historical records. The skeleton had not survived and so could not be radiocarbon dated, and none of the fragmentary wood remains, whether from the chamber, coffin or artefacts, offered any potential for tree-ring dating. During conservation and analysis, however, it became apparent that enough survived of certain organic items for ams radiocarbon dating (accelerator mass spectrometry), as it can provide dates from very small samples.
Among potential material was mineral-preserved horn from drinking horns with elaborate decorated collars, and wooden drinking vessels which had gilded copper-alloy rim mounts. More surprisingly well preserved were
gaming pieces (at first thought to be of antler), found along with two large antler dice on the floor of the chamber in the north-east corner; nearby were iron fittings from a wooden gaming board originally hung on the wall. The dice and gaming pieces are the bestpreserved organic items from the burial – probably due to localised waterlogging from water penetrating through the decayed roof timbers here.
The horn and wood samples produced reliable radiocarbon dates, but dates from the gaming pieces were anomalous. It became clear from stable isotope analysis undertaken as part of the radiocarbon dating, however, that their original identification as antler was incorrect and that the samples in fact derive from a fully marine mammal. Subsequent analysis by zooms identified this material as bone from a sperm whale. The accurate calibration of radiocarbon dates from marine mammals is extremely difficult; including dates from the gaming pieces would have confused our estimated chronologies.
ams radiocarbon dates from the drinking horn and drinking cup were then combined with information from a new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods, derived from seriation and highprecision carbon dating (see Books, Mar/Apr 2014/135). This framework took into account the gold buckle ( ad575– 620), Salin Style ii decoration on drinking vessels and spear shafts, and two Merovingian gold coins (580–630). Combining all the data in a Bayesian analysis led to a preferred dating model for the chamber burial of
ad575– 605 (95% probability) or 580– 600 (68%). This is a little older than the Sutton Hoo ship burial (590–635 [95%] or 600–625 [68%]), and makes Prittlewell the earliest dated princely burial in England.
So who was he? The spoon bears the only surviving inscription in the burial, the Roman names of at least three different owners ( briti, fabi and
romn) and a cross that may be a further owner’s mark, but none of these needs be the man in the grave. In the early days it had been suggested he might have been Saebert, an East Saxon ruler who converted to Christianity and died between ad616 and 618. The dating shows that that is not possible. While the Prittlewell assemblage is rich and elaborate, it pales beside that of the Sutton Hoo ship burial and lacks symbols of political and military leadership: this was a man of aristocratic or princely lineage, a Christian convert possibly related to Saebert, but – notwithstanding the Saxon King, a pub which opened near the site in 2014 – not a king. The only plausible known candidate is Seaxa, a brother of Saebert. However, write Lyn Blackmore, Ian Blair, Sue Hirst and Chris Scull in the monograph, “to offer this as anything more than a speculative possibility would be to go beyond the evidence”.
See www.prittlewellprincelyburial.org and The Prittlewell Princely Burial: Excavations at Priory Crescent, Southendon-Sea, Essex, 2003, by L Blackmore, I Blair, S Hirst & C Scull, and in popular form, The Anglo-Saxon Princely Burial at Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea, London, by S Hirst & C Scull (2019, available at www.mola.org.uk/publications). Excavation, conservation and postexcavation work was funded by Southendon-Sea Borough Council and Historic England and carried out by mola with the support of numerous other institutions and individual specialists. Sue Hirst, an AngloSaxon burial specialist, is managing editor and Liz Barham is senior conservator at mola