The Sutton Hoo
The Sutton Hoo is one of the most important archeological findings in English history. It is an ancient ship burial that was discovered in 1939. The ship was discovered on a high bluff on the eastern side of the Deben River, which is about seven miles from the sea. Most of the archeological findings were in 1938 when the landowner, Edith May Pretty, helped unearth some of the mounds on the burial site. When they did this, they found out that the burial site was Anglo-Saxon, and that grave robbers have disturbed some of the ruins. Around the site, there are around twenty barrows, or mounds, and the ship itself was found in one of the mounds. Many of the burials were found in the actual mounds, but twenty-seven other burials were found outside the mounds. Sutton Hoo is somewhere as old as around A.D. 625, this is based on a gold coin that was found with the treasure to Frankish king Theodebert II. The ship is about ninety feet long and about fourteen feet wide. The ship was powered by at least forty oarsmen. It was placed in the mound with the bow facing away from the river. A burial site was built somewhere in the middle of the ship. Only the ship's rivets survived because of the erosion that was caused by the soil, but the indentions from the ship in the ground make it easy to find out what the actual ship looks like. There were no bodies found during the first excavation, but new excavation had led archeologists to believe that a body may have been on board the ship. There was a massive treasure that was found on board the Sutton Hoo. All of these items were the property of the landowner, but she decided to donate all the treasure to England. All these items are now on display at the British Museum. They found gold shoulder clasps, a huge bold belt buckle, and a purse lid that was framed in gold. They also found a leather purse that had thirty-seven Merovingian gold coins in it, also in the purse were three unstruck bank coins and two gold bars. The treasure