The Man Buried At Sutton Hoo | lifestyle nieuws

The year was 1937. During a fete in Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, the landowner Edith May Pretty talked to Vincent B. Redstone the possibility of opening the peculiar mounds on her estate to see its contents. Redstone then called for Guy Maynard, the curator of the Ipswich Corporation Museum, for a meeting with Pretty later that year, and then Maynard offered the services of Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist, as excavator. These events would then lead to the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.The cemetery contains multiple burials, although many have been heavily robbed. The most famous burial, and one that robbers missed, is known as the “great ship burial” and contains the remains of a 88.6-foot-long (27 meters) ship that has a burial chamber filled with 263 artifacts.These artifacts include an intricate gold belt buckle that depicts a mix of snakes, beasts and birds of prey. They also include silverware and coins from the Byzantine Empire, a sword that has a hilt made of jewels and gold dress accessories that have garnet minerals from Sri Lanka. With these many artifacts in the burial chamber, one would be curious as to who was buried in there. Archaeologists seem to have an idea as to the identity of the man buried at the site: Raedwald of East Anglia.Archaeologists point to Raedwald because the date of the coins and other artifacts matches well with the time of his reign and because the burial does not seem to be fully Christian — something that jibes with what historical records say about him. Sutton Hoo’s location in East Anglia and the richness of its artifacts link it to the East Anglian royal dynasty. Learn more about Sutton Hoo and King Raedwald over at Live Science.(Image Credit: Michel Wal/ Wikimedia Commons)…