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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
- [00:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
- [00:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
If you would like to listen to Gone Medieval ad free and get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
- [00:14]
Matt Lewis
With the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original.
- [00:20]
Professor Joe Buckbury
Documentaries, such as my new series on.
- [00:22]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Everyone'S favorite conquerors, the Normans, or my.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the show Notes for this episode.
- [00:49]
Duncan Sayer
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- [01:21]
Freddy Wong
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Do you like being educated on things that entertain but don't matter? Well, then you need to be listening to the Podcast with Knox and Jamie. Every Wednesday, we put together an episode dedicated to delightful idiocy to give your brain a break from all the serious and important stuff. Whether we're deep diving a classic movie.
- [01:43]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Dissecting the true meanings behind the newest slang, or dunking on our own listeners for their bad takes or cringy stories, we always approach our topics with humor and just a little bit of side eye. And we end every episode with recommendations on all the best new movies, books.
- [01:56]
Freddy Wong
TV shows, or music. To find out more, just search up the Podcast with Knox and Jamie wherever you listen to podcast and prepare to make Wednesday your new favorite day of the week. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [02:21]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to Popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders. To find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here, find out who we really were with. Gone Medieval Foreign welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. We've got two guests for you today to help us dig deep into the stories offered by early medieval grave goods. We've got news of an exciting new discovery for you in this episode. Amongst the goods found in an early medieval graveyard at a secret location in England is a stunning sword. We'll be chatting to one of the archaeologists working on the project later on about this incredible find and about what else is being unearthed at the same site. Before that, I thought it might be interesting to find out about grave goods more widely. It's a term you might hear used frequently, but what does it really mean? And how can exploring grave goods help us get closer to the real people they were buried with? Well, looking for answers to those questions seemed like the perfect excuse to get Professor Joe Buckbury, who is head of the Biological Anthropology Research center at the University of Bradford, back on the podcast to explain it all to us. Joe, thanks for coming back to join us.
- [04:07]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
It's really good to see you, Matt.
- [04:09]
Matt Lewis
It's always a pleasure to have you back on Gone Medieval. And we're going to talk a little bit about grave goods because we've got an exciting find coming later, but I wanted to try and get a bit of context and a bit of detail about what we're going to talk about afterwards. So in a broad span, when we talk about grave goods, what do we mean? What does that term point to?
- [04:29]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So within the frame of medieval, because of course, grave goods are something that are more universal than just medieval. We're normally talking about the sort of 5th to 7th centuries AD. So what's known as the migration period across most of continental Europe because of lots of movement of people, and people may have heard it as early Anglo Saxon as well, although that particular phrase has some loaded connotations which get quite complicated, which I'm not going to go into. So early medieval 5th to 7th centuries are the broad basis for Britain, although a few do occur later than that in specific circumstances.
- [05:05]
Matt Lewis
And is there a geographical difference in kind of practices throughout the period, or is it fairly uniform?
- [05:13]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
There are different patterns. So when we're looking at the 5th to 6th centuries and we're looking at that migration period, most of what we're seeing in terms of grave goods is in the south and east of England and it kind of spreads northwards and westwards. But it isn't a practice that we see as much elsewhere in the United Kingdom. And where we do have grave goods elsewhere, they're of a different style, A Different form, suggesting some kind of different material, cultural fashion for those people.
- [05:40]
Matt Lewis
And do we have a sense of when we get to the end of this period in which you'd be hoping to find grave goods, why do they begin to disappear? Why do we stop seeing grave goods?
- [05:50]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And that's a really interesting one, because there are some conflicting opinions about this.
- [05:55]
Matt Lewis
We love a good conflicting opinion. That's great.
- [05:57]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
We don't. I know. It's always fun, always fun. And so perhaps a more traditional approach, and there is probably some merit to this, is the fact that the decline in grave goods is really happening around the seventh century, which coincides with the conversion to Christianity. So the idea is that because people are becoming more Christian, converting to the religion, they are changing their burial practice. They are electing to be buried lying on their back in a grave, with their heads to the west, their feet to the east, and without any grave goods. And this is what became normal Christian burial throughout the medieval period and through to today. But what's interesting about that is there's actually no documentary evidence anywhere suggesting that the Church said, thou shalt not use grave goods. It's always been much more of a don't try and push too many changes on the local population, kind of adopt local practices as well. So it's unlikely the Church was the only thing, or religion was the only thing fostering this change. What's also happening is connections across Europe, right the way through to Byzantium. So changes in the style of grave goods could be linked to wanting to be part of that broader European community, and also just a change in fashion. And so what we seem to go through is a period where people are buried with extra stuff in the grave. So true grave goods. And then we have a period where you may get occasional personal items, but they're normally something that's worn as part of your everyday dress. So it's not that these objects are not in the grave, but they're not extra things being put in.
- [07:27]
Matt Lewis
So.
- [07:27]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So that kind of suggests we've got people buried in clothes. And then as we move later, there's assumption that we're moving into people wearing shrouds or being buried in shrouds, so they're not wearing their clothes, and therefore we might find a shroud pin or something like that rather than a belt buckle, which we may see between those two periods.
- [07:46]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's so interesting when you get those conflicting opinions, because what you need is someone to have sat down in the seventh century and written a little page saying, and now we're no longer going to bury goods with people because.
- [07:56]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. And the fact they didn't suggests that the reason was not politically motivated and really important in that sense that it's more of an organic change that's happening with that community. And so I think you kind of, when you're looking at that documentary evidence, you think about what are they not writing down and why is it not important to write down? And I think that's quite an important thing to think about.
- [08:18]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. And so in very broad terms, because we'll try and narrow it down in a moment, but when we talk about grave goods, what kind of material things are we talking about? What's the kind of thing that people were putting in the graves during this period?
- [08:30]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So it's kind of three main categories of grave goods. There's the kind of everyday stuff, so this is things like buckles, small knives. Occasionally you might find little lace tags, which kind of bits of metal that go on the end of a lace, a bit like the end of your shoelaces have plastic on today. So normal everyday items that people are wearing. We then move into sort of so called weapon burials. So these are likely to contain larger knives, spearheads, sometimes the ferule, which is the other end of a spear, shield bosses, which is the central metal part of a bigger shield, suggesting the whole shield was buried. And or rarely you may see arrowheads, axe heads and swords, which are particularly beautiful for this period with pattern welding, which is an amazingly fantastic technique where you meld two kinds of metal together and create a beautiful pattern in the kind of thing you might find in a Japanese kitchen knife today. So the third one is the so called jewelry burials. So this is where we find lots of brooches, quite often in pairs on the chest, lots of beads, often in strings. Between those two brooches you may find pendants that are obviously on the same beaded necklace. Rarely you may find bracelets. And in certain areas, particularly along sort of like the east coast, we see wristband clasps which are almost like a large hook and eye that are found at the wrist. And it's thought to be some kind of a mechanical closure for large sleeves. And they're really quite beautiful as well.
- [10:02]
Matt Lewis
Fascinating. So is it fair to say we can divide the three categories almost into two? There's the kind of the everyday things that perhaps represent the normal day to day life of the individual. And there's more symbolic things that might speak to their, their status or statement that they or the people that are burying them want to make about them.
- [10:20]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think that's fair enough. I mean, not all people had grave goods. There are a fair number of individuals not buried with anything, or at least not buried with anything that survived the archaeological record, because you don't know what organics are in the grave, which is that unknown area of curiosity. And those everyday items can be found a person buried with just those everyday items, or in combination with weapons or in combination with jewellery. And so a lot of focus in the research is looking at what is the symbolic meaning of those more richly furnished graves with more stuff in them.
- [10:53]
Matt Lewis
And do we see a big difference in terms of male and female burials? Can you tell the sex of a skeleton, perhaps partly by the grave goods that are buried with it.
- [11:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So that's a really interesting one. So for many, many years, people assumed this was a direct male female separation. And there are archaeologists who didn't bother sex in skeletons because we know it from the grave goods or where the skeleton gives a different answer. They've overruled it with the grave good evidence. And then as you kind of move through sort of like the history of archaeological thought, people have gone, this seems a little bit weird. We've got separate scientific evidence. So people are looking at the relationship between the sex of the skeleton and the grave goods. And by and large, the majority of people with jewellery are either female or we've not got a sex assessment for them. And by and large, the majority of people with weapons are male or we don't have a sex for them. But there are people who are the opposite way around. So female individuals skeletally buried with weapons and skeletally male individuals buried with jewellery.
- [11:59]
Matt Lewis
Which is really interesting just to muddy the waters. So you can't actually work out what's going on.
- [12:04]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. So it's likely that those grave goods are reflecting something that isn't just a direct representation of sort of biological sex. You've got to add into the mix that there is a level of confidence around the methods that we use. So if we have a perfectly intact skeleton, we're maybe looking at 95% of the time we are absolutely perfectly right with our sex. So there's always a little bit of uncertainty in that, just because of the diverse nature of human bodies. But also the less complete that skeleton gets, the. The less reliable that estimate is going to be. And some of the most sexually dimorphic parts or sexually different parts of the human skeleton are also those that are most fragile. So I really like the pubic bone, which is in the pelvis at the front, but it doesn't survive particularly well. So if your skeletons are less well preserved, you have more uncertainty. And those are the cases where we may not get the sex correct and the skeleton. And the way to test that would be to be looking at DNA versus what we've observed. And we do sometimes find a mismatch there as well.
- [13:04]
Matt Lewis
And as well as sex, you sort of mentioned a little bit earlier that there's perhaps a divide between elite and ordinary people too. Do we never find grave goods with ordinary people or do we find different grave goods? Or is it not as clear cut in that sometimes you will and sometimes you won't? For both elite and lower status burials.
- [13:21]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think the difficulty there is knowing how to identify your ordinary people. So the assumption is that people with lots of stuff must be the rich people. And therefore grave goods denote status, but actually they may not directly represent that person as an individual, but rather relate to how they are perceived in their society. So somebody who's not financially high status may have really important social status of another means, perhaps because they're very wise and very knowledgeable, for example. And we can't assume the people without grave goods are the most ordinary people. They could be the really, really important people. They're just buried in a different way. So we kind of make an assumption that lots of grave goods equals higher status, but there isn't a way of independently testing that particular pattern, which makes it quite interesting in that sense, trying to kind of tease out what's going on. But it's likely that those grave goods have some kind of symbolic meaning about the roles those people had in society. Society. So people have suggested things like heads of households, be they male or female heads of households showing allegiance to particular groups. So perhaps adopting a form of burial practice to show your allegiance to a tribe or a kingdom. But also in terms of weapons, are we talking about a warrior status? And is that warrior status a figurative, theoretical state status, or is it a literal thing where those are the people who went out into battle? And what's really curious there is that when you start mapping out which individuals are buried with the weapons and which individuals had injuries from fighting with those weapons, they don't correlate directly. So we have plenty of people who are buried with weapons who have no injuries. That might mean they've never been in a battle, or they could have been in the battle and been very successful and escaped without any skeletal trauma. But we also have individuals who were buried with evidence of skeletal trauma from things like weapons, you know, swords in particular, but they're not actually buried with weapons. So clearly I fought in a battle and I've survived it or not is not something that grants you the right to be buried with those weapons.
- [15:40]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. Which I guess is more suggestive of a status thing rather than a particular proficiency as a warrior. Except that it almost sounds like, you know, you get buried with a sword if you don't die by the swords. If you're good with one, you might get buried with one. But I'm sure it's much more complicated than that. But it sounds like they're more of a status thing than denoting someone who fought for a living. You can fight but not deserve to be buried with a sword kind of thing. Or you can not do too much fighting, but your status will mean you're going to get buried with the sword as a symbol of that status.
- [16:11]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That's certainly a possibility. But the other thing you need to think about is why do people suddenly start burying swords? Because they're actually quite expensive items. They take a lot of effort to make. And we have quite a lot of evidence of reuse of swords or sword parts. And it's quite likely that swords were inherited and passed down families or to other important people in your community. So you're then wondering, well, why did they stop passing this sword on? So it could be that you have a really, really important warrior who has earned the right to bear a sword, but they're not buried with it because they've passed it on to somebody else at some point in their life or on their death. So it becomes quite complicated in that interpretation.
- [16:51]
Matt Lewis
Is it possible there then, that we're seeing kind of a cultural shift away from the sword being the important thing and the sword being the symbol of status to the people wanting it to be more about them, or perhaps that they're beginning to wear a crown that means what a sword used to mean, so that there isn't the need to pass the sword through the generations that they used to be.
- [17:10]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Certainly a possibility. That's part of it. I'm not sure that's going to be the case for all of those individuals. And you've also got to bear in mind that in some cases, grave goods may well have been gifts by other people showing their allegiance, so they may not have been the object owned by that person. And how people perceive receive you is another factor that's coming into the big story. So it can be quite difficult to understand exactly what's going on, you know, directly from. From those grave goods.
- [17:37]
Matt Lewis
Because I guess part of the Problem is that these people haven't ever buried themselves. So they may have let it be known what they wanted in the grave with them, but they have ultimately had no say over that they've been buried by the living who have put those things in, either because they know the person wanted them there, they thought the person wanted them there, or the living wanted that thing to be in the grave with the person that's passed away. So there's a whole lot of stuff going on that must be really difficult to pick apart.
- [18:06]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Absolutely. And what does seem to be evident is that a lot of these larger grave goods are placed in the grave with very deliberate positioning and that perhaps this is something that can be read a little bit like you'd read a road sign. You know, you're driving down the car and you see a men at work road sign. You know, incidentally, that means there's roadworks ahead, but there's nothing on it that says roadworks. It's a symbol, we understand. And it's likely that the positioning of objects in the grave and the combination of those objects had similar meanings to the people who are at the graveside. And they could look in and read that picture and understand what's going to be communicated about that person. But, yeah, as you say, those decisions are made very much by the mourners rather than the person in the grave.
- [18:48]
Matt Lewis
And I guess at this distance, because it wasn't particularly well recorded what all of those things meant, we just don't know how to read what they would have quite easily understood.
- [18:58]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Absolutely.
- [18:59]
Matt Lewis
They wouldn't.
- [18:59]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah.
- [18:59]
Matt Lewis
An early Anglo Saxon person wouldn't understand a men at work sign, but we do. They would have understood what the arrangement of grave goods means, but that's lost to us.
- [19:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, absolutely. And it's. It's one of those interesting things about archaeology that we can start thinking about what these might be. But, you know, short of finding a time machine and going back and talking to someone, we're never actually going to know. And there is this idea that, you know, there may be things that are spoken or acted, add to that meaning and of course they're lost forever. They're very intangible. They're not something we can hold on to and look at. So, you know, we have a partial picture and we're trying to figure out what's going on. But that overall pattern has got more meanings than we can really comprehend because our mindset is totally different. The way we think about, about these things is totally different. And therefore the interpretations we make of those Grave goods are going to be, to a certain extent, influenced by our own perceptions of how people express their identity. And that's one of the things we try to pick apart, is trying to avoid that bias that we have towards what's a norm in the 21st century versus what was the norm in the 6th century, which is probably quite different.
- [20:05]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. When you get that time machine, you'll have to come back and talk to us, Joe, because I reckon you make a fortune from a gone medieval audience who would love to be able to go back and see various things.
- [20:13]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I'm pretty certain I could. I could hire that out at great amounts of money. It would be fantastic. Definitely.
- [20:19]
Matt Lewis
And before we move away from the kind of the different types of burials and what they might be able to tell us, do we ever find grave goods that are associated with the burial of children? Is there anything specific about what goes into child graves?
- [20:33]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So children are quite interesting. So the first thing is that we don't tend to find a huge number of children in early medieval incubation cemeteries, and they are known to be underrepresented. And there's a couple of things that could be in there. And there are three things that I think all interlink and build this picture. The first one is that if you have very bad soil conditions, smaller bones don't survive well, so you're more likely to lose the body of a small child over an adult. So that's going to introduce a bias. At certain sites, you may have a choice where children are buried in a different place, a different location, and therefore we're not finding them. So, for example, children's skeletons, and particularly baby skeletons, have been found within the walls of houses on some early medieval sacraments. And then the third one is that we're talking about a period where cremation is also used alongside inhumation. And one of my doctoral students actually found that proportionally, we have far more infants in cremations, as opposed to inchmations in Norfolk, in East Anglis. That's a really interesting pattern. Is it more appropriate to cremate a baby over in humor baby within that particular community? And that's something that'd be really fascinating to try and expand on.
- [21:52]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I guess an interesting cultural approach to the passing of adults and the passing of children and how you can deal with those differently and what it might mean to cremate rather than in human. Yeah, there's something cultural going on there, isn't there?
- [22:06]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
There's definitely something. But going back to those actual baby informations, and child informations that we can see. There's a real age related patterning in the types of grave goods that we find. So the very, very young rarely have anything in their grave. As they get older, you're more likely to see more objects. But those more gendered grave goods, the jewelry and the weapons, seem to be used particularly often before a child reaches 10 or 12 years old. And that's really interesting because when we start looking at the documentary evidence for the later Anglo Saxon period, what we're finding is that that coincides quite nicely with the age of majority. So it could be that you have to hit puberty, which is a biological milestone, or a certain age as a social milestone before you're entitled to that type of grave. Good. But the younger children are often buried with small pots, maybe buckle or a small knife. Rarely. And the size of the knife seems to relate to the age of the individual. So younger children, small knives, adults larger knives, and men larger knives than women, which is a fascinating study in its own right. But they may occasionally be buried with amulets and things that may perhaps have offered protection to those children. And they are in some cases buried with an adult, presumably somebody who died around the same time, rather than necessarily a family member. Again, you need to use DNA to try and test that to see those relationships. But there seems to be a level of offering protection to those children in the grave, which is really nice.
- [23:37]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah, it sounds lovely. And the knife thing sounds interesting as well, because this is a time when everybody would have carried a knife, they would have had their own knife on them at all times. And I guess that knife would have grows with you and with your needs for that knife. So it's an interesting marker that perhaps children are buried with a knife that indicates their age at the time, sort of by the size of the knife that they're currently using day to day.
- [24:00]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I mean, you know, you think about. So children's cutlery today, it's smaller than adults cutlery. And I think this is probably the same thing. It's a functional thing, is proportional to the size of the individual to a certain extent or the age of the individual. There's lots of variation around that. It's not that, you know, by age 5, your knife is going to be bigger than it was when you were 4 or something. But that pattern of difference between children and adult is reasonably strong. Some overlap. But yeah, I think it's very much that functional use what's appropriate for somebody of your age or indeed gender, when we're looking at the adults.
- [24:33]
Professor Joe Buckbury
Yeah.
- [24:34]
Matt Lewis
And it almost points to that knife being a really, really personal item. It's the thing that is quite often buried with someone, as you say, a day to day functional item, but something very personal that no one else is going to use now because it was theirs.
- [24:48]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I mean, again, not everybody has one and it could be that, you know, in many cases the iron may have been reused or passed on to another individual, but they do seem to be a personal item that belongs to that individual rather than something that's chosen as a. Here is a grave. Good to mark something deeply symbolic. It's rather displayed top of their normal clothing and this is how we're burying this person.
- [25:11]
Matt Lewis
One of the other types of burial that I've come across is what are often termed as deviant burials or execution burial. So where a head is perhaps separated from a body or they're buried in a way that suggests that they may well have been social outcasts or criminals of some description. And obviously they're all vampires as well. When we talk about deviant barrels, they're all vampires, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, we know that for sure.
- [25:31]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Possibly not so much in Britain, but yes, it's definitely been hard keyed for some areas of world.
- [25:36]
Matt Lewis
But do we ever find grave goods in those kinds? Because this is suggestive of people who are outside of the community. Do we ever see grave goods buried with those people? Or does the lack of grave goods point to their, their exclusion from general society?
- [25:49]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
This is something again that's quite interesting in that the separate cemeteries for deviant burials is very much a seventh century and later phenomenon. It's not something we see in this really early grave, good intense period. Rather what we seem to see there is individuals buried in the communal cemetery, but in a slightly different way. And some of those do have grave goods, some of them don't.
- [26:12]
Matt Lewis
It's just interesting. I think it's the different types of burial that people will have come across and. And whether there's grave goods there.
- [26:19]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I mean if you think of somewhere like Sutton Hoo for example, so we're straying into the seventh century. So a little bit later here, seventh and eighth centuries, we have the mound burials with rich grave goods, but there are also flat cemeteries and some of those are believed to be deviant burials because the individuals are positioned in very peculiar positions. A little bit hard to be certain exactly what's going on because there's very little bone survival. So the evidence of the bodies is just caused by the staining in the Soil, really difficult to see, amazingly technical to excavate, you know, brilliant expertise at excavating those. And they generally don't have anything with them.
- [26:55]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And where we do find, you know, a decent amount of grave goods with individuals, can they tell us much about the connectivity of the early medieval world? You know, can we tell how far away some of those grave goods have come from? Do they tend to be local things or have they traveled?
- [27:13]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So some things have traveled. Most things appear to be more local. Quite a lot of objects seem to hark towards what become the Anglo Saxon kingdom. So you kind of have Anglian style grave goods and Jutish style grave goods which seem to coalesce in the regions, but they may well relate to more state formation later on rather than anything in terms of original migration. But we get items that have connections with Branchia, for example, as we're moving on, we see items with connections to Byzantium and certain brooch types have connections with sort of Germany, the German lowlands, thinking into Jutland. And so you have these patterns of grave goods that have relationships, but they're not always something that's migrated. It's a similarity in style rather than a definite movement of that object. Some, some objects have moved. But what's also interesting is the relationship between those grave goods and the individuals that they're buried from. So with the advances in ancient DNA, we're able to start looking at the genetic makeup of individuals in the early medieval period. And whereas we do have quite good correlations between an influx of individuals from northern Europe during the migration period, which is kind of what the hypothesis has been, and there's been lots of debate as to how many people did migrate. It's beginning to look like a reasonable number. But there are individuals who have virtually no evidence of that sort of northern European, continental European DNA, but still have those typically Anglo Saxon style grave goods, suggesting that actually where you as an individual migrated from or your ancestors migrated from is not the only reason for depositing those grave goods. And again, you start thinking about symbolic use, role within society, allegiance to a community and sort of following the local trends as opposed to this is a direct genetic reflection of who you and your family are. Which I think is really fascinating and it's really exciting to see that DNA work starting to be done in more detail now. The techniques have got to the point where we can get that level of detail.
- [29:40]
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- [31:36]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it sounds like it'll be a really interesting window into movement of people, but also settlement and integration of people and how quickly they felt like they were from where they've settled and almost disconnected from where their family may have originally come from.
- [31:51]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Absolutely. And I think also the connections between the individuals in the cemetery and finding those family groups. One of the really interesting advances with ancient DNA is the fact that we can actually start to map our family groups and start to understand are they buried in the same cemetery? Are they close to each other where we have a double grave? Are they related to each other or not? So the potential with DNA as those techniques are being refined and we're getting more detail is is just incredible.
- [32:17]
Matt Lewis
And amongst the grave goods that you find most often, are there things that we think are everyday goods or are there things that are specifically burial goods? You know, is There a set of items that a person might expect to take to the grave, or does it reflect an individual more? More than that.
- [32:35]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So I think broadly speaking, the types of grave goods we get are things that may be deliberately chosen for the grave, and it may be they are everyday items, but they may not have been everyday items in that particular setup of the grave. So, for example, there are some rather fabulous brooches where the corrosion of the metal has preserved evidence of the textiles they were pinned to. And in some of those cases, we can see quite substantial heavy brooches being attached onto fabric that just wouldn't have the strength to hold the weight of that item up if the person was walking around. So we know that in that particular sort of burial itself, that that brooch and that garment did not go together in normal life, and that was a deliberate choice for the grave. So that then implies that perhaps other things were chosen more for the appropriate symbolism for the grave rather than necessarily something that people would wear every day.
- [33:32]
Matt Lewis
So this wasn't necessarily recreating how grandma or grandpa looked when they were walking around to. To place them in the ground. You know, today we might put someone in their best suit or something like that. This is much more symbolic than that.
- [33:45]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think it is. It's matching the different parts together that fit the story you're trying to tell about that person rather than a static point in that person's life and how they would have dressed for a certain occasion.
- [33:57]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, very fascinating. Just to end on, in 500 years time, if someone were to uncover your mortal remains, is there anything that you would like to have in the grave with you? Is there something that you can think of that you might want there to symbolize? Joe Buckbury?
- [34:14]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Okay, so this one's really quite embarrassing, but I'm going to be honest about it. So quite a few years ago, I was watching something on TV that was talking about antiques and teddy bears, and I just had this dawning realization that my teddy bears that I've had since I was a toddler are very personal to me and they've got nowhere to go. And I realized that the thought of them going to landfill actually really upset me quite profoundly. And at that point I went, do you know what? I am going to be buried with my two teddy bears that I've had since forever because they are absolutely no use to anybody else, but they are hugely sentimental to me. Now, if that was dug up in five years time for one of them, they would just find a pair of buttons for the eyes because it's a more homemade teddy and the other one. And we'll find the particular fittings and fixtures of the eyes and nose. And I dread to think how that would be interpreted because it is such a personal thought as to how, how I would do that. But I've never particularly felt the need for anything else apart from the fact no cremation, because I just don't like the thought of it.
- [35:16]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, that's really interesting. I've actually got two teddy bears of my grandmother's that she was given as a very, very small child. And she always had them on a. They had their own chair in the corner of her bedroom and she didn't.
- [35:29]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Know which, which are where mine are. Sat in almost the same position in my bedroom. Yeah.
- [35:33]
Matt Lewis
And I always remember her, you know, saying, I don't know what will happen to those when I'm gone. Well, I've got them now and they sit on a chair in, in our house, you know, because they are, they are very, very personal those things, aren't they? And it's hard, it will be hard in centuries time for people to recreate that connection, which is obviously what you're trying to do for people almost 1500 years ago. You're trying to recreate those connections that they may or may not have had to day to day items. And I guess that what you've just described there highlights just how difficult that is to do, but how interesting, how human and what a connection we could make if we could get there.
- [36:09]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Absolutely. And it's that very personal choice that permeates everything that people do now and everything that people do in the past that makes archaeology so fascinating. Because there's always gonna be something that we can't quite understand. And I always wonder, is this just where somebody's done something that isn't the norm, that it meant something to them, but not necessarily other people. And I find that particular area absolutely fascinating. Of course we can't identify when those things happen, but that knowledge that, you know, human nature is human nature and people do things for sentimental reasons or personal reasons, I doubt that has changed. And it's a really humanizing aspect of that funerary rituals that we will never get back. But do we need to, do we need to have those really tight knit stories that explains absolutely everything or is the air of mystery actually part of the fascination? Certainly is for me.
- [37:02]
Matt Lewis
Well, I mean that sounds like a perfect way to end. I can't think of anything I could possibly add to that. So thank you so much for joining us, Jo. It's been fascinating to try and get our heads around what you might find amidst grave goods and what they may or may not mean, and how much we know and how much we don't know. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much.
- [37:19]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Thank you very much for inviting me.
- [37:24]
Matt Lewis
Thank you, Joe, for helping us to get a better understanding of what grave goods can mean and some of the problems of trying to interpret them. Hopefully you're feeling equipped now to investigate a sword that recently made the news. It's a beautiful example from an early date, making it hugely significant to the study of the migration period. I'm going to turn now to Professor Duncan Sayer of the University of Central Lancashire. Duncan has been working with the finds from a location that's being used as a study site for his students and which has thrown up astonishing early Anglo Saxon finds alongside the sword. So welcome to God, Medieval Duncan, it's fantastic to have you with us to find out more about this.
- [38:08]
Professor Joe Buckbury
Thank you very much, Matt, for the invitation. It's a lovely opportunity to talk about something that I absolutely love.
- [38:13]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, well, I think our audience are going to absolutely love this too, because I find it absolutely fascinating. So let's get into it. You've been working on finds from an archaeological dig for a little while now. What has been uncovered there? What have you been able to discover about the cemetery, its dates, its context and what kind of things might have been coming out of the ground there? Lovely.
- [38:36]
Professor Joe Buckbury
So what we've got is an early Anglo Saxon cemetery, or early medical cemetery in Kent. It's south of Canterbury. It hasn't been touched, which is beautiful in terms of agriculture. So the field hasn't been ploughed in any way, it's been left as pasture. So preservation is absolutely beautiful. And over the last two years, Andrew Richardson and I have opened up a number of trenches in the field to try and identify the nature of the site, its preservation and its extent. And so far we've got 12 really nicely preserved burials with just loads and loads of grave goods and the dates for those. At the moment, we're looking at 5th to probably early 7th century.
- [39:17]
Matt Lewis
So we're talking really early in the arrival of the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, in the aftermath of Rome evacuating Britain. We're still fairly early in that period.
- [39:28]
Professor Joe Buckbury
It's very much so. And that's one of the things, I think, that's really important about the site, is that quite a lot of Kentish sites tend to be slightly later in the early medieval period, say 6th and 7th century, whereas this One, we've got evidence of really early burials, so we've got 5th century burials. And that really does speak to that conversation you said about migration after the end of Roman administration. Whether I would use the terms Anglo, Saxons and Jutes to describe those people is a conversation to have, really, because those are terms that are attributed by Bede, really. I'm not sure that the people who were burying their dead in that space and living in that landscape were actually calling themselves those things. I think also what we're looking at, what we can see from the artifacts that we've found, is a broad connection with continental northern Europe and that it does look like it follows the sort of narrative you're describing in that we've got artefacts that are from northern Europe and then we've got artifacts that are from Merovingian France. There is a transformation, a sort of Scandinavian influence and a Frankish influence on the cemetery. And that's part of this story, isn't it? It's that changing political narrative in the Kentish landscape, where that focus, that connection to post Roman Europe sort of changes over time. How dramatic it is is part of what we want to reveal in the excavation of this site and really part of the story that these artifacts and hopefully DNA studies can reveal. And we've got lots of genetics on other sites that are contemporary and not far away from the cemetery that can help to reveal that sort of narrative.
- [41:13]
Matt Lewis
It's striking how often these sites reveal such a strong connection to continental Europe. When we tend to think of England and the British Isles being completely separate, particularly after Rome has gone and it almost is isolated, but it never ever is, is it? There is always this evidence of a strong conn, all sorts of parts of Europe with people coming there, but also trade links that spread much, much further than just northern Europe.
- [41:38]
Professor Joe Buckbury
Oh, absolutely. And if you think, I mean, so you talk about Kent, you've got all those Roman road network that still exists across the landscape. You've got a sort of prehistoric trackway system that the early Anglo Saxons, early medieval people revisit. Largely, a lot of settlements are built on the back of prehistoric track roads rather than Roman roads, which is really interesting, sort of changing part of that narrative, but really, especially when you're looking at the east coast, it's easier to get to France and potentially easier to get to Norway and Jutland and Denmark and all those places than it is to get to East Yorkshire or Cambridge or Dorset, because those over land routes, whereas the boat is quicker, easier if you've got them. So those International connections that we would call them international now are absolutely key to these narratives. And you can see that, that across the whole period really you think about all of the, the international objects in places like Sutton who, where you've got connections all across, right the way across to the Black Sea and North Africa and that sort of stuff, you know. And what's interesting, one of the reasons why I wanted to, to do an excavation in Kent is because as part of this genetic study that we've done, I sampled three sites in Kent and one of those as part of a sort of elite landscape really up down, identified a 12 year old girl who has 33% of her genetics. So a great granddad and sat Y chromosome genetics or the sort of male ancestry rather than Y chromosome in her case she comes from West Africa and that's astonishing because in this instance she's probably middle seventh century. So there's no way that great grandparents could be from the end of the Roman administration. That's a completely independent connection and it's a new connection that's developed probably as a result of what's going on in the continent. So the sort of reconquest of North Africa by Byzantium, opening up the trade routes across the Sahara into, into West Africa. And what's lovely about that is finding evidence of that in eastern England in the seventh century. It really shows, I think, how far the influence extends across the whole of the world really as it existed at the time. And we see some of that sort of stuff in this cemetery. We haven't got connections that go quite as far as that in terms of artifacts, but we've got material culture that connects us really beautifully with the continent. So we've got this lovely 5th century grave that we excavated last year. A woman buried very deep in what's a massive for her because she's quite short is a huge chamber I think really rather than the grave. It's sort of squared off, loads of room around the body. And in that grave we've got wrist clasps for example. These are lovely things, two little round circles on each pair which have got gilt or wrap on them and they, they sort of clip together and they're supposed to be to, to hold off, to hold your sleeves together probably when working on an upright loom or something like that. These ones are very decorative, so perhaps they're not quite as practical. They're what we call a sort of a type A and we don't have very many examples of those in the UK at all. In this particular example There are no parallels in Britain.
- [45:02]
Matt Lewis
Wow. What do we mean by Type A? Sorry, why are we describing it as Type A? What does that mean?
- [45:06]
Professor Joe Buckbury
So Type A is generally quite early and they're very continental in their styles. Bees, which are the most common, are basically flat sheets which have a hook and a hole and connect through. And quite a lot of those types are insular, so they're only made in the uk. They are of a style. Wrist clasps, as an idea, come from Scandinavia and they're sort of reinvented as insular objects in the early medieval period. And the vast majority of the ones that you find are in sort of Norfolk and in Lincolnshire and in East Yorkshire, whereas the Kentish ones, or in this case the Scandinavian influence on these ones, tend to be quite early and quite decorative. So these ones, they're Type A's, which suggests they're continental rather than British. But actually, these are completely unique objects. There are no parallels in the uk. There are probably parallels in Scandinavia, perhaps Norway, somewhere like that. And that's lovely. That's really nice because of the date of this burial, because those objects help to identify that date. She's also got this really lovely blue bead, which is sort of Milfroy, so it's dark blue, and it's got this sort of yellow circular pattern that runs away through it as a result of this manufacturer. There are no parallels for that in the UK either. So it looks like at least the artifacts are coming from northern Scandinavia. Also in her grave we've got a bucket. So it's a wooden bucket. We've got. The wood is there, made of little wooden staffs. So actually you can hold it in your hand. It's very small, and then it's bound in copper alloy bronze. It's quite plain, this one. Sometimes they're quite decorative, but this is small and quite plain nonetheless. It's just. It's absolutely beautiful. But that suggests really a sort of local manufacturer. You find a few of those sorts of things in Kent, a handful in Merovingian France, and furnished graves from the same sort of period. But it's very much speaking of a local manufacturer. So we've got things that are local and things that are coming from far away. And until we do genetics or isotope analysis, we can never be certain if she's coming from far away or not. But the story in that grave is wonderful. It's got these tiny little cruciform brooches up on her sort of shoulders, chest and shoulder area, which also speak of a very early date. And it also speak of a sort of a connection to the continent as well. And that is also. It's just. It's just a lovely part of the story, really. Alongside that, we've got burials from the sort of 6th century that have buckles that you might describe more Frankish in their style. They tend to have a more decorative shape to them. One of them in particular is an iron belt buckle, which has got loads and loads of little strips in it to create this sort of pattern in the back plate. And that's beautiful. And it's something you see in France quite a lot in northern France. So there is evidence of migration and there is evidence of migration continuing from the 5th, 6th, 7th into the 8th century, if not beyond. And that's the sort of thing that I'm hoping we can do with this new excavation, is start to put together stories that are much more complicated than, here's a burial, here's a bunch of artifacts. Aren't the artifacts beautiful? Which is really what a lot of antiquarian type of research was doing. Very much focused on artifacts, illustration of artifacts, where they're coming from. We've got a really, really complicated narrative taking place here. So we've got this sort of Scandinavian earlier artifacts, and we've got these artifacts that are connecting to. To France, to Mervey and Jew France.
- [48:45]
Matt Lewis
That's really exciting, though. And as you say, if we can get close to those human stories behind those goods, they can potentially tell us a great deal about a period of history that we know so little about.
- [48:55]
Professor Joe Buckbury
What we're doing, really, is starting to tell local stories in a level of detail that we've never been able to do before, and linking those up to national political transformations. And the artifacts here, really critical to that. So one of the ones that we've been working on is the sword. Swords themselves are more common in Kent and in northern France than they are in the rest of the uk, but they are found across the uk. They tend to point towards elite individuals, elite male individuals. And the burial that was excavated that the sword came from is a male burial.
- [49:30]
Matt Lewis
And so this sword has got a little bit of news coverage recently. People may have seen it online, perhaps, but for those who haven't had a chance to. To. To see a picture of this sword, can you just describe to us exactly what it was that was found? What size is it? What condition is it in?
- [49:45]
Professor Joe Buckbury
So the sword is. This. Is this wonderful object. I guess modern swords are about 80cm or so. It's around that sort of size, maybe a bit smaller. It's got an iron blade. And what's lovely about early Anglo Saxon swords is that they are pattern weld. So they have this pattern, I guess we call it Damascus steel these days. We should probably refer to it as pattern weld. But you get this sort of lovely patination, a mixture of steel and iron throughout the blade. When it's polished up will just look amazing. So it's got the chevron pattern all the way down it.
- [50:19]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it makes a really, really nice pattern on the surface, doesn't it? So I watch Forged in Fire a fair bit on tv, so I know all about Damascus steel.
- [50:25]
Professor Joe Buckbury
So yeah, wonderful. The blade is housed within a scabbard and they have various fittings of a mouth and they have a foot. Scab is often made of wood. This one we've got the wood preserved, which is, which is wonderful. And then the wood has within it a sort of leather and fur and that's pretty much consistent with this type. You know, you're not taking this sword out fast. It's not a Japanese sword where you have to pull it very fast. It's something you wear as a display item. It's also helping to keep it polished. I mean these things are going to write pretty quickly if they look after them. The scabbard is sort of helping to maintain it. It's also helping to display it. Okay. Which is really fun. And then you have a guard. This is any small guard and it's usually made of organic materials like wood or bone. In this case it's probably wood because we haven't got much there and that's not really there. Again in modern terms you'd use it to parry so you'd have a big guard that protects your hand. This is just a small thing really there to stop you from pushing your hand over the blade and hurting yourself rather than to actually parry with it. You've got a shield to do that job. It's small, it's decorative, but it serves a practical purpose. And then you have a little handle which is in this case it's about the size of my hand. So it's one handed weapon. You couldn't use it for much more than that. And then you've got the pommel end and really that's the bit you can see on a sword. So that's the bit that's at the top. If you're wearing it on your waist, that's the bit where your hand sits on. And we've got these lovely examples of swords where you can see how that's worn as people were handling it, you know, as it's worn, rather than holding it, they often decorative. And what's fun, particularly about this one, is that it's made of precious metals. So we've got silver and gilt, and we've got this sort of pattern all the way across it that is unique. They're always unique to those, to those weapons. So you could spot it a mile off, you could say, you know, the other side of a room, you could spot it and go, I know that sword. I know the history of that sword because it's. It stands out from all of the others in that room or in the wider sort of community.
- [52:39]
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- [53:38]
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- [54:23]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, and I guess so that's the bit that people can see that's on display so you have something that's identifiable. So as you say, people from across the room could go, I know who that guy is. And I know what he represents. I know his. His level of power and authority in this room based on the bit of his sword that I can see.
- [54:37]
Professor Joe Buckbury
I know the history of the sword and how he got his power. Because that sword is the one that's showing that. Absolutely, yeah. And of course, this one has a ring on it as well. So it's a little. It's a ring sword. And on just one side of the pommel, there's a little loop made of copper alloy, and there's a sort of a big ring that's mobile. It moves around that. And that, again, is decorative. Swords are interesting. And this one, actually looking at where it probably is in. Within the grave, it's sort of within the line of the body. And there's this myth, isn't there, that swords are at hips. It actually creeps into the literature in various different ways. Vast majority of early Anglo Saxon swords are actually placed with the pommel at the shoulder or head and either just outside the body or just in it, sometimes even with the individual hugging it. So this sword is sort of displayed at the same point as the person's identity, their face and their shoulders. You know, how you identify a person is what they look like, isn't it? The sword is there next to them. So it's sort of taking as much of a role within the visual representation of the grave as the person is, which is really fun. So it looks like this individual's also probably hugging or at least very closely associated with the sword, which is lovely.
- [55:47]
Matt Lewis
And speaks to the importance, I guess, of the sword politically, in its life, when it was alive, when it was above ground.
- [55:54]
Professor Joe Buckbury
Yeah. Why do you put artifacts in graves? Because you're showing off, because you're displaying them. And this is very much about that. It's very much about that visual display. The importance of the person is really, really is critical here, but it's actually also the importance of the people who are showing off this stuff. They're the ones who are inviting everybody to come, and they're the ones showing, look how important we are because we're associated with this guy. He is also found with one of these gold bract hits. And that's really interesting because they're usually discovered in female graves. So whether this bractit is his, or whether it's a gift to him, placed in the grave by a woman, or as a way to make that connection to a significant woman is part of that narrative. How do these things get into those graves? What the sword is telling us that it's an absolutely fantastic object because it's beautifully preserved. I've never seen a really well preserved sword like this. And it, you know, to the point where we've got the wood and the leather of the scabbards preserved onto the blaze. And so we've got. Dana Goodman Brown, who's the conservator, has been able to look at it under a microscope and identify that there's beaver fur inside the scabbard. Scabbards are often fur lined in this way. Beaver fur is only associated with the most elite sorts that have been identified. So going back to Sutton Hoo, again, that's a great example where there's this beaver fur lining to the weapon. So that's pointing to an elite object in its own right. But also the pommel of the sword is silver and gilt, so we've got precious metals. It's extremely decorative with sort of chip carved pattern. So it's making that direct connection to elite, even royal landscape which fits into the location of the cemetery. It fits into this sort of broader pattern of activity that's taking place there. So we're pretty convinced that we're within. We're probably part of a series of cemeteries that have this sort of royal association. Certainly significant overlordship in Kent in this sort of sixth century, critical time, sixth century. So that's really lovely. The sword isn't. I mean it's a wonderful object, it's absolutely beautiful. But it tells the story that goes way beyond just the artifact in the ground. It tells us about politics, it tells us about that person.
- [58:10]
Matt Lewis
Could you tell us a little bit.
- [58:12]
Professor Joe Buckbury
What is a bracteat?
- [58:13]
Matt Lewis
For anybody who doesn't know, including me.
- [58:15]
Professor Joe Buckbury
So bracter is a usually a precious metal, gold, often pendant. In this case it's a little round pendant, probably to use old terms, inch and a half, two inches in diameter. They have a little loop on one end to hang it on the top end and then they have a sort of decorative stamp on it. And those things are either animal style decoration. In this case it's either a dragon or probably really a serpent. You're going around in a little sort of animal pattern with a face on it, eating a tail. I guess this is something you see in a lot of early medieval art, or sometimes they have sort of faces on them facing in different directions. Gold bractets are associated with lordship in very real terms. We see them in Kent, we see them a little bit in northern Norfolk. So sort of associated with coastal landscapes, associated with lordship. And we See them in Norway and a little bit of Holland and Denmark around that sort of area as well. Very much associated with elite female burials. Often loads of other artifacts in there as well. Really a symbol of wealth, but also with those artistic styles, that sort of transformation from animal art to face art. Also copying what's going on in the east as well, being influenced by Byzantium and further afield as they're changing in the way that they're sort of choosing to represent the iconography on them. So they're really, really important objects.
- [59:47]
Matt Lewis
So they give us a little bit of a sign of people sort of reaching for exotic fashion that they can follow that, you know, they can be the first one at home to have something that looks like a Byzantine piece of jewelry, maybe, perhaps.
- [60:00]
Professor Joe Buckbury
And of course, these early ones are also, you know, they may be talking more about the connections with northern Europe than they are that sort of broader landscape. But certainly it's. When you find them in England, they're associated first off with very wealthy burials, usually female burials. This one is really interesting that it's within this male sword burial, but also there is a sort of. You're right. This exotic element, this sort of, you know, this connection with something bigger than just the little community that lives in that space. And it talks with those broader elite identities and landscapes.
- [60:31]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And fascinating during that period, I guess, that you build those. That illusion or that ability to display power by talking about your connections as far away as possible, that we're connected to the whole of the rest of the continent, rather than thinking, this is my tiny little patch and I'm in charge of it.
- [60:48]
Professor Joe Buckbury
I think that's a really important part of how you're saying, I have the right to be this person.
- [60:52]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. It must be tantalizing to wonder whether you're ever going to find out who he is. I mean, there's often some suggestion about who was buried at Sutton who. Do you think there ever might be a time where you can get close to who this person might be?
- [61:06]
Professor Joe Buckbury
We can't get to names because we don't have historical sources, but we can use this combination of artifacts and combination of objects. Well, artifacts and scientific investigation to try and put as much of the picture together as possible. We know he's important. It has to be important. Why would you bury them with this most fabulous weapon? As I said, this is an elite weapon. This is something that he wore to say, look at me. I'm amazing. And we know from dories like Beowulf that swords actually probably the thing that Identifies you as important rather than you identifying the sword is important by wearing it, you know, so that Wiglaf sword In Beowulf has 10 lines, I think, about the history of it, and two lines dedicated to Wiglaf. That's it. So the sword is more important. You know, that's. That's the thing that people are focusing on. This is generations, you know, it's not his sword. It was his. Probably his dad's sword and possibly his granddad's sword. And they add bits to it and they change it around and. And for some reason, that community at that point decided that what they were going to do is put that sword in the ground with him. Then it's out of circulation. Nobody else is going to use this.
- [62:15]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I was gonna say that's the interesting part of that story. So the fact that it's hereditary is really interesting in that the sword would symbolize the position and the power rather than him, which then makes it an interesting decision, like you say, to put it in the grave with this person. What kind of a line is being drawn? Was he so significant that the sword ought to go with him? Was he the end of a line? Did something change and that sword was no longer important, though? That's so interesting.
- [62:40]
Professor Joe Buckbury
It is interesting, isn't it? It's brilliant. Yeah. Maybe it got to the point where you could no longer really take the sword away from him. It's part of who he is and part of who the sword is. So it's of the end of the story. Viking swords, when they're talking about those in the Viking sagas. Yeah. Sometimes it's also about not wanting to take up the legacy of your father. If you take up the sword, you also have to take up the sort of feuds as well and pursue those. And maybe they were drawing a line saying, actually, you know what? He was impressed. Important. This community is important. Look at this object we've got displaying it at burial. And the other thing that Dana found when she looked at the sword and the preservation of the scabbard is within that organic material, a tiny, tiny little snail. Shells of these sort of carnivorous snails. They were. They would come into it when it was displayed, when it was open, and it must have been open for some time. And that's really, really interesting that we can see that they didn't dig a grave, put a body in it, stick the soil on top of it, and then go and have a party. This was open probably days, if not weeks, probably to allow people to travel from all over the landscape and further afield, even potentially coming over from somewhere like France, having got notification, this important person is dead, to attend a funeral. So the sword in this case is a really important symbol of that, a way of displaying all of that in that one place just really is something who one is, because we don't have a ship, which is a real shame. But yeah, the sword. What connects us to that sort of royal landscape 100 years or so before the Sutton Hoo burial. Because we're talking really here about the sort of early 6th century, middle 6th century, around that sort of time.
- [64:15]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, incredible. Just stretching those stories that we thought we knew even further back into history is incredible. And yeah, just to think about, as you say, all of those people being summoned to this guy's funeral, everyone being aware just how important he must have been for some kind of local lord in Kent to attract that kind of international attention. Perhaps at his death, it makes you wonder who he was, the amount of grave goods that you're finding. We're talking about pagan burials here. So I guess it tells us something about the religion and the culture in the fifth and sixth centuries, in the immediate aftermath of Rome leaving too.
- [64:54]
Professor Joe Buckbury
It does, absolutely. I mean, whether we can really ever say pagan or Christian is open conversation. Even in the Middle Ages, Christian barriers are buried with artifacts. So the presence or absence of artifacts doesn't symbolize or doesn't signify whether someone is Christian or pagan. And of course, Sutton, who's a great example of that because of that Christianity element within there too, this guy is alive at a time which we often describe as a pagan period. If you think really the end of the Roman administration. What's interesting about the genetics is 75% of the DNA is continental Northern Europe, but 25% of it isn't. So there is still a significant Western British Irish is the way we term it in the genetics. And I hesitate to use the word indigenous, but certainly a DNA that's coming from prehistoric Britain is present in these Anglo Saxon cemeteries, even the ones in East Kemp. So Roman Britain's Christian. How much influence does that still have on these people and the way that they see things? And you can see really the influence of Christianity in those stories that they're telling. Think of Woden. You know, he's. Well, that's certainly where you go into Odin. He hangs on a tree. That's how he begins his knowledge. That's not that dissimilar to the crucifixion of Christ, who. Who is resurrected after he is crucified. Isn't he? But the rood, which is the church, the early church. Just the way that you separate the sort of sacred zones from the lay people zones comes from the term hanging. So whether in early Anglo Saxon Britain, they were really identifying the difference between crucifixion and hanging, or making those connections, it is all sort of mixed up a little bit. And I think it is certainly the case that paganism in this period, if you want to call it that, is very influenced by the remains of Roman Christianity. And with this sort of Frankish connections as well, you can see that there is probably a Christian influence, even as in the 6th century. And when we get into our later 6th century burials, we've got two burials which are both next to each other in separate graves, and they are within quite a substantial penn. Annular ring ditch. So I call it penn annual because it's got a causeway to allow you into it. The ditch would have gone around the barrow. Quite a significant one. It's not as big as a Bronze Age barrow, but it certainly takes a lot of construction. So it's a very prominent thing that you'd have seen in a mound of chalk and soil that you'd have seen in the landscape. It may have even been clear of soil. So it's really shining white. Those burials have no artifacts in. Now, I've already said we need to be careful about artifacts and Christianity, but that tends to indicate a slightly later date. So late 6th century, early 7th century, which puts them contemporary to the establishment of the first church at Canterbury. So is the building of barrow monuments. And it's a sort of reaction to a more formalized introduction of a new Latinized Northern European Christianity, sort of Italian, French Christianity that's starting to come into Britain. The people are hanging on to these old cemeteries. They're still using the places where their ancestors are buried. They're sort of making these prominent connections. Or are these people influenced by that very close association to the new church and the elite landscape that this is part of. There is another part of the story. It's not just about migration and political landscapes. It's also about this sort of the waxing and waning, the transformation of religious connections as well, which are part of elite landscapes.
- [68:26]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And I think it's another fascinating part of the story, isn't it, that everything here, from the genetics of the individuals, the grave goods that you're finding, the religious significance, the political significance, it all speaks to the world that is more interwoven than we probably would generally think it to be, that there Is this ebb and flow of all sorts of things going on, of movement of people, movement of ideas, of religion? Are people exploring Christianity but hedging their bets still a little bit with the old ways? You know, is Christianity finding a way to wheedle itself in by working with the old ways? You know, that the early church was very, very good at adopting pagan festivals and things like that as a way to ease its acceptance. Are we seeing that happening with the grave goods there that Christianity is gradually working its way in and slowly pushing aside some of those old ways, but still allowing people to engage them? Actually, I'm fascinated by the stories coming out of it, you know, much. My mind is just whirling with all of these connections and it just feels like a world that is so much more interwoven than we generally think it is.
- [69:33]
Professor Joe Buckbury
I think that's really important. Yeah, we, we used to refer to it as the Dark Ages, didn't we? We don't generally do that anymore. I think that that name is still around in popular culture. But the reason we don't anymore is because it's a very derogatory term. It tends to think of, you know, we had Rome, we had lots of texts. Well, not so many from, from Britain. We had this sort of civilization, if you like. And the implication of the Dark Age is that civilization is gone, that people are living in where we go back to sort of early 20th century interpretations. They're living in holes in the ground. They're living in these sunken featured buildings, grub huts, I think, as they were again, derogatory called. Because Rome is gone and the civilization is gone and the light has gone from the landscape. Okay, but that isn't true. They've got these great big wooden halls. They're making these absolutely beautiful artifacts. These artifacts that show these connections. They're traveling all around the world that they know of. They're people moving around. There's these, you know, they're establishing new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things. And that's what, what's, what's really cool. We don't call it the Dark Age anymore because it's not dark. It's just that we didn't understand it. But now I think archaeology is able to do so in a way that we've really not been able to before. And that's this combination of really good excavation methods, being able to choose sites, being able to compare with excellent catalogues of material from all over Britain and Europe, but also scientific techniques that we can apply both artifacts and to human Remains as well, which are really giving us a picture that we've never had before.
- [71:05]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, incredible. I mean, here's a question that you can't possibly hope to answer. So I'm just being mean by asking, asking it. What would you love to get to the end of this project and have discovered or understood that you didn't go into it knowing?
- [71:19]
Professor Joe Buckbury
That's a very good question. For me, it's putting this whole thing together. So it's all about context. The artifacts are wonderful, but on their own, they're pretty artifacts. What I want to know is the context of everything. So I want to take the time to work on this. I want this to be a learning experience. I want my students to pick up on this, to understand the methods we use, to understand the importance of it, to start new, to describe and talk about the cemetery in that way. But what I want to know is how those artifacts and those people interconnected in every way. So I want to know who's related to who, and I want to be able to see those relationships within the site continuing or changing or cutting off at the same time as these artifacts styles change. That sort of Northern continent, Scandinavian connection versus the Merovingian connection versus the sort of rise of insular objects and the fall off of objects. What would be really, really fun is if the families continue despite that change or sort of. You can see probably what we've got in the genetics is a little bit more French, Iron Age type genetics coming in, especially in that sort of Eastern Sea zone. And we've got that influence from Scandinavia, and we've got that influence from the indigenous communities or Western, British, Irish communities. So maybe what we'll be able to see then is how all of that is playing out in the human biology as well as it's playing out in the artifacts. And we can use that detail to start really coming down into very fine chronologies looking at generations within the site. So how is your relationship to your parents and how is your marriage and your children changing? And how are people representing themselves, and how is the broader political landscape changing as well? So this is a really, really complicated story, but that's the one that I want to see. And that's why I want to see the whole cemetery excavated. Because it's only when we get complete sites that we can start to get that level of detail.
- [73:25]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, and I guess that's something, you know, we can all relate to. We don't wear the same clothes as our grandparents did. So things change and things evolve. And I guess to be able to see that playing out 1500 years ago, just as it does today would be absolutely incredible. Duncan, this has been so exciting. I hope you continue to find exciting things at this site, and I hope you'll come back and tell us a bit more about it when you uncover some more exciting stuff from there too.
- [73:51]
Professor Joe Buckbury
Very happy to Brilliant.
- [73:52]
Matt Lewis
Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been brilliant to talk to you.
- [73:54]
Professor Joe Buckbury
And thank you very much for talking to me. It's been wonderful.
- [73:56]
Matt Lewis
Thank you. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm fascinated by the ways in which the work of Joe Duncan and others is getting us closer to a period of history that's been considered lost for so long. It's poignant, too, that this brings us closer to the people who lived their lives a millennium and a half ago. They fascinate me in part because they often don't seem all that different to you and I. You can find Jo Buckbury's previous appearances on Gone Medieval in our back catalogue. She's always a pleasure to speak to, so if you haven't heard them, I recommend them to you. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to Also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Until all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval, you can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free. Sign up@historyhit.com subscribe go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits.
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