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The Age of Sutton Hoo : the seventh century in north-western Europe

The Age of Sutton Hoo runs from the fifth to the eighth century AD - the age which separates the fall of the Roman Empire from the emergence of the nation-states that have endured down to the present day. This is a dark and difficult age, where hard evidence is rare, but glittering and richly varied: "myths, king-lists, placenames, sagas, settlements, runic inscriptions, palaces, belt-buckles, post-holes, middens and graves", says the editor, "are all grist to our mill". This volume celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery of that most famous burial of the early middle ages: the great treasure now in the British Museum, unearthed from the centre of a 90-foot-long ship buried in the sand beneath a mound on remote Suffolk heathland at Sutton Hoo. It also marks the end of the major campaign of excavations carried out there over the past decade, which involved the widest possible range of disciplines. The scholars whose work is gathered here, together with Martin Carver's concluding summary of the results of the latest excavations, represent the current state of knowledge about this extraordinary site; that it still has secrets to reveal is shown by the last-minute discovery of a striking burial of a young noble with his horse and grave goods.