The first aim of this new excavation was to complete the study of the largest of the mounds. It was not known what the original shape of the mound was, whether oval or circular, what its height had been before excavation, whether it was surrounded by a ditch, or what structural or ritual features it might possess. It was also an aim to obtain more information about the site in general by cutting away the grass and bracken and making a fresh and sensitive survey of the surface features. In the process the number of barrows recognizable rose from 11 to 16. It was also an aim to sound the flat ground between and near the barrows to see whether ordinary burials, whether cremation or inhumation, could be located, and to establish the nature of the Neolithic-Bronze Age occupation plentifully attested on the site by stray finds.

The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, with its great store of treasure from the early Kingdom of East Anglia, was discovered and excavated in 1939, between May and 26th August. That is now twenty-five years ago. Eight days after the work's determinedly unhurried close, the country was at war. Jubilee reminiscence of those extraordinary weeks has had no space, till now, to spare for the almost miraculous alliance of fine weather with human enterprise and skill, which gave us from Suffolk this 'finest archaeological discovery ever made in Great Britain, perhaps in Europe' [I]. The roll of fame is nevertheless well known, and was rehearsed last year by Mr Charles Green in his book on the discovery [2]: Mrs Edith Pretty, the landowner, author of the enterprise, and donor of the whole find to the nation; Basil Brown and his chief Guy Maynard of Ipswich Corporation Museum; the fuller muster of talent assembled soon beside them, under Mr C . W. Phillips, for the Office of Works (as the Ministry then was called), among which the names Piggott, Grimes and Crawford stand out especially; and the late Commander Hutchison, R.N., then of the Science Museum, who drew the lines of the 85-foot ship.

I WAS unfortunately not able to be present at the inquest held on 14 August, but I understand that no satisfactory evidence of identity was offered. Indeed the prevalent view now seems to be that the tomb never contained a body—that it was constructed as a cenotaph.

For cenotaphs in the Anglo-Saxon period I do not know of any good evidence. But we can hardly say with certainty that any of the cemeteries previously known were royal—apart from St. Augustine’s, Canterbury. It is not impossible therefore that a cenotaph may have been constructed for a king who lost his life at sea or on some distant expedition, from which his body could not be brought home.

The removal of the chief finds from the Sutton Hoo ship was an exciting and exacting task extending over more than a week. My own participation began when the gold purse and its trappings—as well as some other objects, such as the whetstone—had been found. The dominant feature in my first view of the ship was a great three-foot purple-grey disk: the silver dish (PLATE XVIII), beneath which the lip of at least one other vessel was promise of more treasure to come. Other things there were already exposed—especially the two bronze bowls at the southwest corner of the burial deposit. But the urgent interest was centred on the dish and on the problem of whether it could be lifted entire, or whether steps should be taken by means of drawings and photographs to record its complete character before the hazardous work of lifting it began.

When it was known that 40 gold coins had been found in the purse at Sutton Hoo, great hopes were entertained that they would enable the date of the burial to be fixed accurately. Those hopes have not yet, however, been realized. Under existing conditions little progress is likely to be made; but we may look forward to the day when they are again available for study, and when numismatists themselves are free to consider the problems presented.

The silver plate in the Sutton Hoo treasure is not as uniform in technique and style as the gold ornaments. While the latter can be claimed as the work of a special ‘Sutton Hoo School ’ the silver is a haphazard collection of pieces differing in date and origin, and can only be discussed by taking each item separately.

Until the year 1939 the archaeology of Britain in Anglo-Saxon times has had to concern itself little with ship-burials and to no great extent with rich burials of any kind. If we omit those in the county of Kent and a few important burials at Taplow, Broomfield, and elsewhere, the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon graves in general presents few striking features besides its almost universal poverty.

We have not hitherto considered the East Angles as a showy and conspicuously prosperous folk. In the Settlement Period we find them, as Mr Myres says, 'a federation of several smaller peoples' living in groups that were geographically isolated and to a certain extent independent of each other. Their material wealth would be judged by such a cemetery as Caistor-by-Nonvich, and on the evidence available before the Sutton Hoo discovery we should not have credited them with any unusual skill in the crafts or with the possession of notable riches. But we now know that in the early seventh century the folk inhabiting the coastal area between the Orwell and the Alde were the subjects of a prince whose grave contained one of the most magnificent and costly furnitures that has ever been found in a Teutonic tomb. Hitherto, when we have wanted to show off the richness of Anglo-Saxon England, we have looked to Kent. Now we have learnt that in one limited area of Suffolk, where lies Rendlesham, a vicus regius of the East Anglian ruling dynasty, the maximum brilliance of Kentish archaeology was not only equalled, but surpassed in splendour ; and we realize that the house of Wuffa (the sixth century grandfather of Redwald) thus put to shame the rich royalties of Kent, at the time of, or only shortly after, the reign of Kent's greatest king, Ethelbert.

The largest of the hanging-bowls from Sutton Hoo is distinguished by the abundance and the brilliance of the mosaic glass adorning its mounts, and by the mannered drawing of its delicate Celtic scroll-patterns. The character of the mosaic glass links this bowl very closely with the newly discovered bowl from Scunthorpe, Lincs., and, but less closely, with the bowl from Barlaston, Staffs., and the bowl represented by the Northumberland escutcheons in the British Museum. Only the Scunthorpe bowl, however, bears mosaic of comparable elegance, and it is also much closer to the Sutton Hoo bowl in its ornamental style. This Celtic style has been studied by Mr Leeds' and Franqoise Henry,2 and, therefore, to Sutton Hoo and Scunthorpe we can add as further representatives of the same school of design the wellknown Faversham mount^,^ the escutcheon from Barrington, Cambridge, the enamelled bronze vessel from Needham Market, Suffolk, and the escutcheon from Benniworth, Lincs.

Ost of the gold ornaments represent the very splendid outer harness of a princely apparel, doubtless the sword-belt and baldrick, and also a purse and the straps on which it was slung. From the point of view of sheer weight of gold, the chief find was a huge and heavy buckle, inlaid with niello ; but the harness included twentyeight other pieces, all richly jewelled with garnets and, in some instances, blue and white mosaic glass. We must remember too that the sword has a jewelled gold hilt and two hemi-spherical bosses of gold, jewelled with garnet and blue glass, on the sheath (PLATE IX). There are also a number of minor fragments of gold, including one or two unornamented strap-mounts, two jewelled filigree strips of great delicacy, and a tiny mount of gold foil in the form of an animal. The excavators also found various ornamental fittings of wood or a similar material that were plated with gold.