page_title: Sutton Hoo
section_title: The burial
hierarchical_section_title: Sutton Hoo / Anglo-Saxon cemetery / Mound 1 / The burial
caption_attribution_description: English: Model of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial 1, England. The placement of the burial chamber is marked white. Deutsch: Modell der Schiffsbestattung 1 von Sutton Hoo, England. Die Position der Grabkammer ist weiß markiert.
context_page_description: Sutton Hoo, at Sutton near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, England, is the site of two early medieval cemeteries, from the 6th to 7th centuries. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since the 1930s. One cemetery had an undisturbed ship burial with a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts of art-historical and archaeological significance; most of these objects are now held by the British Museum in London. The site is in the care of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.
  Historians who specialise in the early middle ages regard Sutton Hoo as important because it illuminates a period that is on the margin between myth, legend, and historical documentation. Use of the site culminated when Rædwald, ruler of the Kingdom of East Anglia, held senior power among the English people and played a dynamic if ambiguous part in the establishment of Christian rulership in England. Scholars believe that Rædwald is most likely the person buried in the ship. Findings at the site have been important in understanding the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia and the early Anglo-Saxon period.
context_section_description: Although practically none of the original timber survived, the form of the ship was perfectly preserved. Stains in the sand had replaced the wood but had preserved many construction details. Nearly all of the iron planking rivets were in their original places. It was possible to survey the original ship, which was found to be 27 metres (89 ft) long, pointed at either end with tall rising stem and stern posts and widening to 4.4 metres (14 ft) in the beam amidships with an inboard depth of 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) over the keel line. From the keel board, the hull was constructed clinker-fashion with nine planks on either side, fastened with rivets. Twenty-six wooden frames strengthened the form. Repairs were visible: this had been a seagoing vessel of excellent craftsmanship, but there was no descending keel. The decking, benches and mast were removed. In the fore and aft sections along the gunwales, there were oar-rests shaped like the Anglo-Saxon letter "thorn", indicating that there may have been positions for forty oarsmen. The central chamber had timber walls at either end and a roof, which was probably pitched.
  The heavy oak vessel had been hauled from the river up the hill and lowered into a prepared trench, so only the tops of the stem and stern posts rose above the land surface. After the addition of the body and the artefacts, an oval mound was constructed, which covered the ship and rose above the horizon at the riverward side of the cemetery. The view to the river is now obscured by Top Hat Wood, but the mound would have been a visible symbol of power to those using the waterway. This appears to have been the final occasion upon which the Sutton Hoo cemetery was used for its original purpose.
  Long afterwards, the roof collapsed violently under the weight of the mound, compressing the ship's contents into a seam of earth.
caption: Model of the ship's structure as it might have appeared, with chamber area outlined
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