page_title: Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery
section_title: The Ship Burial
hierarchical_section_title: Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery / Cemetery features / The Ship Burial
caption_attribution_description: English: Four Anglo-Saxon rivets found at the Snape ship burial and now in Aldeburgh Moot Hall Museum. Dated to circa 550 CE.
context_page_description: The Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery is a place of burial dated to the 6th century CE located on Snape Common, near to the town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, Eastern England. Dating to the early part of the Anglo-Saxon Era of English history, it contains a variety of different forms of burial, with inhumation and cremation burials being found in roughly equal proportions. The site is also known for the inclusion of a high status ship burial. A number of these burials were included within burial mounds.
  The first recorded excavation of the site was conducted by antiquarians in 1827, with a later, more thorough investigation taking place in 1862 under the control of landowner Septimus Davidson. Artefacts from the earliest excavations soon disappeared, although important finds uncovered from the 1862 excavation included a glass claw beaker and the Snape Ring, now housed in The British Museum, London.
  During the 20th century, the heathland that the cemetery was on was given over to farmland, with a road and house being constructed atop the site.
context_section_description: The Snape cemetery is best known for the boat burial that was uncovered there in 1862 by Septimus Davidson's excavation. Our knowledge of its shape and style comes from the accounts produced by Davidson and his excavators, alongside Davidson's plan, the most reliable version of which is a watercolour painting held in the library of the Society of Antiquaries; this was produced "either during or very shortly after the excavation", and was used as the basis for the subsequent engravings of the ship, for which extra, often erroneous details were added. Alongside these early accounts and plans, we also have access to the surviving rivets and other ironwork now housed in Aldeburgh Moot Hall Museum.
  The ship was at least 14 metres long and contained a beam 3 metres in width. Clinker built with riveted construction, the rivets were spaced at intervals of approximately 140 millimetres and according to the watercolour painting, there were nine strakes a side. The rivets are of usual Anglo-Saxon style, being composed of iron and having domed heads and diamond roves. Excavators also uncovered fragments of a metal strip, at least 300 millimetres in length, which was vertically riveted to the outside of the hull. Filmer-Sankey noted that this could be interpreted as a chain plate that held the shrouds of a mast.
  The boat was positioned on an east to west axis. It apparently once contained within it a high status burial, but the grave had already been robbed by the 1863 excavation, meaning that many of the grave goods had probably already been removed. Nevertheless, several grave goods had remained, and were discovered by Davidson and his excavators; these included two iron spearheads, suggesting that the burial might have been male, the gold Snape Ring and a glass claw beaker. Another find from the burial was initially described as a "mass of human hair... wrapped in a cloth of some kind", although later archaeologists reinterpreted this as a form of shaggy cloak akin to those found at Sutton Hoo and Broomfield. Also uncovered were some fragments initially identified as jasper and a single fragment of blue glass. The ship burial was relatively dated using these artefacts, meaning that the burial of the ship was given a "very tentative" terminus post quem of circa 550 CE.
caption: Rivets from the Snape ship on exhibit at Aldeburgh Moot Hall Museum.
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