page_title: Sutton Hoo
section_title: Upper body area: purse, shoulder-clasps and great buckle
hierarchical_section_title: Sutton Hoo / The objects in the burial chamber / Upper body area: purse, shoulder-clasps and great buckle
caption_attribution_description: English: Items from the Sutton Hoo ship burial in the British Museum
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: Together with the sword harness and scabbard mounts, the gold and garnet objects found in the upper body space, which form a co-ordinated ensemble, are among the true wonders of Sutton Hoo. Their artistic and technical quality is quite exceptional.
  The "great" gold buckle is made in three parts. The plate is a long ovoid of a meandering but symmetrical outline with densely interwoven and interpenetrating ribbon animals rendered in chip-carving on the front. The gold surfaces are punched to receive niello detail. The plate is hollow and has a hinged back, forming a secret chamber, possibly for a relic. Both the tongue-plate and hoop are solid, ornamented, and expertly engineered.
  Each shoulder-clasp consists of two matching curved halves, hinged upon a long removable chained pin. The surfaces display panels of interlocking stepped garnets and chequer millefiori insets, surrounded by interlaced ornament of Germanic Style II ribbon animals. The half-round clasp ends contain garnet-work of interlocking wild boars with filigree surrounds. On the underside of the mounts are lugs for attachment to a stiff leather cuirass. The function of the clasps is to hold together the two halves of such armour so that it can fit the torso closely in the Roman manner. The cuirass itself, possibly worn in the grave, did not survive. No other Anglo-Saxon cuirass clasps are known.
  The ornamental purse-lid, covering a lost leather pouch, hung from the waist-belt. The lid consists of a kidney-shaped cellwork frame enclosing a sheet of horn, on which were mounted pairs of exquisite garnet cellwork plaques depicting birds, wolves devouring men (or the ancient motif of the Master of Animals), geometric motifs and a double panel showing animals with interlaced extremities. The maker derived these images from the ornament of the Swedish-style helmets and shield-mounts. In his work they are transferred into the cellwork medium with dazzling technical and artistic virtuosity.
  These are the work of a master-goldsmith who had access to an East Anglian armoury containing the objects used as pattern sources. As an ensemble they enabled the patron to appear imperial.
  The purse contained thirty-seven gold shillings or tremisses, each originating from a different Frankish mint. They were deliberately collected. There were also three blank coins and two small ingots. This has prompted various explanations: possibly like the Roman obolus they may have been left to pay the forty ghostly oarsmen in the afterworld, or were a funeral tribute, or an expression of allegiance. They provide the primary evidence for the date of the burial, which was debatably in the third decade of the 7th century.
caption: Purse-lid
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