Sutton Hoo and Syria: The Anglo-Saxons Who Served in the Byzantine Army?

In The English Historical Review, Helen Gittos writes:

Abstract: The Sutton Hoo ship burial is one of the most famous examples of a group of lavishly furnished graves of the late sixth and early seventh centuries in south-east England. The discovery in 2003 of another, at Prittlewell (in Southend, Essex), and its publication in 2019, has brought our knowledge of them into sharper focus. One of the characteristics of these burials is that they tend to contain objects that were made in the eastern Mediterranean which were current, rather than old, when buried, and were of very unusual types. This article argues that they were acquired by men who were recruited into the Byzantine army in 575 to serve on the eastern front against the Sasanians. Those who returned brought back with them metalwork and other items which were current, and distinctive, and not the kinds of things that were part of normal trading networks. This opens up a startlingly new view onto early medieval British history.

The Sutton Hoo ship burial is the most famous example of a group of lavishly furnished Anglo-Saxon graves. The discovery in 2003 of another, at Prittlewell, Southend (Essex), and its publication in 2019, has brought our knowledge of them into sharper focus. Some questions, however, remain. How did the men buried in these graves acquire so much wealth? And why were they buried with so many objects from the eastern Mediterranean? The conventional view is that they probably acquired the gold from their Merovingian neighbours, and that the imported goods came as gifts or through trade. Here I argue for a different explanation which opens up a startlingly new view of early Anglo-Saxon history.

The graves currently known as princely burials share a number of characteristics. The men were buried fully dressed and provided with large numbers of grave goods, including weaponry. Their burials were carefully orchestrated and included exotic objects imported across great distances. The graves themselves were monumental, in that they were designed to be an enduring feature in the landscape; they were experimental, in that each one took a different form; and they were often placed apart from more normal cemeteries, in prominent locations on the boundaries of kingdoms. These burials were a short-lived phenomenon of the period from c.580 to 635. The Prittlewell chamber grave, created c.580–605, is one of the best preserved.

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