Everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history, a lot of people watching the dig on Netflix. Good luck to them. I don't mind people going over to their competitor every so often. Netflix doing a decent job. It's good to see them embracing some good historical topics. But let's be honest, the hero of the dig is not the attractive people that hung out in a field in Suffolk as the clouds gathered before the Second World War. No, here the dig is the extraordinary material culture, the archaeology which was found during that excavation.

And I'm talking all about that today on the podcast. If you worked to dig, come here for your real info. Sue Breuning is an archaeologist who specializes in early medieval material culture, particularly Saud's. She loves a sword. She's the curator of the early medieval Europe collection at the British Museum. That's where most of the objects recovered from the Sutton Who excavation are currently housed. I've been to see them heavenly. It seems so natural at the time, walking in, looking at glass boxes with beautiful things inside.

Now that feels like some halcyon dream of the past. But we may see those days again. Let's hope so. What about the excavation? Who might have been buried at the heart of it and what it tells us about early medieval England? Pretty exciting stuff. If you want to watch documentaries about the departure of the Romans, the arrival of Europeans, the Saxons and others at the beginning of the medieval period. All you gotta do is get a history dot TV.

It's like a History Channel. There's no aliens on it, so it's pretty good. And you go there and you can watch all sorts of wonderful documentaries. So please head over there and do that. But in the meantime, it is excellent.

Sue Breuning, enjoy. Sue, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Well, you know, everyone's talking about the dig, but it strikes me that no one's talking about what actually matters about the deed. And that is the dig, what it was at the bottom of that wonderful hole that they were all having their human dramas around.

Well, at the bottom of the hole was an early seventh century grave. But to describe it as a grave is to sell it a little bit short, really, because what we're talking about here is the most spectacular intact burial to survive from early medieval Europe so far. So the burial focused on a 27 metre long ship. And inside the middle of the ship was a burial chamber. And inside the burial chamber was just an array of the most astonishing artifacts, the likes of which had never really been seen before.

So we're talking about gold dress accessories that had been inlaid with shimmering garments that have probably come from India or Sri Lanka. Also find feasting equipment. So a pair of drinking horns, some beautiful bottles and flasks that have been trimmed with silver gilt mounts. There's a musical instruments, a liar with strings that have probably been used to sing songs in the Great Hall, other vessels from the Great Hall as well. So a series of quite enormous cauldrons and buckets and tubs.

There were some silver vessels. Exotic ones are to come all the way from the eastern Mediterranean, the Byzantine Empire, and, of course, an array of glittering war gear. So a fine sword with a pattern welded blade that had a golden garnet handle, a coat of mail armor that's still unique from this period. Actually, a great big shield marked with these predatory beasts as decoration.

And then, of course, the iconic helmet, which really I think is the thing that most people think about when they think about something, who it is just one of the most amazing archeological sites in Britain, and particularly because of the period that it's from about which we know so little about a common factor. So can you just give me the geography? Because the River Diebel is quite important, isn't it? It's on the banks of the River Debone, one of the great rivers of the east coast of the southeast.

What's the geography? Tell us about that.

Well, yeah, well, East Anglia is quite a watery place if you've ever been there. There are lots of waterways which kind of break up the land a little bit. But these also provide a means of getting around if you have a watercraft at your disposal. But if we think of East Anglia to as it looks on the map, it's kind of this lump of land that juts out into the North Sea and it's actually quite close to the continent.

It's closer, in fact, to the continent than it is to some parts of inland Britain, for example. So it's quite interconnected with those lands across the North Sea and therefore with access from those sorts of areas to those great rivers of Europe. So places like the Rhine, which were really great highways of their time. So when we realize this, I think it's no surprise that we see so many things from different places represented in the sun who burial this region really was connected with the wider world or at least with routes into the wider world.

Which brings us to the ship. Listeners know that I love ships or at least, well, in this case, evidence of a ship.

Well, the first thing to say is that it was really big, so it was about twenty seven metres long. That's about three London double decker buses end to end and there was space for about 20 oarsman on each side. What's less clear is if this was a riverine craft made for rowing up and down rivers or if it had a sail and was able to sail out on open water. And that's because any evidence of a mast had been removed to install the burial chamber in the middle of the ship.

We can also say that the ship was not made specifically for the burial, and that's because evidence of repairs were found when the ship was excavated. So, for example, there are signs where rivets had been added in order to shore up the planking. And the other thing I should really say is that it's amazing that we know this much at all about the ship because the main part of the ship, the wooden part of the ship, didn't actually survive.

What we see in those amazing excavation photos is actually kind of like a ghost ship. It's like an imprint of the ship in the form of compacted sand where the ship was positioned. But actually those pieces of wood did not survive. The soil there is very acidic. And so organic material like wood and bone just doesn't do very well in that kind of soil. But what did survive were the many iron rivets that held those planks together and they survived also in their original position.

So when we look at those images, we see the imprint of the ship with lots of kind of dots running along its length. And those dots are all of those original iron rivets. So it's really kind of ironic that the one thing that we do not have surviving from the ship burial is the actual ship itself.

But we can still call it a ship burial, can't we? Yes, yes, we definitely can.

And I'm glad to say a hardy band of reconstructing shipwrights is going to put that right, which I'm proud to be playing a tiny, tiny part in. So we've got the geography there. We've got a little bit about the site. Yes. Get into the history. I mean, I know we don't use the term Dark Ages anymore. It's early medieval period, but the 5th and 6th century in what is now, let's say, the. It was a bit dark, wasn't it, like it was not a happy time?

Well, I think it depends on what you mean by dark. It's true that this period is still one of the most challenging to understand. But I think things really are starting to change. There's been lots of research over the last decade or so. Lots of experts have really made some inroads into understanding this period and also crucially in how to study this period. You know, it's a time before we have really good, dense written records. We're relying a lot on archaeology and other methods really to try to get a handle on this.

But things like different scientific methods, for example, are starting to help us create a richer picture of what was going on. So I don't really think it was as dark, perhaps in terms of knowledge as it once was.

No, I agree. It's not a complete unimpaired, but it wasn't a happy time. Tell me about what we know about the history of the politics society in the former province of Britannia, the Roman Empire. What was happening at that time? Give me two hundred years. Like take me from the departure of the Romans up to Sutton, who.

Oh, gosh. It was quite complicated, but I'll give it my best shot. So at the end of Roman rule in Britain, so this traditionally dated to the early 5th century, we start to see changes in the archaeological record. So we start to see new methods of burying the dead, new types of structures and dwellings appearing and also changes to material culture and dress. The explanation for this and actually the chronology for this has been quite fiercely debated for quite a long time amongst experts from all sorts of disciplines.

Actually, I say the chronology is debated as well, because although we have this date for the end of Roman rule in Britain, the archaeological changes that we're seeing, they kind of have been getting a bit earlier over the course of the last few years or so with the research that's doing, it seems that these changes have a slightly different chronology. It's not just something that happens immediately after the Romans withdraw. So the received wisdom for explaining these kinds of changes is that we're seeing migrations from areas in the North Sea region coming to England across the North Sea, settling in the lowland parts of Britain and eventually forming themselves into kingdoms that themselves, a couple of centuries later coalesce into larger kingdoms and then finally into a unified England.

But I should also say that this is a really complicated question, and there has been a lot of debate over exactly how this is happening, why this is happening, how many people might be involved, if it is some kind of migration, that kind of thing. And as I've mentioned, one of the things that is helping us to try to understand what's going on is scientific analysis, things like ancient DNA isotopes, those sorts of things, examining the burials of people who are being buried in this different way to what was being practiced before.

These sorts of things are helping us to create a more nuanced picture of these changes. So, for example, some of these changes could be explained by the previous received wisdom of large scale migrations of people from somewhere else to somewhere else. And that explains the changes. But they could also happen with fewer people and be combined with cultural influences. So a smaller number of people might come, might settle, and then their way of doing things might influence the other people that are around them, but already living there.

And that could also explain a spread that we say. But at the very extreme, there are even some people that argue that perhaps, you know, the majority of this could have come about by cultural influence. As I mentioned earlier, there are these very strong connections, quite straightforward connections between England and the North Sea region across the North Sea on the continent. So actually might be in a cultural influence, played a larger role itself than we'd previously perhaps appreciated.

And that's because people travel, but also ideas travel. So you don't necessarily need people to come over in order to explain all of the changes that we're seeing in the archaeological record. And I know. Right, that that's really complicated and I find it complicated as well. But we can try to perhaps understand this by looking at an example from our own experience. So the one that I tend to use is that I have a set of Japanese knives.

Right. Really nice Japanese cooking knives. So if I'm buried with the knives, which I would actually quite like to be, and nothing survives of my bodily remains, but only my knife survive, then you can see where we might start to run into issues when we're assuming that maybe I've come from Japan, when obviously all I have is a set of Japanese knives because that's what I like to cook with. So I think that hopefully helps to slightly explain how we might try to understand what we see in the archaeological record at this time.

My own view, I think, is that it's probably a bit of a mixed model, right? So it's involving the movement of people and influences from across the North Sea because we know that both people and influences and objects were moving freely in both ways as well. So I think that we're probably going to see some exciting new perspectives coming out of that work that I mentioned that's being done on exactly these kinds of questions.

Well, tiptoed to that minefield. But we do think that there are the establishment of smaller kingdoms within what we now call England at this time and certain who might be a reflection of a local or a local monarch. Yeah, so there were a number of smaller kingdoms laid out on the territory that's roughly equivalent with England as we understand it today, we think they start to develop in the sixth century and then continue to develop into the seventh century. But what I think we shouldn't really imagine is a map of England with lots of neatly intersecting blocks and each block has a kind of label on it, which is the name of the kingdom.

I think the reality was a bit more messy than that. So we kind of have our big rocks, which are those main kingdoms, and then in between them and all around them, we have a kind of gravel which are these smaller kingdoms, smaller places, smaller areas that are kind of doing their own thing. So I think that more patchwork image is what we have, particularly at that earlier time. And it's only later that we start to see those larger rocks kind of coalesce into bigger blocks.

And then eventually, of course, subject for another podcast, perhaps into a unified kingdom of England. But returning to Sutton, who whether there could be a king buried in the mound in the ship, yes, that's certainly the popular view. And there are a number of pieces of evidence, really that would support that view. So, for example, the quality of the grave goods, we've spoken about the sheer amount of precious metals and wonderful things that are buried there, the quantity of material as well, the multiples of drinking cups, the multiples of spearheads, that sort of thing, just the sheer amounts of things buried there, just completely by far and away above what we would find in a regular burial, even a regular, well furnished burial.

Also, the investment of labor in the ship burial. So the fact that it would have taken a lot of people to drag that enormous ship into position to dig the trench, to put that ship inside, to erect the burial chamber, to select all of the objects for the burial chamber, to lay them all out beautifully and meaningfully, and then, of course, to cover everything over with a huge Earth Mound. I mean, that's a massive undertaking.

That would have been a huge piece of theatre that would have involved a lot of people, would have generated a lot of memories, would have been something to be remembered. So those sorts of things as well, show us that perhaps the person buried here was someone important or was being presented in death as somebody very important roles. He also could be suggested by some of the objects in the burial that are unique. There are one or two things in there that we don't fully understand what they mean, but they seem to be possibly connected with symbols of power.

One of those is the famous wetstone, which is kind of like a long rectangular stone bar that has human faces carved at each end. And this looks a little bit like some sectors that we see in Roman imagery. And it's possible that this could be sort of an echo of that kind of thing. So some kind of symbol of power. I should also mention nearby to Sutton, who is a place called Rendlesham, which is described in Bede's writings as a Vicas Regius.

And that means that this is a place where the king might have a palace, would certainly be spending some time and might do things like dishing out justice and doing the admin and giving rewards and that sort of things ring feasts. So we have a place, a settlement with a royal connection just about five kilometers or so up the road. So again, that could be in Sutton, whose favour for being a royal burial.

So what kingdom do we think might be attached to something like what is the material culture, the objects found at this excavation? What do you think they tell us about the kingdom?

That it might have been a reflection of the son who is within the kingdom of East Anglia at this time. And just like today, that's focusing on the region of kind of Norfolk and Suffolk. And we know from the writings of Bede's, who was writing about one hundred years later, but seems to have been very well informed, had good records. So it's quite a good account that at the time that the burial went into the ground. So we're talking about the early decades of the six hundreds.

East Anglia seem to have been quite powerful in the south of England. It was enjoying some influence and some control over kingdoms that were around it. And this could chime with what we see in the burials. So, as I've mentioned, we have this really top quality metalwork, this Goldwax and Garnet work, these sorts of things, suggesting that the people in East Anglia at this time had access to the best resources, the best metal workers. They were able to commission the best pieces.

And again, referring to what I was talking about a bit earlier, that interconnectedness, the fact that this is a region at this time that's plugs into the wider world, and that's not just across the continent. That's at home in Britain as well. The hanging bowls, these wonderful copper alloy vessels that we have from Sutton, who they've probably come from somewhere else in Britain. So outside of England, maybe in kind of Western Britain or Ireland or Scotland or something like that, these wonderful bowls with these beautiful enamel mounts.

Some of the war gear could have come from Scandinavia and northern Europe. The coins in the barrel come from the Frankish region. So just across the North Sea in this region of modern day France and Germany and that silver that I mentioned, that's come all the way from the eastern Mediterranean, that's been exchanged across those vast distances all the way from the Byzantine Empire to find its way into Suffolk. So we can say at least I think that the orbit of the person buried at Saturn who was at least doing quite well based on what we can see from the historical and the archaeological sources.

Does this history you've got Sue Breuning on the podcast talk about Sutton, who a.k.a. the dig more after this. The goods from the grave of the highest quality. Does that imply this was a particularly important post dynamic? I mean, my friends in Suffolk and Essex would say nothing's changed. But do we know anything about in relative terms that Kingdom of East Anglia? Oh, yes.

I mean, this was indeed a dynamic society, not just in East Anglia, but across the rest of these kingdoms as well. As I've mentioned, this is a period when those kingdoms are still developing. We see also society becoming more stratified. So the emergence of it leads, for example, who are competing with each other for power. They're employing the types of artefacts and the symbols that we see at Sutin, who as part of that competition. And it's also, let's not forget the period of conversion to Christianity and to Christianisation.

And this is happening right at that contemporary period with some who going into the ground. So it's really such a fascinating moment in time. And I really do think that we're so lucky to have a burial like this on a ship burial to really give us a window on it is really, really quite precious.

What about the goods, what they tell us about the society culture? Is this a pagan society? Like what does it tell us what we learn about the people? Well, I mean, where do you start?

Quite honestly, there's so much that we can take from it. Before I start mentioning a few ideas, I'd like to start with a little bit of a disclaimer, if I can. And that's just that interpreting burial archaeology from this period is just really hard. So funerals at this time, and especially this one, which was so spectacular, these were kind of like pieces of theatre. You know, they have their own props in the form of the grave goods.

They have a kind of cast of characters who are the mourners and the person who's buried in the grave and the rituals that are enacting the kind of like the scenes of a play almost. So we're not really dealing with reality. It's kind of like a heightened version of reality. And these burials are kind of speaking to us almost with a bit of a forked tongue. And archaeologists have for a long time been aware that grave goods might not accurately reflect the dead person's lived reality or identity.

This material culture is something that can be kind of manipulated and selected and created to make a desirable or a useful identity in death that doesn't necessarily kind of match with the identity that that person had in life. And it's that old adage of the dead don't bury themselves. And to kind of make an analogy with historical texts, perhaps, that in this respect, archaeology can sometimes be an unreliable narrator. So we just have to be mindful of that. But I don't really think we should let it put us off.

We just have to kind of have one eye on whether what we're seeing is really what the meaning is and to look for the context and what we can learn from amassing all of those clues together. But in terms of what we can learn from the burial about this period and about people that are living at this time, there's lots of things. So, for example, the nature of power in the early 7th century, we see the lavish weaponry that I've mentioned a few times, the martial paraphernalia, those swords and the shield and the helmet.

These things suggest to us that power in the early 7th century was related to warfare rather than things like trade and agriculture is related to violence and warriors. And this is something that echoes, again, those writings of Beed and also the famous poem of Beowulf, those descriptions of war in kings of kingdoms, kind of exchanging supremacists and fighting with each other, vying for power. But the other thing I'm going to add another sort of vague disclaimer in here about that warrior status.

But it's something actually that I think is really interesting and important to think about. And that is the definition of what a warrior was at this time, because based on my own research and the research of other people in this area, I think there was actually a broader definition of what a warrior was at this time in the early 7th century. I think we would normally interpret that meaning as someone who fought with weapons, probably a man, let's face it.

But I think based on research, as I've said, I think in this period, that category might have been a little bit more inclusive and it might have encompassed other types of individuals as well, and perhaps could be better described as someone who owns or displays weapons rather than someone who necessarily fights with weapons. And that's because we see a series of burials where we find individuals buried with weapons who would be described by us perhaps as being too young to old, maybe too female, or perhaps having some kind of physical impairment that we would think would preclude them from participating in armed combat.

But I think what this might be telling us is that perhaps this category of warrior was perhaps broader than we might interpret it today and admitted other people that we might exclude. And that fits with the society that's quite violent in a violent society. Weapons might acquire a broader symbolism than just being as physical weapons, and therefore they might have a wider acquisition and relevance to more people. So it's quite complicated. But I think really, really interesting.

Also relating to the nature of power in this period is we have a glimpse of the seat of power as well in that hall and feasting paraphernalia that we see that I've mentioned already. So those enormous drinking horns, the huge cauldron. The collision itself is very interesting, unfortunately, in the gallery, it's one of the objects that people tend to pass by because it's kind of brown and lumpy doesn't glitter like the gold work does. But what's important about it is that that chain is about three and a half meters long.

And that gives us the dimensions of fact in the that this person buried at Sutton who may have held court in so it's three and a half meters long, that building's probably going to be much higher than that to enable that cauldron to be suspended above a fire. So we start to build this amazing picture of power of this person with their glittering weaponry and their seat of power in that great timber whole. You mentioned beliefs as well in your question to me there, and that is certainly something else that we can learn about from the burial at and who and when we think about the conversion period that I've already mentioned, this is a very interesting dynamic periods.

We see Christianity arriving in southern England sort of being introduced here by Roman mission from about five nine seven. And then in the north, we see missionaries from Ireland doing their work in the early 7th century, I should say Christianity was in Britain before hand during the Roman period, but seems to have receded. And these missions during the early medieval period revive it and cause it to spread again. What we see from the Sun, Hubble, is that this process was incredibly complex.

And one of the enduring questions about the burial is, is this Christian or not? And that's because we see a lot of mixed messages amongst the material culture. So the Byzantine silverware that we find, these dishes that have crosses emblazoned on them, pair of spoons, which in the past have been identified or interpreted, I should say, is baptismal spoons, but less so these days. So those seem to provide a kind of Christian flavor. But the very act of Shipborough itself is something that traditionally has been interpreted as something that's very pre-Christian in nature.

So it's something quite traditional. Again, this is very complicated, but I'll do my best to break it down because, again, I think it's really interesting. So if we look at that ritual of ship burial, first of all, there is actually a debate over whether this method of burial, furnished burial with grave goods is inherently pre-Christian in flavor, or if other concerns could also have contributed to this type of ritual. Of course, it's true that this type of furnished burial was practiced and performed in the pre-Christian period, and we see it fall out of use later in the Christian period.

But it was also in decline before the conversion took place, before Christianisation and in some places continued after Christianization to take place in some regions. So that suggests that there were probably other motivations beyond that sort of belief system. That's underpinning why people are burying people with grave goods at this time. So the ritual at someone who is not necessarily a deal breaker in telling us whether this is a pre-Christian or a Christian society, but what about those Christian grave goods that I mentioned?

Well, the Byzantine silver, for example, that's traveled from a Christian culture, Byzantine Empire, but its presence at certain who doesn't necessarily have to signify Christian practice of the person who's buried there or the mourners that that buried that person. So that Christian meaning or the Christian function need not actually have traveled with the items from the Christian culture of the Byzantine Empire. That makes sense.

There's also a really interesting flipside to this, in that the gold buckle that we have from the burial, very famous, is completely covered with these intertwining creatures, normally interpreted as traditional interlacing zul, morphic animal ornaments. So that's often seen as almost like the pinnacle of pre-Christian art. But the problem is that this is the type of buchel that's also a box, similar box buckle's that we know from the continents actually functioned as Christian reliquaries. So what does that mean?

Again, it means that this is not necessarily inherently pre-Christian, this type of ornaments. It could have had a relevance also in the Christian period. I make no apology for this being really complicated, but I think in the terms of the Christianisation period, I don't think this is very, very surprising at all. I think it really reflects the spiritual reality of the time, this conversion period. It's a period of experimentation, of symbolic kind of mutability, for want of a better word, the transference of symbols between Christian and pre-Christian uses.

And this is, I think, something that we would absolutely expect to see reflected in a barrier like someone who that it would have these mixed messages because it's taking place at this time of great change. And this is something, again, that we see glimpses of in bed. We see, for example, one of the favoured candidates for Sutin, who the King Rodewald in East Anglia, having to altar's one pre-Christian and one Christian, also in his great hall, and the Mercian King Penda, who's often been associated with the Staffordshire hoard practising religious tolerance, even though he himself continued to be pre-Christian.

So I have to say that while this is one of the enduring questions about someone who is not one of the ones that keeps me awake at night, do we have any idea if I should have a beginning?

But does this extraordinary burial, all these objects really centred on one individual? Is this one person's Gregson's very complicated site, isn't it?

Oh, well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? And I always feel a little bit like a party pooper when I say, well, we don't really know for certain. And it's likely that we will never know exactly who it was, who was buried here. What we can say is that this is likely to have been just one individual rather than a few individuals buried in the same ship. There's kind of a human sized shape left in the burial surrounded by the grave goods.

So I think it's room for one, but probably not room for one more. So I think we're talking about one person, but the problem comes when we try to identify or name that person. So how far can we get? Right. So we have the coins from the burial, which provide us with a rough dating of between around six and six thirty five.

And if we can trust the royal chronologies that we have and the works of people like that, again, that gives us a few candidates. So the popular one is raddled who died in six 20s who can't remember the exact dates. He's also very popular, as I mentioned, because he is the king who has the pre-Christian and the Christian order in his whole. So it's thought that he's kind of hedging of the spiritual bets there, matches the sort of mixed spiritual messages that we find in the ship burial.

But that chronology also includes at least one of his sons as well. So if we are looking at a king here, we could have one of those individuals. But it's really, unfortunately, sorry to say, impossible to know for certain.

Just lastly, on the material culture, you've got to work with it. You know better than anybody, much of it in your museum, as I understand it. What can you just say about how fine this would have been in the world of the early 7th century?

Oh, well, incredibly fine. The metal work in particular remains the best that we have from England and arguably from Europe during the early medieval period as a whole. I'd say that a few pieces in the Staffordshire hoard come close, but I think it's still fair to say that it's nothing really quite surpasses what we have from Sutton who so to give an example, the shoulder clasps. And I'm obviously going to give an example, because those are the pieces that inspired me to study the early medieval period in the first place when I was an undergraduate visiting the museum.

These are made with the so-called Klusener technique, which basically involves an intricate network of tiny gold cells creating carpet like or Zuel morphic patterns. Each one of these cells is inlaid with a wafer thin red Garnett's and each one of these Garnett's has underneath it a pattern, gold foil, equally thin. And this functions by reflecting the light back through the garnet and making it sparkle and glow. The best analogy I have for this technique, which I think was from one of the people working on the Staffordshire hold, was that it kind of works a bit like a bike reflector.

So it's that kind of effect. And we have to remember that all of this is being achieved without the use of precision jewellery tools such as we have today. It's being done without sophisticated magnifying methods, without artificial light. So the achievement in light of those challenges is just completely superlative. And if that wasn't impressive enough, there was some new research done in the last few years by a researcher called Ellie Blakelock, a scientist working on the Staffordshire Hoard again.

And she was able to show with her analysis that Smiths were even able to make the gold they were using look more gold. And they did this by removing silver from the gold alloy at the surface level, and that this created a kind of more lustrous gold effect. So, you know, these really amazing techniques that we developed and used, this technique has been identified, I should mention, not just in the Staffordshire hoard, but also on the Sutton who metalwork, too.

So this is something that they were able to do and that they were doing for this high status metal work. And it's really quite mind boggling. But I just like to mention also because it's something that I find just completely beguiling about this period and that this metal work, this art is not just fine on a technical level, but also in terms of the imagery that we find as well. So those animal motifs that I've repeatedly made. And those are incredibly intricate, they're like magic eye puzzles, you look at them and you see a kind of massive bodies and you think, well, I'll never be able to disentangle all of that.

But if you put the time in, then the design resolves itself and you kind of get this moment of revelation. And I think that's part of the point. That's part of the reason why these images were made like that is so that, you know, you had to scrutinize them and then you kind of got your reward. So I think that's kind of like a long winded way of saying yes. In short, the son who finds are still very much the best that we have.

It's so exciting.

We've had on the podcast in the last year, we've had the talk about the Priddle well burial, which is on the Thames Street in South Essex today. So exciting there. Is there more of this stuff? Are we going to find more from this wonderful period that is going to help eliminate it even further?

Yeah, I think it could absolutely happen. I mean, the British royal burial in itself shows us that these kinds of burials are still out there to be discovered, even though we think that something like something who is so spectacular that they can't be that many of them out there. Surely it shows that maybe there will be maybe we will find something else. And for example, the Staffordshire hoard that turned up in 2009 and kind of changed our map of understanding again overnight, it increased that kind of high status metal work of the type that we have at who thought that maybe, you know, there wasn't that much of it out there.

Then a whole mass of it turns up in one place as part of the Staffordshire hoard. So it really does show that these things are potentially out there for us to find. And I absolutely think that we will have something else to look at and enjoy in the future. At least I hope so.

Sue, how can people once this state of lockdown is over, how can people look at the remarkable finds from Sutton who.

Yeah, so once a lockdown is finally over, people will be able to visit and view the Sutton who finds at the British Museum. They can find it in room 41, which is called the Sir Paul and Lady Ruddock Gallery of Sutton who and Europe. And you can't miss Sutton who, because it's right in the middle of the gallery. So when you enter through room 40, the medieval gallery, you're met with the face of the Sutton Who helmet.

So you can put that on your list for once. Lockdown is over and we can all safely be outside again. But in the meantime, we are doing the best that we can at the museum in order to make information about Sutton who are available. You can visit the gallery virtually. If you go to our website, you'll be able to find the links there and also with some extra information about Sutton, who a couple of blocks that I've written also and some links to videos in our Curator's Corner series on YouTube.

I've done one about this on who sword and one recently about such a new helmet, which was tremendously exciting for me and people seem to be enjoying. I should also mention that you can visit the burial site itself at Sutton, who the site there is run by the National Trust. They have some walk through the estate at the moment, which are open, but obviously check the website in case there are any changes. And they also have a great website, too, with lots of information about Sutton who.

So for the time being, there are lots of things you can do virtually. And then eventually you'll be able to come and actually have that personal connection with the fines again.

You certainly can. Are you doing enough to turn on Netflix soon? Thank you so much for coming on the pod. Pleasure. Thanks very much for having me.

Ivan, thanks for reaching the end of this podcast. Most of you probably asleep, so I'm talking to your snoring force, but only one is awake. It would be great if you could do me a quick favor, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Martinus. I know, but them's the rules. Then we go farther up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome.

So thank you so much. I'll sleep well.

Akehurst powers some of the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend. In the latest episode of history this week, we take a closer look at a failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building in 1861 when the nation was on the cusp of a civil war nearly 160 years later. What can we learn from this moment when democracy was challenged? And check out all our episodes this month as History this week celebrates Black History Month. Last week, we covered the Greensboro sit ins that sparked a media firestorm and inspired mass sit ins across the country.

Next week we travel to Australia and witness Sydney students taking a freedom ride of their own for Aboriginal civil rights. After that, we'll be exploring the origins of jazz. For these stories and more, subscribe to history this week wherever you listen to podcasts, Bikash recommends.