Customer Reviews

The Treasure of Sutton Hoo: Ship-Burial for an Anglo-Saxon King

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Easy to read and fully documented for the beginning scholar. It is full of information and pictures and even some useful recent findings from the Sutton Hoo sites. I recommend it to all readers age 13 or so and above.

I found this to be a very good work on the Sutton Hoo ship burial, its treasures, the culture of Anglo-Saxon England and the archeological dig that brought these things to the light of day.

I found the author's integration of the Sutton Hoo dig with the historical and cultural world of the times to be very informative and enjoyable. The author weaves passages of Beowulf into the narrative in a very effective fashion to give the reader a context into which one can view the finds. The story of Beowulf was roughly contemporary with the ship burial of this Anglian king (whose body was not in the mound) and gives the reader insight into the culture that buried these items as a funeral rite.

There is a lot of good information on the discovery of the find by Mrs. Pretty, the archeological dig itself as well as the items discovered. The book has very good illustrations and photos so the reader can see as well as read about the dig.

The issue of whose burial it had been is discussed at length without a solution. This is reasonable given the difficulty of dating the site as well as the dearth of written documentation of the times.

My only problem with this book is it's length. There are only about 150 pages. There is a preface to the paperback version, a preface, a foreward and acknowledgments as well as a bibliography, glossary etc. There is a lot of good reading in between to be sure, but I would really have liked for the author to have expanded many of the chapters.

Short though it was, it was a very good read about the burial, the artifacts and the culture and times that produced it. I recommend this for those wanting a short read on the subject.