Professor suggests graves at Sutton Hoo belonged to Anglo-Saxon men who fought for Byzantine Empire
Helen Gittos, a professor of medieval history at Oxford University, in the U.K., has developed a new theory regarding the identity of the remains found at a famous burial site near Suffolk, England. She has published a in the journal English Historical Review outlining her ideas. Called Sutton Hoo, the burial site was discovered almost a century ago, and has since that time become the subject of much debate.
Discovered in the late 1930s, Sutton Hoo (from the Old English Sut and hoo, which refers to a heel-shaped hill) was soon found to hold the remains of not just humans, but a full ship. The site has become an important excavation site for research surrounding the East Anglia kingdom during the time of the Anglo-Saxons. The site, which consists of 20 burial mounds, is near a port on the North Sea.
Items found beneath the mounds suggest that the people buried there were important, perhaps even royalty. Some suggested one or more of the graves could be the remains of a Byzantine king. The burial sites have been dated to approximately 575 AD, a time when the Roman Empire had already withdrawn from Britain, leaving the region to develop independently. Prior research has shown that soldiers in Britain were recruited by the Byzantine army, which was busy fighting the Sasanians in what is now Iran.
Gittos has been studying artifacts found at the site for several years, as well as those found at other similar sites. She describes artifacts such as jewelry, silver plates and swords and shields as being of extremely high quality. She also noticed that many of the artifacts share characteristics with those found at other sites known to hold the remains of local soldiers.
She suggests the similarities are likely not coincidence; instead, it is more likely that those people who buried the men beneath the mound at Sutton Hoo revered the soldiers who had returned from fighting with the Byzantine army and regarded them as heroes, which, she further notes, would have merited a lavish funeral and burial. She also notes that recent work at the site by excavators has dashed the notion that only one man was buried with the ship.
More information: Helen Gittos, Sutton Hoo and Syria: The Anglo-Saxons Who Served in the Byzantine Army?, The English Historical Review (2025).
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