Sutton Hoo

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1999

The Sutton Hoo ship-burial is one of the most significant archaeological finds ever made in Europe. It lies in a site that contains all the elements of archaeological mystery and romance: burial mounds, buried treasure, great works of art, sacrificed horses, and evidence of human execution. In the first accessible account of the whole story to date, Martin Carver explains what we know of the Sutton Hoo burial ground, in which the leaders of the medieval kingdom of East Anglia signaled their belief in a pagan and maritime kingdom independent of the Christian Europe of the day.

Since the rediscovery of the first ship-burial in 1939, the site has been the subject of three major campaigns of excavation and research, the last of which ended in 1993. In Sutton Hoo, Martin Carver, director of the most recent excavation, tells the story not only of one of the most dramatic historic places in early England but of the fifty years of its exploration--a history of British archaeology.

A selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.