Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings

by Martin Carver

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812234553
• ISBN13: 9780812234558
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.8" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

An up-to-date review of archaelogy at Sutton Hoo

Carver supervised the most recent round of digging at Sutton Hoo (the full excavation report is due out in 1999). This book seeks to present the new work plus all past work in a short book for a broad audience.At its best, this book is extremely good. It clearly summarizes the various digs, and the analyis of the archaeological evidence is clear, insightful, and often entertaining (who would have thought the archaelogists could work out so much detail of how a person was buried, down to details of how the coffin tipped when lowered, 1300 years ago?). But when Carver attempts to get into the minds of the people who built the mounds, the book often feels like bad popular history -- one example is that a comb was added to a tomb -- Carver suggests this event shows someone remembering the deceased as an unkempt youth.