Today we went back to the early medieval (6th to 7th centuries) times. In 1938, amateur archeologist Basil Brown discovered an ancient Anglo-Saxon burial ship on Edith Pretty’s land. Excavations continued on and off until the early 1990s finding 18 burial mounds. Mrs. Perry donated all the treasure found on her land. In 2000, when excavating for the Visitor Center, they found many more burial mounds.
Mound 2 is the most important as this is where Basil Brown found the large burial ship. It has since been determined that it was probably the burial ship for the East Anglian King Raedwald. This is when England was made up of a bunch of kingdoms so every region had its own king.
They also found the grave of a 25-year old warrior. He had been laid out with his sword and purse in a tree-trunk coffin. Here are some of the things found with him.
The early Anglo-Saxons decorated a lot of their things with garnet (my birthstone) as it was fairly common stone as it was brought with traders from what is now the Czech Republic, India and Sri Lanka.
They found relics in the other burial sites. One was a Byzantine bucket. The first photo is a replica to show what it would have looked like. The second photo is what remains today.
We were home early (2:30) which was great. We’ve been running around a lot so it’s been fun to have a lazy late afternoon. Tomorrow I think we’re going to go to a local beach and just chill for the day. It will be wonderful.