We already know what the mysterious “ghost ship” was served in a thousand years

Excavations over 10 years remained a puzzle. Even a team of researchers add the pieces (literally).

Sutton Hoo, a National Trust site in Suffolk, England, is known by mystery fans for containing a “Ghost ship” Anglo-Saxon of the Seventh Century, buried on a hill and discovered in the 1930s.

The content of the ship has remained unknown since then… until now. Researchers discovered by chance in the 80s a Byzantine vase of the sixth century that was inside the vessel, and now new excavations held last summer dug another block of dirt that contained pieces of this bucket.

And came with a surprise: inside the bucket, they were cremated remains of animals and humans. Both human and animal bones are being studied and dated by radiocarbon to investigate an additional context, but the findings are already revealing. Initial analyzes also suggested the existence of grave objects inside the bucket (including a curious comb made from a horn).

Several cremation burials in Sutton Hoo were placed in containers such as ceramic vases and bronze cups, however, the remains preserved in any vase had never been found.

Now the team believes these buckets served to transport the ashes of some important personality. “We knew this bucket would have been a rare and valuable possession In Anglo-Saxon times, but it has always been a mystery why it was buried, ”said Angus Wainwright, a National Trust archaeologist, quoted by.

“Now we know that was used to contain the remains of an important person in the community from Sutton Hoo. I hope that a deeper analysis can reveal more information about this special burial, ”he says.

“We are not sure how this bucket, made of hundreds of kilometers away in the Byzantine Empire, came to this corner of sufffol,” he admits, but “by reusing this luxury object as a cremation container, something is marked about the luxury container. Statute of the buried individual (as seen in life and death) and its connections. These last discoveries helped redefine the bucket of a possible isolated find for part of a burial context. ”

“We finally resolved the bromeswell bucket puzzle – now we know it is the first of these rare objects to be used in a cremation fierce. It is a remarkable mix – a container of the classic southern world containing the remains of a very northern and very Germanic cremation“He said Helen Geake, Anglo-Saxon expert.

But the mystery of the ship remains: there is still much to find out, admits the researcher. “Maybe what else can you still contain?”