Sutton Hoo treasures reveal ancient global connections - with Sue Brunning | Curator’s Corner S10 E7

I'm back for another rare opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the objects from the Saturn Hoo ship burial. And today we're creating a passport for a small group of truly incredible objects. So let's go on a journey through time and across geographies to see what these beauties can do. I'm Dr Sue Branning and I'm curator of the European Early Medieval Collections here at the British Museum. And this is my corner. So I have for your viewing pleasure here today, Three objects made using a technique known as gold and garnet clasenae. They're all made during the early 600s and they were buried with the helmet in the Saturn Hoo ship burial. So Saturn Hoo is a site in the east of England in the county of Suffolk. And here there are a cluster of burial mounds that were all made between the late 500s and early 600s. So this is a period that you might have heard described as Anglo-Saxon The largest of these burial mounds was found to contain the richest intact burial known from early medieval Europe. It was inside a 27 metre long ship and in the middle of the ship was a burial chamber that was full of unfathomable treasures. Now, unsurprisingly, given the quality and the quantity of the objects inside and the sheer monumental effort that have gone into creating the burial, it's thought that the burial probably contained a ruler of East Anglia, which was the kingdom where Saturn Hoo was located at a time when England was made up of a number of independent kingdoms that were all fighting with each other at the time. So we'll return to the discovery a little bit later on. But first of all, I want to tell you all about the objects that we have in front of us here. So first of all, this object is a shoulder clasp. It's one of a pair that was found in the burial. So there was another set just like this one. And it's in two halves, as you can see. And the two halves connected through the middle here by means of this rather lovely gold pin, which has a really lovely animal head that once had tiny, probably glass or garnet eyes set just there. And it's connected to the clasp by this really rather lovely dainty gold chain. And this pin inserted between the clasps like so by means of this rather smart hinge that you can see alongside here with these three loops. So these slotted together and connected through the pin. So the way these were worn was over the shoulder like this. One of the plates would come over the front and the other one would go over the back. And then the pin would connect them probably over the top of the shoulder like this. And we think that they fastened a rather chunky fabric. And if I turn the clasp over again, you can see it has a series of loops on the back. And this tells us that the shoulder clasp was probably actually sewn onto the garment that it fastened. Now, these types of clasps are quite unusual in England. In actual fact, it's pretty much unique. So what we think is that it's probably based on types of clasps that are known from the Roman and Byzantine Empire in the Mediterranean world and beyond. So what's possibly happening here is that there was an attempt to project that kind of Roman authority for the wearer of this clasp in England. Now, I'll move the clasp to one side because the other two pieces are both from the harness of the sword that was found in the burial at Sutton Hoo. And you might remember that we've already had a Curator's Corner episode about that sword. Now, in order to explain their function, I need the help, of course, of my trusty assistant, Flex Galliber. Now, believe it or not, Flex Galliber is actually going to be 10 years old next year, but I still think he looks pretty good. So, to take the first object, this is a button that sat on the sword scabbard in about this location. And again, it was one of a pair. So we had one in this location, roughly, and another one right next door to it, like this. And on the back, again, you can see a loop which would have inserted into the sword scabbard's surface. Now, this acted like a button that fixed a strap that connected with the waist belt, so that enabled the person who owned the sword to wear it at their waist. Now, moving on to the next object, this pyramid-shaped mount. So, we think that this mount probably acted as a kind of toggle for tightening and loosening straps that were associated with the sword harness. And we think that because, again, if I turn it over, always look at the back of the objects, there's always something to learn there. We see that this gold bar is running across, and the pyramid is hollow on the inside. So that would have enabled a strap to pass underneath the bar and out the other side, and that would have enabled the mount to pass up and down a strap, a little bit like this, to loosen and tighten as necessary. So, now we know what the objects are, we can learn a bit more about where they came from, how they got here. So, I'll put the Excalibur again to one side. Now, all of these objects were excavated in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II. Now, the excavation was initially begun by the local archaeologist Basil Brown, who was invited to dig the mounds by the landowner, Mrs Edith Pritty. And a bit later on, he was joined by a team of professional archaeologists, headed up by the Cambridge academic Charles W Phillips. And over the summer months, just as the war was looming, they revealed the ship and also the burial chamber in the middle. Now, on the 21st of July 1939, gold started coming out of the ground. And the first piece was found by an experienced young archaeologist called Peggy Pickett. And it was actually one of the two pyramid-shaped mounds that I have in my hand here. It might even have been this one. Unfortunately, we don't know which one came out of the ground first, so we have a sort of 50-50 chance of it actually being this one that I have in my hand right now. Now, after that first discovery of gold, there was a veritable gold rush, as more and more amazing metalwork started coming out of the ground over the days that followed. Now, we're really lucky here at the museum to have Basil Brown's original excavation field notebook and diary, which he bequeathed to us when he died in 1977. And his description of the gold discovery is pure magic. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? We also have a pretty remarkable letter from Charles W. Phillips, the Cambridge academic, wrote to the British Museum shortly after the gold came out of the ground. And he was discussing our pyramid again, and he included a little sketch of it, a pretty accurate one, in his writing. The whole of the material in the clasons, that's the little cells that you can see on the pyramid, is, so far as I can see, beautifully cut red glass. I can hardly suppose it to be garnet. Well, as we know, that's probably a slightly less accurate assumption than the little sketch that he included. Now, the archaeologists continued digging, and they started to understand and have their suspicions confirmed that what they were digging was actually something quite rare indeed. Not only was it a ship burial, which was an incredibly rare find in Britain, but it was also a ship burial from the early 600s. So this was way before the Vikings, who are much better known for this sort of behaviour. And what was also remarkable about the find was the sheer amount, the quality of the garnet clasonnet metalwork that came out of it. Now, this type of metalwork was known before. There had been discoveries of similar metalwork with the same technique found on the European continent, for example, but also in England at sites, for example, Kingsfield in Faversham in Kent, down in the south-east of England, which was excavated in the 1800s, so quite a bit earlier than Sutton Hoo. But the Sutton Hoo material far surpassed anything that had ever been found before in terms of its quality. It clearly had something to tell us about the Dark Ages, which were becoming rapidly less dark as the finds continued coming out of the ground. But all of that would have to wait because events were about to overwhelm everything. The excavation was concluded at the end of the summer in 1939, and then the finds went through the treasure trove process. Now, this would determine who was the legal owner. And in basic terms, because Sutton Hoo was a burial, it was decided that they were probably not intending to recover the finds, therefore the finds were legally awarded to Mrs Pretty. And in an act of outstanding generosity, she decided to give them to the nation, which meant that they came here to the British Museum. Only they didn't quite make it at that time. Of course, World War II was about to break out, so the finds actually first went to Aldwych Underground Station, which is about a 10-15 minute walk from here, where they stayed for the duration of the war, along with many other objects from the British Museum's collection. After the war, researchers were finally able to get their hands on the Sutton Hoo finds. And over decades of study, they were able to reveal the true significance of the burial. And it's no understatement to say that through their work, our understanding of early medieval Britain changed forever. It was now revealed to be a very well-connected place, sophisticated and rather wealthy. And this Clousenet metalwork was really critical to that realignment of understanding, because this material really did show just what early medieval craftspeople in Britain were capable of at this time. And I would like to demonstrate that a little bit with our shoulder clasps. So let's move these pieces out of the way just for now. So let's look again at the shoulder clasp, and I'll explain a little bit about why garnet Clousenet metalwork is so sophisticated. So hopefully you can see that we have lots of different cells in different colours across the surface of this object. So garnet Clousenet metalwork is essentially defined by the setting of inlays into a network of cells. The red inlays that you can see here, unlike Charles Phillips's letter, are actually garnets. The blue pieces that you can see here are glass, and some finds also have other materials such as white shell to create these really lovely multicoloured surfaces. And all of these inlays are laid into a cell structure with cells of lots of different shapes and sizes to create this really rather beautiful, glittering, mosaic-like surface that just carpets the front of the object like so. Now, how is this made? Well, the gold lines that you can see on the surface here are the cell walls, and those are made by narrow strips of gold which are shaped into the shape of the cell that is desired and set edge-on to the gold backing plate. So, again, onto the back here. So once you build those up and you have your cell-like structure, then in each cell you place a small amount of a paste-like substance. And that doesn't act as a glue, it acts as kind of like a little bed for the gem, so it lifts it up so that it's flush with the upper cell wall. But before you put the gem on top, we have the pièce de résistance of garnet Clousenet, and that's in the form of a wafer-thin gold foil with a textured surface, and that adds the little spark that really unleashes the full potential of garnet Clousenet. Now, its job is to catch the light as it's passing into the garnet and reflect it back out, and that makes the garnet glimmer and glow. And without this little gold foil, even the most lustrous and highest-quality garnet would look pretty dull by comparison, so it's really an ingenious thing. So I think we should see this in action. Now, I'm going to use our pyramid mount again, because these are the biggest show-offs when it comes to that particular light show. And that's because the corners of the pyramids here have been set with really chunky garnets that have been cut in a three-dimensional shape that essentially works like a prism. So when the light hits them, just so, it bends through, and then the garnet suddenly lights up as if it's been set fire to on the inside. And for that effect, I tend to refer to these as little volcanoes, because when that light effect takes hold, it looks like they're full of molten lava. Now, unsurprisingly, this incredible metalwork has attracted a lot of attention from researchers over the years. I mean, who wouldn't want to spend their career gazing lovingly at this? And their work, including on the finds from the Sutton Hoo burial, have really helped to redefine our understanding of just how well-connected Northwest Europe was during this period in the early Middle Ages. For example, we know that the technique of garnet cloisonnée that was arguably perfected at Sutton Hoo didn't develop there, or indeed anywhere nearby. Current thinking points to an origin in the Black Sea, Caucasus, or West Asia region, and it developed, we think, probably around the early 200s. Now, during the centuries that followed, the technique was adopted and adapted much further west, throughout Europe, where it became a sort of badge of elite identity. So if you were moving in the fanciest circles, this is the sort of stuff that you would be wearing. We think it reached England in around the 500s, where it reached its zenith, of course, represented by the finds from Sutton Hoo, but also finds from another amazing assemblage of gold and garnet cloisonnée metalwork, known as the Staffordshire Hoard, which was discovered as recently as 2009. Now, there are certain pieces inside the hoard which are so fine that it's thought that they could have been made in the same workshop as the Sutton Hoo finds, potentially actually also by the same hands. So somebody in that part of England had really developed a knack for that technique, and we could say that they were nailing it. But what about the garnets themselves? Where did they come from, and how do we know? Well, we know a little bit from historical sources. So in the AD 70s, Pliny the Elder, who was the same Pliny the Elder who unfortunately lost his life in the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, he wrote that garnets came from India and Carthage, which is a city in northern Africa, now in the present-day country of Tunisia. And rather charmingly, the word that he uses for the garnets is carbuncumi, which in Latin means little coals because of the way that they glow, and we've just seen that in action. A few centuries later, in actual fact around the time that the Sutton Hoo burial was taking place in the 600s, Isidore of Seville wrote that there were 12 different kinds of garnets, to his knowledge, and that they were very popular with eastern kings. So again, that places the garnets and this type of metalwork in that region that we think they might have developed and from where they moved westwards. But what's really developed our understanding of where the garnets may have come from is science. Now, this is where we're going to get a bit technical, but bear with me and don't be scared. Now, garnets form deep inside the earth within rocks that are subject to intense pressures and temperatures, and these forces transform the rocks and cause crystals, including garnets, to form inside them. Now, garnet deposits are found all over the world, but wherever they're found, they take on the geological brew of the local area. This gives a deposit a particular chemical fingerprint, and if you can identify that fingerprint, then you can compare it to geological reference collections of garnets that have been gathered from all around the world. And if you find a match, then you have a better chance of narrowing down where in the world that garnet may have come from. Now, the Sutton Hoo garnets were first explored scientifically in 1982 using a technique known as X-ray fluorescence, or XRF for short. Now, in very basic terms, this involves firing an X-ray beam into the garnet to reveal its chemical composition. Unfortunately, the 1982 results were a bit of a mixed bag, and that was partly because it was quite difficult to actually get good data from the garnets when they were still set inside their objects. Now, cuts of 40 years later, and research for the British Museum's Silk Roads exhibition gave me another opportunity to explore the garnets from Sutton Hoo using a much more powerful technique. Thanks to some funding from the research consortium, Iperion HS, I was able to take objects from the Sutton Hoo burial to the National Centre for Research and Restoration in French Museums located in Paris. Now, here they have a particle accelerator, really, that is able to undertake a type of analysis known as particle-induced X-ray emission, or PIXI for short. Now, this is a much more sensitive technique than XRF. It's able to pick up even the tiniest traces of the chemical elements inside the garnets, and moreover, it has no problem analysing garnets that are still in situ in their objects. And add to that the fact that colleagues at the centre are the leading experts in the world in garnet chemistry. So we were really in the best place and the best hands to finally learn more about where the garnets from Sutton Hoo came from. So, these two objects got the particle accelerator treatment. The preliminary results indicated that garnets on both of these objects came from Czechia in Central Europe, so relatively close to home, but they also found garnets that came from much farther away, in India and Sri Lanka in South Asia. Now, I should say that actually at this point, this wasn't too much of a surprise, because of certain things that we could actually see with our naked eye. For example, some of the garnets on both of these objects are different colours from each other. Now, to demonstrate that, I'm going to return to our scabbard button. Now, I'm hoping that you might be able to make out a kind of cross motif around the middle of the button, which is made with orangey-red colours of garnets. And that's set against a background of these beautiful, purpley-plummy coloured garnets all around the edges. And that colour contrast helps that cross to sort of really stand out against a much darker background. So, because these garnets are different colours to each other, we expected that maybe they could have come from different sources. And actually, the PIXIE analysis confirmed that, because it found that those orangey-red garnets that form the cross on the button probably came from Czechia and Sri Lanka, while the purple garnets came from India, specifically a source in Rajasthan, which was well-known for supplying very high-quality garnets. But there were surprises too. One of the objects that we took to Paris was an imitation buckle also from the sword scabbard. Now, all of the garnets that we analysed on that piece turned out to come from the Indian source, so it didn't seem to blend garnets from different ranges of sources. It seemed to just have garnets from this one particular source. Now, the final four results are still to come in, but until then, we can speculate over what these findings might reveal about the extent of connections in early medieval Britain and also the knowledge of the wider world that was present there at this time. We can ask certain questions, such as, what motivated the choice of these garnets in these objects? Were they chosen because of their colour contrast or because of their quality? Or could a knowledge of their geographical origin also have motivated some of the selections? Now, this is a particularly tantalising question when we come to that imitation buckle that I mentioned, because if the final results do confirm that they all came from India, then that could suggest that the maker deliberately selected this one type of garnet to the exclusion of others. Now, why would they do that? Is it because they were of clearly high quality? Or could there have been some kind of prestige associated with where the garnets had come from, that faraway land that infused the gems with a special prestige that could then have been passed on to the object and from the object on to the wearer? Now, this is all speculation, of course. We can't really know the answer to this, but I think we have enough to go on to at least give this interpretation some careful thought. After all, in the early medieval world, information travelled just as freely as objects did. So it's not beyond the realms of possibility that details of where these garnets came from could have travelled along with the stones themselves. And I don't think that we need to assume that the person who was purveying these garnets to make these absolutely incredible objects was necessarily ignorant of their wider context. The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial is often referred to as a microcosm of the early Middle Ages, just simply because it contained so many objects that came from different parts of the world, from Western Britain and Ireland up to Scandinavia, the near continent in Europe, and also over to the Eastern Mediterranean, West Asia, and perhaps even further afield than that. But I think that we can be a little bit more nuanced because each one of these garnet-clasenate objects is also a kind of microcosm in its own right. It represents ideas that came from one part of the world and raw materials that came from another, and they're all brought together in yet another part of the world to express something rather wonderful.