Professor Martin Carver excavated at Sutton Hoo in the 1980’s and 1990’s. His talk will start with the 1938/39 discoveries as featured in the film The Dig – the old stories. He will then move on to the new excavations of the 1980s and 90s, which expanded Sutton Hoo’s stage to reveal the emergence of the East Anglian kingdom, overseas connections with Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, and the analogies with heroic societies in the American west and the Japanese south.
The focus will be the ship found in Mound 1: its excavation, its role as the most important machine in seventh century England, and its sister ships in the medieval North Sea. Finally, to its current rebirth from the pattern of rusty nails and dark stains found in the bottom of the trench in 1939 to the full sized reconstruction now being built across the river in Woodbridge, and the voyages we expect it to make. These are the new adventures.
Martin Carver is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York, and former editor of the journal Antiquity, writer and broadcaster. Martin is also a well known authority on Sutton Hoo having led the excavation and survey research project at the 7th century princely burial ground from 1983-2005.
We are delighted that Martin is supporting us with this joint fundraising event for the Saxon Church of St. Laurence, Bradford-on-Museum, Bradford-on-Avon Museum, and the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.
St. Laurence is one of our best preserved examples of pre-Conquest ecclesiastical buildings. Maintained by a board of trustees, the Trust is also responsible for St.Mary’s, Tory, a hermitage chapel overlooking the town.
Bradford on Avon Museum is a small, volunteer run museum of the historic and natural heritage of Bradford on Avon and the villages around it, the historic area of the Hundred of Bradford, on the western edge of Wiltshire.
Tickets
Tickets – £7 per screen (£4.50 WANHS and Bradford on Avon Museum Members) – booking essential. Use the button below.
Ticket sales close at 5pm on the day of the lecture.
Start Time: 7.30pm
An online event, using Zoom webinar – the link will be emailed on the day of the lecture.
A joint fund-raiser for the Saxon Church of St. Laurence, Bradford-on-Avon, and Bradford-on-Museum, with proceeds split three ways to include the Wiltshire Museum.
