Anglo-Saxon Objects

In 1903 a miraculous discovery was made in western Norway.  Under a large mound on a small farm in the Vestford region, there was unearthed a massive Viking ship.  Its treasures and contents were so large they are still being studied today. The Oseberg ship burial, as it has come to be known, gives us important information on Norwegian Viking culture.   This essay will look at the history of its discovery, the ship itself,  its objects, the intriguing carvings, the intricate fabrics, and of course, the bodies .  By studying the Oseberg burial ship we can learn about burial practices, Norwegian Viking diets, Norwegian dress and decoration, shipbuilding practices, arts, and religion.

Discovered in a burial site labelled Grave Circle A, shaft Grave IV on the citadel of Mycenae by an archaeologist named Henrich Schliemann (1876), the original mask has been claimed to belong to the grave of King Agamemnon of Mycenae. This claim has since been questioned for it verity since the grave was likely dug as much as three centuries before Agamemnon is thought to have lived and ruled. Nevertheless, the death mask has an aura of romance and mystery about it since it reveals so much about the cultural and social practices of the civilization of Mycenae, who like other ancients such as the Egyptians made funerary masks for their powerful and wealthy dead.

Looking at an artifact’s physical attributes is always the first step to uncovering the archaeological significance

Scotland has an abundance of archaeology all throughout the country and all within different parts of prehistory. Scottish archaeology has a big impact on both the rest of the UK and on the rest of Europe. Although during the beginning of the 20th century, archaeology was seen as nothing more than labour, with the help of the two great men which held ‘the Abercromby chair’ – both with their own contributions to Scottish archaeology as a whole – it soon rocketed into the discipline what we see today.

An unscrupulous archaeologist by the name of Henirich Hochstetter excavated the Shoen-Tell site in Turkey in the late 1920s. Hochstetter was interested more in antiquities than in data, so he provided little substantive information tot eh professional community about his dig or his findings. However, a conscientious assistant of Hochstetter’s, Roxanne Browne, managed to collect detailed information on fifty of the burials Hochstetter plundered. Her data is

In the 7th Century AD, an important individual was buried inside a ship in East Anglia. The ship most likely hauled up from the nearby river, a burial chamber was built in the center of the massive vessel. Luckily grave robbers did not reach the ship burial as they did other nearby burial mounds, because the ship was rich in history and artifacts including gold, silver, bowls, spoons, weapons, drinking horns and much more. Originally discovered in 1939, the artifacts and ship burial have been closely examined another 2 times. The artifacts found within the magnificent burial site have created a lot of stir over the past 80 years. Theories have changed on the significance and origins of the artifacts due to changing hypothesis or the arrival of new and different evidence. Because there are dozens of artifacts within Sutton Hoo, this paper will be focusing on a select four of them including; the ‘baptismal’ spoons, the Merovingian coin hoard, the whetstone, and the scepter. According to scholars over the past 80 years, how have opinions, evidence, or assumptions changed relating to these exact artifacts? This paper will be taking a contemporary look at the perspectives of different scholars on different artifacts and, finally, analyze why these perspectives have shifted or changed over time. To my knowledge, scholars do give credit to previous perspectives, but no scholar has every brought all the perspectives together and analyzed their findings.

Tomb 10A was discovered near the Nile River in a region known as Deir el-Bersha (The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC 2009). It is the 4,000 year old resting place of a governor and his wife, both of whom ruled during the 11th or 12th dynasty and are named Djehutynakht. After the tomb was excavated in 1915 by archaeologists from Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA), it was clear that what they had found was a consummate archetype of traditional Egyptian burial practices. One of the many grave goods found in the Djehutynakhts’ tomb was a fleet of 58 wooden model boats, which is the largest collection of model boats ever discovered in an Egyptian burial (Gansicke 2003: 185).

Life in Anglo Saxon England was more dangerous than you would think. Anglo Saxons could be at risk from famine and epidemics, also diseases including degenerative arthritis, leprosy, and tuberculosis. Archaeological evidence appears to show life expectancy was in the thirties, and high infant deaths. Old English Saxon rulers were productive officials, and law-codes somehow survived the seventh tof eleventh century. Under the seventh-century Kentish law, for instance, the total of 12 shillings was payable for removing an ear, 30 shillings for incapacitating a shoulder, and 50 shillings for putting out an eye. Thumping out a front tooth was surveyed at a higher rate of remuneration than thumping out a back tooth, while a finger was worth twice as much as a toe.

Sutton Hoo is the site of two cemeteries of the sixth and seventh centuries. Sutton Hoo was discovered in 1939 and is the most important link to the Anglo Saxon world. On the Sutton Hoo burial site, there are approximately 20 burial mounds formed between 625 and 670 AD. As Thomas Robjent says in his article The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial: A General Background and Source List, “Along with the ship-burial, many impressive artifacts were found within mound one. The list of artifacts and treasure from this mound is as follows: An iron standard, a sceptre, spears, an iron-bound wooden bucket, a bronze bowl, a hanging bowl containing the remains of a musical instrument, drinking horns, a shield, a helmet, a sword, the iron head of an axe, the remains

In the year 1939 in the community of Sutton Hoo near Suffolk, England a discovery of massive proportion took place. The magnitude of this archeological find was described in a local news article, “For the first thousand years of the Christian era the little island of Britain was overrun by hordes of men who rose up out of the sea. In the Fifth Century came the Angles, from somewhere on the bleak coast of the Baltic. Ships brought them, and when their kings died they were buried in ships with their bows pointing toward the sea.” This discovery answered many of the questions left by the story Beowulf, a document once cast of as a transcribed lore. Modern day archeological discoveries prove that Beowulf is a story founded in truth.

Runic inscriptions have been found not only in Anglo-Saxon poetry but also in archaeologicial discoveries like the Clermont or Franks casket.

During the Anglo-Saxon time, the social periode of this age was hard on everyone, for this particular reason it had a big effect on the literature of this time, literature during these centuries reflected the realism of the situations and experiences of the time period ….. The fall of the Roman Empire threw the social conditions into chaos ; there was a lot of war between between cultures & religions, along with disagreement and mistreatment between classes of people (especially when it was a time of feudalism ), Historians and others thought of this iron age to be ; corrupt, vile and hellish ,because of this it has and continues to be nicknamed the “Dark Ages “. The Literature of this age shows the fatalistic world view that the people developed from this wretched time, the writings tell of death and war with little hope for a better future.For example in the story of Beowulf it shows the many challenges that a society had to face before it could even be near peace and even then problems kept coming, not only does it show these

Bishop Germanus used a technique of preaching and spreading the word of god thru the churches and in the streets and fields. There idea was they were going to try to spread the religion as fast as they could by word. The people learned of this religion and learned they would acquire authority and honor, thus making them immediately open to there way of thinking. Bede may consider the Anglo Saxons as not fully converted because they still had there ways of being brutal and having the urge to always fight, they were basically still barbarians and they way of converting them was to try to get them to relate some of the ways of there life to the Christian religion. The Anglo Saxons that were converted by the Irish form of Christianity was different

Jeremiah Summers Mr. Hartley CA IV 9-21-16The Fabric of Anglo-Saxon ChristianityChristianity, a well developed faith that many know, and many more follow, has been a part of our culture for decades. Whether it be Europeans or or the spaniards or even the Japanese for all that matter, it is a powerful motive in people's lives. The Anglo-Saxons were deeply involved in their faith, and followed the ways of the Bible prestigeuosly, making jewel endowed covers for the book. God inspired this culture, and drove them to do many great things for their culture at the time. Such as in the christian version of "Beowulf", he did all his mighty deeds under the name of god, He is what drove him to do all the great things he did. A common

When the Sutton Hoo burial site was discovered in the summer of 1939, the quality and quantity of the burial surpassed any site previously discovered and therefore drew much attention in the archeological community. The richness of the artifacts led some to believe that it was the burial site or someone high and wealthy like a king. Around the same time more translations of Beowulf were being published and the epic poem was one of the few written records of the old English times, so naturally people tied this ancient site, dated to a similar period, to the literary text. The connection between the two persists even with the lack of evidence and the ambiguity around the facts of both the text and the site. Though using the archeological discoveries