Painting: The Beeches, oil on canvas (1845) by Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886), part of the Hudson River School, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
For years, my wife and I have dutifully recycled. Our suburb has had an active recycling program for a long time. At one time, you brought your materials to the center. Now, it’s curbside pickup. Some months back, we read that nearly 90 percent of all plastics that are theoretically recycled actually aren’t, simply because there’s no competitive market. And most of those recycled plastic bottles, detergent jugs, and other #1, #2, and #5 materials end up being shipped to places like Nigeria, where they are promptly dumped into rivers flowing to the ocean. The Center for Climate Integrity recently published a report, “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling.”
I’ve been thinking about producing a new bingo card, with a space for every time this year I hear “threat to democracy,” “end of democracy,” and similar sentiments. These sentiments are usually expressed by people willing to do anything to discredit a certain political candidate. And if it means destroying democracy in the process, so be it, reminding me of that army major in Vietnam who said, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Mark Tapscott at The Epoch Times describes a different direction for the threat to democracy, describing how the government used “Track F” to fund censorship tools. Matt Taibbi at Racket News describes an award he’s getting, and why it’s so worrisome as America enters the “Samizdat Era.”
I’d see an earlier exhibit of the artifacts of Sutton Hoo some years ago. But it was the 2021 film The Dig that really peaked my interest.
The Sutton Hoo archaeological site is in Suffolk in southeastern England, northeast from London, due east of Cambridge, and not far from the city of Ipswich. It is a site containing a number of burial mounds, with some more prominent than the others (18 or 19 in all). In 1939, the landowner of the site, a widow named Edith Pretty, invited n amateur archaeological named Basil Brown to explore and excavate it. What Brown discovered was one of the most spectacular archaeological finds in Great Britain – a burial place for an Anglo-Saxon of high rank, with almost all of the items buried with him intact. The ship that had been part of the burial had long since disintegrated, but its outline was clearly visible.
The most probable date for the burial is between 600 and 650 A.D.
The British Museum came to visit, and Brown would find himself acknowledged but somewhat sidelined. The World War II began, and all archaeological work stopped. Sutton Hoo was in a particularly vulnerable area, close to the coast, in the event of a German invasion.
In the movie, Carey Mulligan plays Edith Pretty, Ralph Fiennes is Basil Brown, and Lily James plays a member of the dig team. I enjoyed the movie so much that I vowed to make a special effort to see the exhibition at the British Museum if I ever returned to London. Return I did, and the top photograph here was taken by yours truly. I also found a book in the museum’s book shop.
The Sutton Hoo Story: Encounters with Early England by Martin Carver tells the story of this extraordinary discovery. It explains how Mrs. Pretty came to own the land and make her offer to Brown; what happened (or didn’t) during the war years, how work resumed after the war, and some of the remarkable discoveries that were made there.
But Carver does more than tell the Sutton Hoo story. He puts it in its historical and archaeological contexts, explaining how it was like and unlike other sites in Britain and Sweden. He recounts the long history of the excavations and study, and how the official records were developed and maintained. And he notes the “politics” of the site because politics, too, played a role.
Martin Carver
It's a scholarly book, but one that is accessible to general readers. It’s a real treat if you’re interested in Anglo-Saxon history, post-Roman Britain, and archaeology generally. And it’s profusely illustrated with maps, schematics, and photographs, sufficient to satisfy the amateur archaeologist in all of us.
A career Army officer, Carver because one of Britain’s first commercial archaeologists. He was a professor of Archaeology at the University of York for 22 years and editor of Antiquity for 10 years. He is now a full-time professional researcher, writer, public speaker, and broadcaster, and his research includes the Sutton Hoo site as well as other excavations in Britain Scotland, France, Italy, and Algeria. A project he’s involved in is a fundraising effort to rebuild the Sutton Hoo ship.
The Sutton Hoo Story is a delightful resource about a significant historical discovery. Mrs. Pretty would eventually donate the artifacts to the British Museum, and the site itself would become part of the National Trust, with its own visitors’ facility with guided tours, audio guides, a café and book shop. If you can’t make it to the site itself, the exhibition in the British Museum includes some of the most significant artifacts.
I
was in high school when I first read Josephine Tey’s The
Daughter of Time, originally published in 1951. Tey’s detective,
Inspector Alan Grant, is laid up in the hospital, and avoids boredom by reexamining
what is likely the most serious charge ever laid against a British sovereign –
the murder of the young princes in the Tower of London by Richard III,
the last of the Plantagent kings. Tey’s mystery is fascinating and rather
pointedly suggested that history could well be?
But
then, what academic would take a mystery novel seriously?
Four
years later, an American historian named Paul Murray Kendall did academically
what Tey had done novelistically. He wrote a
biography of Richard III that relied exclusively on contemporary sources
instead of the later accounts like that of Sir Thomas More (Shakespeare used
More’s account for the basis of his play Richard
III.) What Kendall discovered was that there was a world of difference
between what Richard’s contemporaries said and what later (and rather obviously
biased Tudor) accounts said.
In
1998, film writer Philippa Langley stopped briefly at a Waterstone’s bookstore
in Edinburgh, to find something to read while on holiday. She saw an old book,
thought it looked interesting, and bought it. She later said she spent less
than minute picking it out. The book was Kendall’s biography of Richard III.
Her
selection changed history, figuratively and literally. After reading the book,
she became convinced that Richard’s reputation has been deliberately blackened
by writers seeking to flatter the Tudors, not to mention the Tudors themselves.
Richard had been turned into a monster, while contemporaries had a very
different perspective.
Portairt of Richard III ion the Nationakl Portrait Gallery, London
Langley
would play a critical role over the next 14 years in what became one of the
marvels of modern archaeology – the discovery of “Skeleton X’ during a dig in Leicester
in central England, the skeleton confirmed as that of Richard III. In fact, she
played a critical role in the questioning, badgering, motivating , fundraising
and undertaking the dig at the site of Greyfriars Friary.
Or
at least it was thought to be the site; no one was quite sure. The friary, which
contained Richard’s tomb, had been destroyed during the dissolution of the
abbeys, monasteries and convents by Henry VIII after the English Reformation
(Henry was less interested in theology and church matters and more interested in
the divorce the Pope wouldn’t grant and the wealth that the various Catholic
institutions held in England). The story was that at the time of the friary’s
destruction, an angry move had destroyed the tomb, exhumed Richard’s remains, and
tossed them in the nearby Soar River.
Mike Pitts
The
story of the discovery and confirmation of Richard III’s skeleton is
wonderfully told in Digging
for Richard III: the Search for the Lost King by Mike Pitts, first published in 2013
and updated and expanded earlier this year to cover the reburial earlier this
year. Pitts was well-suited to write the story – he’s the editor of British Archaeology Magazine and
the author of several archaeological works, including Hengeworld,
the account of the discovery of a large prehistoric temple in Somerset.
Digging for Richard III is a full and
fascinating account of how the king’s remains were discovered – the role of
Philippa Langley, the assembling of the team at the University of Leicester,
how Richard III societies around the world contributed to the funding of the
project, and how the goals of the archaeological team often conflicted with
those of Langley and her supporters. The team was trying to identify the site of
the friary, with the finding of Richard III’s remains somewhere down the list
of objectives. In fact, the archaeological team didn’t really think finding
Richard’s remains was all that likely.
Facial reconstruction from the skeleton's skull by the University of Dundee
This
was a project that did not go as archaeology projects usually go. As Pitts
quotes the members, typically a team will find a few pottery shards “you can’t
even sell on eBay.” In the case of the
dig at Leicester, what was labeled “Skeleton X” was found the very first day of
the dig. But it was simply a skeleton, until a forensic specialist began to dig
the skeleton out of the compacted dirt and discovered it had scoliosis, or a
severe curvature of the spine. Just like the reports of Richard III. Four
months later, DNA testing with descendants of the king confirmed it was indeed
Richard III.
The
findings sparked an international sensation, and, no surprise here, the
inevitable lawsuits. All kinds of organizations and cities wanted Richard’s
remains (think tourist dollars). There were online votes and lobbying, with
Queen Elizabeth II giving a dignified nod to the cathedral at Leicester, a few
short miles from where Richard was born and the nearby field where Richard died
in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. This past spring, Richard was reburied in
the cathedral.
Not
all archaeological projects happen as thrillingly as this one, but Pitts tells
a great story. It’s all about Richard III, yes, but it is also how forensic
science, DNA testing, and good old intuition played critical roles in finding
the body of a long-lost king.
At
the reburial service, actor Benedict Cumberbatch read a poem written for the
occasion by Carol Ann Duffy, Britain’s Poet Laureate (you can watch the reading
here). This is the
poem:
Richard
My bones, scripted in light, upon cold soil,
a human braille. My skull, scarred by a crown,
emptied of history. Describe my soul
as incense, votive, vanishing; your own
the same. Grant me the carving of my name.
These relics, bless. Imagine you re-tie
a broken string and on it thread a cross,
the symbol severed from me when I died.
The end of time – an unknown, unfelt loss –
unless the Resurrection of the Dead …
or I once dreamed of this, your future breath
in prayer for me, lost long, forever found;
or sensed you from the backstage of my death,
as kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.
Related: Highlights of
the reburial service earlier this year.
