Anglo-Saxons, Picts and Scots

Learning Objective: To study the archaeological evidence at to ask and answer questions.

NEXT www.planbee.com They dig with trowels. They spend a lot of time in mud. Have a look at these picture clues. Can you guess what job is being described? They find things underground. They study the past.

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com Did you guess correctly?!

The pictures were describing the job of an archaeologist. Archaeologists find out about the past by discovering objects that have been buried in the ground over time. They carefully dig these objects up and investigate them. You can find out a lot about history by studying the objects that have been left behind.

Sometimes, archaeologists will find lots of pieces of a single object that they have to put back together. Sometimes they will dig down and discover the remains of a whole town!

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com Archaeologists find sites to dig up in different ways. Sometimes there are lumps in the ground that don't look natural and archaeologists will investigate them to see what they are. Sometimes you can see marks on the ground from the air that you can't see on the ground, so archaeologists go up in small planes and take photographs.

Archaeologists also walk over newly ploughed fields to see if any objects have been brought to the surface – they might be from larger collections that are still underground.

Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project. Photo by Michael Given.

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com What is Sutton Hoo?

Sutton Hoo is one of Britain’s most important archaeological sites. It is a collection of mounds outside in Suffolk, not far from the sea. Archaeologists were interested in the lumps and bumps in the ground and wanted to investigate. A big house was built near the mounds in 1910. When Edith Pretty bought the house in 1926 she was also interested in the mounds. In 1938 she asked a local archaeologist, , to do some digging to find out if there was anything interesting buried underneath.

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com After he started digging, he realised that he had found something very important so he asked another archaeologist, Charles Phillips of Cambridge University, to come and help.

What do you think they have found?!

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com As they dug they uncovered the imprint of a whole ship that they worked out was a burial ship. However, none of the wood from the ship had survived and there was no sign of a body. Only the iron rivets remained, as well as the metal, stone and glass objects that the person was buried with.

Why do you think the wood and the body were not in the ship?

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com Different types of earth will make different objects rot, depending on what the earth is like. In normal soil, the bones of a skeleton would survive. However, the sand at Sutton Hoo is very acidic which made the skeleton rot. If the burial ship had been left in soil, we might still have had bones and wood to investigate.

This picture shows what the remains of a body look like when it is buried in soil.

Image courtesy of Oxford Archaeology

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com So who was buried at Sutton Hoo?

The burial ship at Sutton Hoo has been a historical mystery since its discovery. Historians are still not sure exactly who the ship belonged to or who might have been buried inside.

What do you think we can do to solve the mystery?

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com To help us find out about the burial ship at Sutton Hoo we can look at the objects that were found in and around the ship itself. Objects from the past can tell us a lot about people from a long time ago. Have a look at the Object Cards. Do you know what each of the objects are? Put them into two piles...

I know what these I don’t know what objects are. these objects are.

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com If we don’t know what an object is or what it was used for, how can we find out?

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com Let’s have a look at some of these objects in more detail!

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com Plenary: What have we found out about the burial ship at Sutton Hoo?

What kind of time period do you think we are looking at? Why?

BACK NEXT www.planbee.com Historians mostly agree that the ship was buried around the year 625. This means that it is an ANGLO-SAXON burial ship. The Anglo-Saxons lived in Britain from around 410 to 1066. We are going to be learning lots more about Anglo-Saxons over the next few lessons to see if we can solve the Sutton Hoo mystery!

How long ago was 625? How different do you think Britain would have been during Anglo- Saxon times?

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