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The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial. VII. The Salvaging of the Finds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Extract

The removal of the chief finds from the Sutton Hoo ship was an exciting and exacting task extending over more than a week. My own participation began when the gold purse and its trappings—as well as some other objects, such as the whetstone—had been found. The dominant feature in my first view of the ship was a great three-foot purple-grey disk: the silver dish (PLATE XVIII), beneath which the lip of at least one other vessel was promise of more treasure to come. Other things there were already exposed—especially the two bronze bowls at the southwest corner of the burial deposit. But the urgent interest was centred on the dish and on the problem of whether it could be lifted entire, or whether steps should be taken by means of drawings and photographs to record its complete character before the hazardous work of lifting it began.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1940

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References

* I have used an almost similar method in removing very fragile Bronze Age pottery. The consolidation of two Bronze Age urns from Coity, Glamorgan (Sir Cyril Fox in Archaeologia, 1937 (1938), LXXXVII, 166-7, fig. 3 (p. 132) and plate XLVI) was only possible because they were lifted intact in this way and the crumbling pottery hardened and treated in the workshop before its contents (which helped to reinforce it) were removed.—F.W.G.