Sutton Hoo and Syria: The Anglo-Saxons Who Served in the Byzantine Army?

Abstract

The Sutton Hoo ship burial is the most famous example of a group of lavishly furnished Anglo-Saxon graves. The discovery in 2003 of another, at Prittlewell, Southend (Essex), and its publication in 2019, has brought our knowledge of them into sharper focus.1 Some questions, however, remain. How did the men buried in these graves acquire so much wealth? And why were they buried with so many objects from the eastern Mediterranean? The conventional view is that they probably acquired the gold from their Merovingian neighbours, and that the imported goods came as gifts or through trade.2 Here I argue for