Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #TheDig
Most recents (6)
With the huge interest in all things #SuttonHoo at the moment, and because the exhibition spaces here and the @britishmuseum are currently closed, we are bringing some of the objects from the Great Ship Burial to you via social media! First up is of course the helmet... (1/6)
(2/6) For many this the most iconic object discovered at #SuttonHoo but its importance was not realised at first & this may be why it didn’t feature in #TheDig. It was discovered as over 500 rusted fragments.
📷 @britishmuseum
📷 @britishmuseum
(3/6) At the time of discovery only one other Anglo-Saxon helmet, the Benty Grange example, had been recorded in England. With the declaration of war, the objects were quickly moved to the safety of a dis-used London Underground tunnel with little time to study them further.
#TheDig has been causing quite a buzz this past week and we thought it would be a good time to revisit two archaeological digs that uncovered intriguing burials at our churches. So leave #SuttonHoo behind for now and come with us to Sutterby in Lincolnshire ...
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In 2015, a skeleton was found beyond the west wall of the church. Two femurs protrude, with hands clasped in front the the pelvis. These bones were radiocarbon dated to approximately 1050 - the very end of the era of Anglo Saxon rule, before the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Evidence of a church from this date hasn’t been found but it may have been a timber church of which all traces are now lost. The earliest building archaeology here dates to the 12thC - a rough stone foundation built directly on top of the older burial & an existing north doorway.
Well, as I appear to have upset half of FB, I'll go for the double on Twitter then shut up about it: #TheDig
1) Edith Pretty was 5 years older than Basil Brown at the time of the dig.
2) Basil wasn’t an amateur, he was self-taught, and paid to dig sites by Ipswich Museum 1/n
1) Edith Pretty was 5 years older than Basil Brown at the time of the dig.
2) Basil wasn’t an amateur, he was self-taught, and paid to dig sites by Ipswich Museum 1/n
3) The site photos were taken by two women, Mercie Lack and Barbara Wagstaff
4) Biggles the photographer is a complete invention. He did not exist.
5) Stuart and Peggy Piggott were roughly the same age.
6) Stuart was not Peggy’s professor.
4) Biggles the photographer is a complete invention. He did not exist.
5) Stuart and Peggy Piggott were roughly the same age.
6) Stuart was not Peggy’s professor.
7) They did not break off their honeymoon to go on the dig.
8) Peggy was a respected and very experienced archaeologist by the time of Sutton Hoo.
9) There is zero evidence Stuart Piggott was gay.
10) Their marriage lasted another 15 years or thereabouts after Sutton Hoo.
8) Peggy was a respected and very experienced archaeologist by the time of Sutton Hoo.
9) There is zero evidence Stuart Piggott was gay.
10) Their marriage lasted another 15 years or thereabouts after Sutton Hoo.
🧵For #MosaicMonday (aka #MillefioriMonday!) it's got to be these: the pyramid mounts from @NT_SuttonHoo. Made of cloisonne goldwork, garnets & coloured glass, these were the first gold artefacts found during the 1939 excavation 1/ britishmuseum.org/collection/obj…
📷@britishmuseum
📷@britishmuseum
As shown in #TheDig, they were found by Lily James's character #PeggyPiggott, who was born in Kent in 1912. She was an experienced archeologist when she arrived @NT_SuttonHoo, she had studied @Cambridge_Uni & @UCLarchaeology, directed her own dig & published several papers 2/
Her career spanned 60 yrs & she is recognised for her field methods, research into prehistoric settlements, burial traditions & artefact studies (particularly glass beads). She reconsidered #FigsburyRing & a bequest from her helped us to acquire meadowland around Silbury Hill 3/
So. I loved #TheDig. Despite being set in the 30's it evoked a lot of my early fieldwork experience in the 80's and some of the things archaeologists were gushing about are still pay of the experience today. And it also evoked the fantasy that I became an archaeologist to chase>
If you just want to enjoy it, and bask in the glow of archaeologists being happy for once, stop reading here >
Because, being aware of that fantasy, I'm also aware of corrosive elements, things that structure how archaeology works, both practically & in the collective imagination which work against that other fantasy, that my work can 'make a difference' contribute to progressive change>
The dig ('La excavación'), publicada desde onte en Netflix, é un destes grandes filmes británicos con todos os ingredientes: pazo, 'arriba e abaixo' social, guerra mundial, amores e paixóns imposibles, personaxes profundas. E todo un retrato das tensións da arqueoloxÃa. 👇
O filme describe a escavación das mámoas de Sutton Hoo (partÃame de risa coa tradución como 'montÃculos'), un dos sitios arqueolóxicos máis importantes de Gran Bretaña e clave para entender as culturas saxonas do século VII, da que se sabÃa moi pouco. (Os seus suevos, vaia).
A propietaria do pazo encarga a un 'excavator' local, Basil Brown, a intervención: un granxeiro con afeccións arqueolóxicas. Recoméndanllo no museo local, onde pensan que non o precisan eses dÃas para os seus proxectos arqueolóxicos. Brown coñece cada palmo da terra de Suffolk.
