Sutton Courtenay is, for an Anglo-Saxonist, an absolutely iconic site. When it was dug in the 1920s it was the first time that early Anglo-Saxon buildings had ever been identified. It was still so important when I was at university (sixty years later) that our very first essay, a week into the course, was about Sutton Courtenay and its buildings. So being able to dig there was an amazing experience.
We were building on the work done by Helena Hamerow and her team from Oxford. It was incredibly generous of her to suggest the site and help uncover what turned out to be one of the biggest early Anglo-Saxon buildings ever found. Helena's one of the most original thinkers on these buildings and has pointed out how much they have to tell us about life in the period, rather than death!
The buildings tell us a different story to what we learn from early Anglo-Saxon burials. The burials look very Germanic; the buildings, though, are distinctively English and may have developed out of late Roman buildings. They also tell us a lot about the environment, as whoever built Sutton Courtenay could control the importing and carpentering of great quantities of huge timbers from ancient woodlands. The impact of these giant buildings must have been awesome, but the smaller ones have their part to play too; the Grubenhäuser, with their big pits beneath the building, are amazing traps for finds including animal bones and charred seeds, helping us to reconstruct farming techniques and ancient diet.
At Sutton Courtenay Mick asked me if I'd like to direct the project, and this was a nerve-racking role to take on. If you are directing where the trenches go, their size, and the methods by which they are excavated, you need to be everywhere at once. Which areas need the geophysics first? How much can we take off with the machines? What has Stewart found out? What features have we found - and is the trench the right size? What about the available time and labour - can Tracey release a digger from this trench to allow us to extend that one? And having to take ten minutes (which always turns into an hour) to explain what's going on to a camera crew isn't always convenient... I certainly found out how difficult Mick's job is!
Luckily, the soil was a big help. It's a sandy site with a bit of gravel, and I trained as an excavator on a sand site, at Sutton Hoo. So I was used to the way in which, if the trenches are big enough and the trowelling careful enough, you will be able to see the archaeology in incredible detail, by subtle colour and texture variations within the sand. These often disappear up close, so the ideal is to get up as high as you can and look at the big picture. The cherry-picker was in high demand but the tops of the Land Rovers were a good substitute.
Of course there is another similarity with Sutton Hoo. Both Suttons (the names are a coincidence) are likely to have been royal sites, and the atmosphere of power and importance resonates down the centuries when you are standing there in the midst of their remains. I had the privilege during this Time Team to stand in a mighty hall, like those we hear about in Beowulf which were decorated with gold and ivory. Okay, its roof, walls and floor were gone, but I still felt a shiver!
