Major Archaeological Discovery Completely Rewrote The History Of England
Edith Pretty was no stranger to archaeological excavations: she’d been in Egypt as they dug up the Nile Valley in the early 20th Century. But now her eyes were fixed on her own estate in Suffolk, England, and the question of just what lay beneath. A group of enthusiastic local historians and archaeologists gathered around 18 strange mounds of earth, with no idea what they were about to expose or how it would change everything.
Its own movie
Some of you might find this story a little familiar, because it’s made its way to the small screen. Even Netflix found the discovery so astonishing that they decided it deserved its own film. You may have watched The Dig, but even that won’t be enough for you to fully appreciate the scale of what happened at Sutton Hoo.
“One of the greatest discoveries”
If you’re wondering just how big it is, then consider that Sue Brunning of the British Museum called Sutton Hoo “one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.” So there’s no way one film alone could do it justice. Instead, the movie is “more about the people than it is about the dig,” according to Professor Martin Carver of the University of York.
The people behind it
And those people are definitely important, especially when it comes to Edith Pretty and her lead archaeologist Basil Brown. They were both extraordinary people in their own right, and when they came together it was the beginning of something special. There were a lot of remarkable individuals involved in the dig, actually, including Peggy Piggott.
John Preston
It was Piggott’s nephew, John Preston, who wrote the novel that inspired the Netflix film. And its publication in 2008 shed new light on an event that originally took place in 1939. The story of what happened then and what has happened since make for quite a tale.
