Meet the Real People Behind the Sutton Hoo Excavations, as Portrayed in Netflix s The Dig 22 Shares
The excavations at Sutton Hoo, the site of Dark Age-era Anglo-Saxon burial mounds located in Suffolk, East Anglia, are considered England s greatest archeological find of the 20th century. Mere months before England entered the second World War, the story captivated British consciousness, as well as the attentions of budding archeologists the world over, and not only for the spectacular treasures discovered within the graves.
The people involved, from the wealthy widowed landowner whose estate the mounds were discovered on, to the self-taught archeologist who first broke ground, to the British Museum officials who wrested control of the dig away from the local scientists all set against the backdrop of England on the eve of WWII seem perfectly suited for cinema. Sure enough, Netflix has a new film,
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It was in Suffolk - not Egypt, Turkey or Greece - that one of the most significant archeological discoveries of all time took place. In 1939 amidst the shadow of World War II, a young widow named Edith Pretty contracted a local expert to dig up the mounds in her garden in Sutton Hoo, believing them to be part of a mass ancient graveyard. Yet as Netflix’s brilliant new film
The Dig dramatises, what they actually found was a huge, Anglo-Saxon longship, possibly the burial site of the ancient King Rædwald of East Anglia.