Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings?

Rating:
Summary: An up-to-date review of archaelogy at Sutton Hoo
Review: Carver supervised the most recent round of digging at Sutton Hoo (the full excavation report is due out in 1999). This book seeks to present the new work plus all past work in a short book for a broad audience.

At its best, this book is extremely good. It clearly summarizes the various digs, and the analyis of the archaeological evidence is clear, insightful, and often entertaining (who would have thought the archaelogists could work out so much detail of how a person was buried, down to details of how the coffin tipped when lowered, 1300 years ago?). But when Carver attempts to get into the minds of the people who built the mounds, the book often feels like bad popular history -- one example is that a comb was added to a tomb -- Carver suggests this event shows someone remembering the deceased as an unkempt youth.