Snape boat grave
Encyclopedia
The Snape ship burial is a 6th century boat grave found at Snape Common
Snape, Suffolk
Snape is a small village in the English county of Suffolk, on the River Alde close to Aldeburgh. It has about 600 inhabitants. Snape is now best known for Snape Maltings, no longer in commercial use, but converted into a tourist centre together with a concert hall that hosts the major part of the...

, near Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh is a coastal town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Located on the River Alde, the town is notable for its Blue Flag shingle beach and fisherman huts where freshly caught fish are sold daily, and the Aldeburgh Yacht Club...

 in Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

, East Anglia
East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...

.

History

This was the first boat grave of its kind discovered in England (since the ship found at Ashby Dell near Lowestoft
Lowestoft
Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly point of the United Kingdom. It is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich...

, Suffolk in 1834 in a silted river channel may not have contained a grave), and foreshadowed the discovery of the two large ship burial
Ship burial
A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave...

s, one of them plundered, at Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo, near to Woodbridge, in the English county of Suffolk, is the site of two 6th and early 7th century cemeteries. One contained an undisturbed ship burial including a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts of outstanding art-historical and archaeological significance, now held in the British...

, Mounds 1 and 2. It appears certain that Sutton Hoo Mound 2 was opened at about the same time as the Snape excavation, because there is a report of that date of a large quantity of iron ship-rivet
Rivet
A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the buck-tail. On installation the rivet is placed in a punched or pre-drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked A rivet...

s having been excavated there and afterwards rendered into horseshoes.

A group of barrows was excavated here in 1862 under the direction of Septimus Davidson and Nicholas Fenwick Hele of Aldeburgh, and the remains of a clinker-built boat about 15 m long was found in the soil under the largest of the barrows. The ship had been used to contain a high status burial, and had been lowered into land which had previously contained cremated burials in urns, some of which had been carefully removed and reburied when the ship was mound-laid. The grave goods from the ship included fragments of an amber glass claw beaker
Chalice (cup)
A chalice is a goblet or footed cup intended to hold a drink. In general religious terms, it is intended for drinking during a ceremony.-Christian:...

 of early Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

 manufacture and a gold ring with filigree of possibly German manufacture containing an antique Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 intaglio engraved gem in the bezel
Bezel
Bezel may refer to:* Bezel setting, or bezel, the rim which encompasses and fastens a jewel, watch crystal, lens or other object* The sloping facets of the crown of a cut gem such as in diamond cutting...

. Based on the finds, the burial is thought to be of 6th century date. Two masses of what was thought to be human hair were also found.

The knowledge of this grave assisted archaeologist Basil Brown
Basil Brown
Basil John Wait Brown was a farmer, archaeologist, amateur astronomer and author who most famously discovered the buried ship at Sutton Hoo and excavated its sandy outline on the eve of war in 1939....

 to understand the nature of the nearby Sutton Hoo burials as soon as he realised he was dealing with a boat-like structure. He visited Aldeburgh to inspect the finds on 20 July 1938, during the excavation of Sutton Hoo Mound 2, the plundered and disturbed mound which was shown by many loosely-distributed iron rivets to have contained a boat, although no impression survived and the rivets were not in their original relative positions. He was therefore fully aware of the meaning of the rivets when he discovered them again, this time in situ, on 11 May 1939 when opening the mound which contained the undisturbed ship-burial. He was also well aware that the Snape burial was of early Anglo-Saxon, not of Viking age
Viking Age
Viking Age is the term for the period in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, spanning the late 8th to 11th centuries. Scandinavian Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. The Vikings also reached Iceland, Greenland,...

 date, and this was part of the evidence which already in 1938 was convincing Basil Brown and his friend and principal employer Guy Maynard (Curator of Ipswich Museum
Ipswich Museum
Ipswich Museum is a registered museum of culture, history and natural heritage located on High Street in Ipswich, the County Town of the English county of Suffolk...

 1920-1952) that the burials at Sutton Hoo were of similarly early date.

The finds and records from the excavation are held in the Aldeburgh Moot Hall Museum
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