Examining a well-connected Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Broughton Lodge
Some 60 years ago, a pioneering community excavation carried out three seasons of digging at Broughton Lodge, Nottinghamshire, revealing an unusual Anglo-Saxon cemetery. This image shows the 1963-1964 investigations in progress.
The diverse grave goods excavated at a 6th-century cemetery in Nottinghamshire testify to a wealthy community with wide-ranging trade links – but, as well as new objects and materials, did these networks help to spread deadly diseases, and might this explain the unusually high number of multiple burials identified at Broughton Lodge? Carly Hilts visited a new exhibition about the site and spoke to Ann Inscker, Professor Chris Loveluck, and Dr Clare Pickersgill to learn more.
Pandemic disease and climate change might seem like contemporary concerns, but the archaeological record has much to tell us about the impact of similar events on communities who lived centuries earlier. Intriguing insights are emerging from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Broughton Lodge, near Willoughby-on-the-Wolds in Nottinghamshire, which was excavated during a pioneering community project in the 1960s and has yielded further clues during subsequent scientific research. The high-status artefacts and exotic materials accompanying many of the graves speak of a diverse mix of cultural influences and trade links stretching across Europe and far beyond – but the site is also home to the largest number of multiple burials yet identified at any 6th-century cemetery in England. Why were so many people from this apparently thriving community dying in quick succession? A new exhibition at the University of Nottingham Museum draws together evidence from the original excavations and recent scientific analysis to explore possible causes, and the experiences and beliefs of the people buried there.
It had long been known that the site, which lies beside the Fosse Way (the Roman road from Exeter to Lincoln), was home to extensive Roman remains, including a large settlement and a cemetery. Evidence of activity dating to this period is described by the 18th-century antiquarian William Stukeley, and more buildings and burials were uncovered during investigations on an adjacent site in 1948-1951. Broughton Lodge’s early medieval significance, however, only became apparent in the 1960s, when the construction of a flyover for the A46 (the modern successor of the Fosse Way) revealed graves and a cobbled surface. Despite the site’s history, the Ministry of Works judged the archaeology to be too damaged to merit further investigation – but luckily the discoveries had come to the attention of Malcolm Dean, a local maths teacher who was also a member of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, a major county historical and archaeological society.
Recognising the site’s potential – and its immediate threat of destruction – Malcolm sprang into action, assembling a team of willing volunteers from the local community to excavate and record the remains before they were lost forever. They were assisted in their endeavours by Alan MacCormick, the newly appointed Curator of Archaeology at Nottingham Castle Museum, as well as by Malcolm’s rigorously methodical approach to excavation, based on a large grid system (well, he was a mathematician!). From 1963-1964 and 1965-1966, two seasons of digging revealed dozens of graves, many of them richly furnished, as well as a section of the original Fosse Way, with the volunteers pressing on undeterred even as the modern roadworks continued around them. These discoveries finally convinced the Ministry of Works of the site’s importance, and they agreed to fund a final phase in 1968.
Tragically, Malcolm was killed in a car crash in 1970, leaving his final report on the findings incomplete, but the work of bringing the site to publication was taken up first by Hazel Wheeler, Director of Excavations for the Trent Valley Archaeological Research Committee (a forerunner of Trent & Peak Archaeology, which is today part of York Archaeology) and, from 1985, by her colleague Gavin Kinsley, who published the resulting monograph in 1993. The excavation archives and finds were shared between Nottingham City Museums and the University of Nottingham Museum and, almost 60 years later, some 40 objects drawn from both collections have been reunited for the first time to help tell the site’s story in the new exhibition co-curated by both institutions. As the displays attest, analysis of the Broughton Lodge burials has shed vivid light on what has proven to be one of the wealthiest and most unusual Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in Nottinghamshire.
Excavations under way at Broughton Lodge in 1963-1964. Given the impractical footwear of some of the visitors, and the smart attire of the volunteers in the trenches, the exhibition’s curators wonder if they had donned their ‘Sunday best’ for an official photography day on the site.
OBJECT LESSONS
In total, around 120 graves were excavated at Broughton Lodge, spanning c.AD 475-580. The artefacts that they contained highlight the diverse cultural influences and expressions of identity that were coming together in England at this time, combining items that reflect traditions from northern Germany, Denmark, and south-west Norway with those of more local styles, as well as materials from even further afield, and some ‘heirloom’ objects dating to the Roman period. Many of the grave goods are fairly typical of their time: adolescent and adult males were frequently found with iron shield bosses and spearheads, while their female contemporaries tended to have brooches of various types, including the annular (ring-shaped) designs that appear to have developed in 5th-century Britain, and square-headed small-long types which derive from northern Germany and Denmark. Adding to this cosmopolitan picture, some women were buried with necklaces of Baltic amber, and polychrome glass beads from Francia. Other objects were more unusual, however, among them a hand-worked pottery vessel which, at first glance, appeared to be a type that is seen across 5th-century and 6th-century England – but it had a large piece of Roman blue glass set into its base, leading it to be dubbed the ‘window pot’. It was found in Grave 59, the burial of an adolescent who was aged 14, probably male, and was also accompanied by a spear.
Other artefacts testify to the social status of some of the individuals buried on the site. One female grave included a double ‘girdle-hanger’, thought to be a symbol of authority within the household, while another wealthy woman was identified in Grave 3. She had been buried with a pair of annular brooches (which would have secured her dress at the shoulders) as well as a much larger cruciform brooch adorned with gilding and silver decoration. This ostentatious ornament, together with a more fragmentary example from Grave 8, represents trade links with the eastern Mediterranean: its gold probably came from melted-down Byzantine coins, while the mercury used in the gilding process would have come from the same region. The well-dressed woman also had Norwegian-style wrist-clasps to fasten her sleeves, a buckle for her belt, and a much rarer item: a pendant or amulet fashioned from the tooth of a beaver (a species which, 1,400 years later, has just been reintroduced into the region). Two other early medieval examples of such objects are known, also from women’s graves in the East Midlands: at Little Chester in Derby and Wigber Low in the Derbyshire Peak District. It is possible that they represent a regional tradition of protective charms used by women of some status (the Wigber Low example is tipped with gold, while the Broughton Lodge pendant’s top has a green tinge that suggests a now-lost copper-alloy binding). Two pendants made from the teeth of boars or feral pigs were found in female graves on the Nottinghamshire site, too.
This was not the end of the prestigious objects in Grave 3: the woman was accompanied by a large elephant ivory ring as well, which would have formed the mouth of a now-decayed leather or cloth purse or bag. Another well-preserved example was recovered from Grave 56, while fragments of others were found in two more burials on the site. Recent research on ivory purse-rings by Rowan English (https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12715), as well as by Dr Katie Hemer and Dr Hugh Willmott (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103943), suggests that they probably come from east Africa, possibly the Rift Valley, and it is thought that the ivory was exported via the Nile Delta in Egypt and across the Mediterranean before arriving in eastern England. (See CA 399 for a 5th- to 6th-century cemetery in Scremby, Lincolnshire, where 20% of the excavated female graves had ivory purse-rings.) The rings themselves are plain, transverse sections sawn through large tusks – indeed, their dimensions are rarely seen in modern elephant populations, highlighting the impact of hunting since the early medieval period.
This is an extract of an article that appeared in CA 433. Read on in the magazine, or click here to read it online at The Past, where you can read all of the Current Archaeology articles in full as well as the content of our other magazines, Current World Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and Military History Matters.
