This Bewildering Byzantine Bucket Stumped Archaeologists for Decades. Now, They’ve Finally Discovered Its Purpose
Fragments of the bucket were first found at England’s Sutton Hoo burial site in 1986. New research has revealed that the 1,500-year-old artifact was probably used as a cremation vessel
Nearly 40 years ago, fragments of a mysterious sixth-century bucket were unearthed in England. Archaeologists have been puzzling over the artifact’s purpose ever since.
But now, a team of researchers thinks they’ve solved the mystery: The object, known as the Bromeswell Bucket, was used to hold cremated human remains.
The fragments were unearthed at Sutton Hoo, an archaeological site in Suffolk. Discovered in 1939, the site holds the ruins of a royal ship burial filled with treasures. Over decades of excavations, archaeologists have uncovered weapons, drinking horns, musical instruments and the iconic Sutton Hoo helmet.
The bucket’s purpose had been unclear ever since the fragments were found in 1986. However, a recent “micro-excavation” at Sutton Hoo revealed the bucket’s base, conserved in one piece. The artifact contained fragments of human and animal bones.
“We knew that this bucket would have been a rare and prized possession back in Anglo-Saxon times, but it’s always been a mystery why it was buried,” Angus Wainwright, a National Trust archaeologist, says in a statement. “Now we know it was used to contain the remains of an important person in the Sutton Hoo community.”
The excavation was filmed for “Time Team,” a British television show that broadcasts archaeological digs. The team’s dig was the most intensive excavation at Sutton Hoo since the 2000s.
Researchers were able to identify cremated parts of a skull, an ankle bone and some fragments of animal bones associated with the Bromeswell Bucket. Helena Hamerow, an archaeologist at Oxford University who was not involved in the dig, tells the Washington Post’s Annabelle Timsit that the artifact was a “special kind of cremation vessel.”
“This, we assume, was a very, very special individual from a very important family whose cremated remains were interred in this extraordinary object,” says Hamerow. She notes that cremated remains were typically stored in urns or pots, rather than ornate vessels like the Bromeswell Bucket.
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Pieced together, the bucket depicts a hunting scene featuring a warrior surrounded by animals. A Greek inscription reads, “Use this in good health, Master Count, for many happy years,” according to Artnet’s Min Chen.
Researchers think the bucket came from the Byzantine Empire, though they’re not sure how it ended up in England. The Sutton Hoo site dates to the seventh century, so it was likely made about 100 years before it was buried there.
“We think that the bucket had a life prior to burial,” Laura Howarth, archaeology and engagement manager for the Sutton Hoo site, tells CNN’s Ashley Strickland in an email. “We can’t be certain how this bucket made hundreds of miles away in the Byzantine Empire ended up in this corner of Suffolk. [It] could have been an antique at the time of burial, a gift, a souvenir, etc.”
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Helen Geake, an archaeologist with “Time Team,” says in the statement that the find “epitomizes the strangeness of Sutton Hoo.”
“It has ship burials, horse burials, mound burials and now bath-bucket burials,” she says. “Who knows what else it might still hold?”
In addition to the bucket fragments and human remains, archaeologists uncovered a double-sided comb, which they hope to analyze for traces of ancient DNA.
Beyond the remains found in the bucket, plant remains could “reveal more about the climate and seasonality around the time the bucket was buried,” the National Trust says in a statement posted to Facebook.