An investigation states that the warriors buried in Sutton Hoo fought in Byzantium

Far from being mere passive receptors of exotic objects through trade or diplomatic exchange, Gittos states that certain Anglo -Saxons were part of the cavalry troops known as ‘foedarati’, recruited by Emperor Tiberi II Sutton Hoo served, together with a group of their contemporaries, as cavalry soldiers in the Byzantine army, in the Wars against Sasanids On the eastern front, ”says the researcher.

This new reading provides a deeply cosmopolitan dimension to the early Anglo -Substitute period. “People in the High Middle Ages were much more connected than we usually imagine, and these objects must have been valued not only because they are exotic, but also by the stories they evoked,” Gittos argues.

Archaeological tests that support this thesis are not minor. In Sutton Hoo, the famous burial discovered in Suffolk, silver and copper containers of the Eastern Mediterranean, Betún fragments, possibly from the Levante, and textiles of Syria were found. In Prittlewell, in Essex, an individual was buried in a camera with wooden panels next to a copper flagon that comes from the sanctuary of San Sergio in Sergiópolis (current resaf, Syria). In Taplow, Berkshire, another man was buried with a glass on a rare pedestal, that there are only three comparable specimens, all of Egyptian origin. These objects, underline gittos, “were Current, distinctive and not the type of goods that circulated in normal commercial networks ».

Moreover, the study links these findings with a particular political phenomenon: the early development of “overking slab Supreme leader Within a kingdom hierarchy.

According to Gittos, the desire to commemorate extraordinary life and the official military status of these individuals could have motivated the elaborate funeral rituals. “They were buried with military equipment and weapons associated with their status, perhaps partly financed with the annual assignments for weapons, equestrian equipment and armor they received during their service,” he explains.

Contact channels

The academic also points out that this military service does not explain on its own the phenomenon of princely tombs, but it does reveal it. In fact, he acknowledges that these were not the only links between the Anglo -Saxons and the Byzantine Empire. There were other contact channels: direct diplomatic ties such as the mission of Pope Gregory to Kent, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and commercial routes that connected the kingdoms of eastern England with the Rin region, southern Germany (especially the Alamanic zone), Lombard and Byzantine Italy, and from there to the Eastern Mediterranean. “These different types of links were probably reinforced each other,” says Gittos.

Your proposal does not arise in a vacuum. Gittos recognizes the previous work of historians such as James Campbell, who already in the 90s considered “perfectly possible, if not particularly probable, that the man on mound 1 would have been in Byzantium.” He also quotes Noël Adams, who suggested that direct contact with Byzantium could explain the presence of Byzantine silver In Sutton Hoo, David Hinton and Sally World, who stated that certain cubes from the Eastern Mediterranean could have been brought by English emissaries to the Byzantine court. Archaeologist Marlia Mango, when studying Prittlewell’s “flag”, proposed that he could have been taken by a pilgrim or even “by devotee military,” and asked: “Could he have been buried in Prittlewell one of them?”

Gittos wonders why specialists have traditionally been reluctant to accept the possibility of direct contacts between East Britania and the Byzantine empire. In his analysis, he identifies three causes: a tendency to see Anglo -Saxons as late continental fashion followers; a vision of Romanitas anchored in the Roman past rather than in contemporary Byzantine reality; and a methodological preference for explaining the social changes Through gradual transformations, when sudden and marked changes could also occur.

The researcher concludes that it is time to expand the look on the limits of the Byzantine Empire and its influence. “At a time when much is being reflected on the borders of the empires, the evidence presented here indicates that the shadow projected by the Roman empire of the Eastern in the West was longer, and less diffuse, of what has been believed,” he says, a new approach that raises fundamental questions about identity, power and mobility in England of the 6th century, and that, in his opinion, also forces to reconsider the connections between connections between connections between connections between West and East in the post -time period.

Thus, Gittos investigation suggests that men buried in Sutton Hoo were not only local figures of power, but also veterans of imperial campaigns of two worlds that were probably more interconnected than has been believed so far.