The Prittlewell Princely Burial presents the results of the excavation of a burial from Prittlewell, near Southend (in Essex), which, the book argues, dates to the late sixth century ad. The quantity and quality of the finds, including items made of gold, identify this as the grave of someone of high status, justifiably described as ‘princely’. The excavation and the subsequent finds conservation and research were carried out to a very high standard, and the results are embodied in this publication, for which all the many contributors deserve congratulation. The text, accompanied by many photographs and drawings, covers all possible details of the site, its history and archaeology, the grave and its contents, and its wider contexts within Essex and beyond. Many further illustrations and data are available in the online archive hosted by Archaeology Data Service (ADS), which this reviewer successfully accessed. The publication in print of so much detail is welcome to this reviewer, who suspects that online resources are not consulted as often as they should be, partly because of lack of awareness of what is available. The Prittlewell site seems to have found the best, if an expensive, solution: a longer, more detailed book (The Prittlewell Princely Burial), which forms the main report, and one that is shorter (The Anglo-Saxon Princely Burial at Prittlewell) yet which contains a text that brilliantly compresses the conclusions of the main report while giving a good introduction to the processes of archaeological excavation and analysis. The finds are on display in Southend Museum. Anyone can discover the site as the museum display, book or webpage, then read further using whichever medium suits them best.

The burial was discovered in the course of road widening: an intact Anglo-Saxon burial, not previously damaged by human or animal activity, simply left to disintegrate in situ. The many finds included metal vessels still hanging on the walls of the timber burial chamber where the burial party had left them. The excavators and conservators have been able to virtually reconstruct the processes of construction, decay and collapse of the chamber and its contents. This was a considerable achievement since most organic material had decayed, leaving only discoloured soil to show where wooden chamber, coffin, boxes or textiles had been, except where they had been in contact with metal. Of the body of the person buried, only few fragments of teeth survived. The Prittlewell Princely Burial is a demonstration of the value of skilled excavation. Incompetent digging would have found the complete objects, but many artefacts would not have been recognised. The lyre is a case in point, which, consisting as it did simply of brown soil and a few metal fittings, was nonetheless able to have its shape, form and size established − even to the extent that it was revealed to have been repaired and buried face down, making it the most complete of the lyres excavated from an Anglo-Saxon burial, despite hardly any of its fabric surviving.

The initial discovery of the Prittlewell burial in 2003−4 attracted much attention, with many preliminary presentations of the finds. The delay in post-excavation research and publication was caused by sustained local opposition to the road widening scheme that had been the occasion for the excavation. Only when this was resolved in 2009, by withdrawal of the road widening, could responsibility for funding post-excavation research and publication be agreed, taken on by Historic England and Southend Borough Council. In that context, this project has been completed in an admirably timely fashion, whereas ignorance of the reason for the delay had caused some criticism.

Exhaustive studies of each and every artefact type include reconstructions and precise accounts of location in the burial chamber. Many tiny details were discovered and recorded: paint on a wooden box, scratched names on a spoon, tiny images of hares with flying ears on the hanging bowl. The labour that would have been required to construct and install coffin, chamber and burial mound is calculated as around 140−55 person days, involving several different teams. Such estimates can only be approximate, but it is clear that this represented many times the labour and resources needed for a simple inhumation.

A small criticism of The Prittlewell Princely Burial is that, as often happens, finds from cremations have been missed in the comparative reviews. Also, the discussion chapters perhaps include more general accounts of early medieval burial and society than is needed, and the Bayesian chronological calculations remain opaque to the statistically incompetent. But these are all minor quibbles; the overwhelming impression is of admirably thorough and knowledgeable scholarship and technical expertise.

The aspect of the burial that has attracted most attention is the presence of two gold foil crosses, probably placed on the eyes of the dead person. This immediately suggested Christianity. The crosses are so small and fragile they must have been made for the funeral and therefore have direct bearing on the belief of the person buried or those who laid out the body. This is a dramatic confirmation that Christian burial need not preclude lavish grave equipment, and it also led to much discussion of the relationship of this burial to the account given by Bede of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. An initial premise was that this burial must post-date the Augustinian mission of ad 597. The broad date range of ad 580−620 given by coins, artefact typology and ¹⁴C would allow this burial to slot neatly into Bede’s narrative, which suggests that the East Saxon king Sæbert was converted by 604 but by his death in c 616 had lapsed to paganism. However, relating Prittlewell to recent chronological analysis of Anglo-Saxon burial (Bayliss and Hines Reference Bayliss and Hines2013) gives instead a date range of ad 575−605 (95 per cent probability), which means that this Christian individual may have been buried before Augustine arrived in Kent. This is not, however, a real problem. Christianity was known in Britain long before 597: Ricula, the wife of Sæbert, was sister-in-law of the Christian Queen Bertha in Kent and could have been baptised, possibly with a role in the Prittlewell burial. This kind of linkage between historically recorded individuals and archaeological evidence is intrinsically attractive, but in this case can only be speculation.

The Prittlewell Princely Burial compares favourably with the publications of Sutton Hoo (Bruce Mitford Reference Bruce Mitford1975−83; Carver Reference Carver2005). All three represent a high level of scholarship and expertise, with investment both in excavation and research. All provide detailed accounts of artefacts and assemblages, with extensive technical and scientific input, together with wide-ranging comparative artefact study and accounts of the history of the sites. Carver (Reference Carver2005) has a wider remit, as an excavation report of a substantial part of the Sutton Hoo cemetery, whereas the other two each focus on a specific elaborate burial. Otherwise, Carver (Reference Carver2005) and The Prittlewell Princely Burial recognisably belong to the same phase of archaeological research, concerned as much or more with the ideological, social, political and economic structures of early medieval society as with historical narrative.

Overall, both The Prittlewell Princely Burial and The Anglo-Saxon Prittlewell Princely Burial do indeed ‘restore the East Anglian kingdom to its proper place in the world of the late 6th and 7th centuries’ (Hirst and Scull, 105).