I have looked to see if anyone has mentioned this find previously, but it doesn't look like it.

This is the oldest Christian burial in the Anglo-Saxon world of East Anglia. The grave goods are on permanent display at a museum in Southend. We went on the Opening Day in May and it is indeed fascinating. Not much further away (near Woodbridge, within an easy drive) is Sutton Hoo with it's ship burial, and possibly that of  a king rather than a prince. You do wonder if these two knew each other.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prittlewell_royal_Anglo-Saxon_burial

It's an unfortunate moniker they've decided to use in their media activity, isn't it? Even if the guy was indeed the son of a local king the term "prince" would never have applied (and wouldn't even have been understood by locals anyway) - and in fact use of the term by archaeologists involved in this find shows a distinct ignorance of Saxon kingship and how such status was determined and conferred on the part of so-called professionals who, one would have sincerely hoped, should really know better. It's either an unjustifiably "dumbed down" moniker, or - even more worryingly - proof that the archaeologists themselves have been "dumbed down"!

I assume that it was simply the temptation to opt for a snazzy and childish use of alliteration in press releases which led to the adoption of so dumb a name for what is, in fact, a find of immense historical significance if the gold foil "crosses" did indeed infer that the body is of a Christian noble (presenting this supposition as hard evidence of it being the oldest Saxon Christian burial site is equally disingenuous, I reckon).

We discussed early Christianity in Britain here before (also prompted by an important Saxon dig by the Wensum river in Norfolk) - and in fact archaeological excavation performed since the practice became a scientific endeavour has revealed that it's a far more exciting and dynamic history than the traditional account ever suggested, and gets particularly convoluted and interesting in precisely that neck of the woods (SE England) around the time that this lad would also have been buried, taking in as it does equally exciting developments in Christianity as a religion worth adopting politically and dynastically throughout Frankish and affiliate kingdoms elsewhere on the continent at the same time.

I plan to be in England some time later in the Autumn and will definitely try to get down to Southend. It's not a museum I have visited before so thanks for the heads up.

I gather that the National Trust have also just reopened the Sutton Hoo site after a major revamp with new "immersive exhibitions", although at the end of the day the site itself of course remains just a series of bumps in a grassy field.

When dining at vegan restaurant in Whitstable, Kent, we struck up conversation with a pink-haired 
lady who was at the opposite table. She was an archaeologist, from the Museum of London, and had done some work in Southend. 

What she said, and this has stuck in my mind, is that it isn't certain the body is that of a male; only tiny bone fragment(s) were found, not an entire skeleton. That led us on to the eastern European/Siberian burials of high-status women, with jewellery, tattoos and horses. In other words, it could be the Prittlewell Princess that has been discovered.


The Sutton Hoo site has indeed reopened recently after being closed for many months (to my great annoyance as a paid-up NT member). There was a lottery award, or could be a heritage award - not entirely sure - of £4million and the exhibition hall has been revamped and there is (or shortly will be) a full size replica of the boat. But as you say, apart from the Exhibition Hall, it's still only a field with humps (very atmospheric though) and Mrs Pretty's house to look round.

Hatshepsut wrote:

... In other words, it could be the Prittlewell Princess that has been discovered.

Given the broo-ha-ha surrounding the re-interment of a squashed nun found while excavating a car park in Leicester recently I wouldn't be at all surprised only your pink-haired friend had a very valid point!
(I am only half jesting)

But it is the Christian aspect to this burial that intrigues me more - if such a thing can be ascertained at all (which I doubt) it would throw a lot of light on the inter-kingdom relationships in the area during a time which has proven to be notoriously difficult to interpret based on purely philological research (very little of which relates directly to the time and place and which reeks of contemporaneous agenda in its composition, no matter the source).

I am intrigued by your comment about a 'squashed nun'. So it wasn't King Richard? Tell me more please!

In December 2014 - suspiciously soon after the excavation itself - the Leicester University team whose existence and funding hinges largely on the wow factor of having discovered our favourite hunchback (with the first JCB shovel-thrust even!) issued this rather starling press release (well - "startling" for anyone with even half a clue about how DNA analysis works and who cannot see any good reason why a single Canadian lad should be referred to in the plural).

"The latest announcement confirming the king’s identity comes after comparing the remains to the mitochondrial DNA samples from living descendants of Richard III’s older sister, Anne of York. The researchers conservatively state that they are 99.999% sure they found the lost monarch’s remains, and the odds of them being wrong are roughly 6.7 million to one.

Comparing DNA on the Y chromosome didn’t have such clear results. While this could mean that there was one or more breaks in the royal bloodline throughout the years, this doesn’t necessarily have to be true. The Y chromosome has a relatively high mutation rate, so it’s not surprising that there wouldn’t be a clear match 20+ generations on. Even without the direct link to male descendants, everything else appears to be in order to verify the king’s identity."

The Y chromosome analysis referred to above as being relatively (pardon the pun) inconsequential - but which actually would help prove that known relatives were of direct patrilineal descent from the lad, or at least had a more recent common ancestor than that which the mitochondrial DNA can ascertain (probably Lucy the Australopithecus - which puts me in line for the throne too, along with every human on the planet) - was to be further refined following the Canadian lad's (a known descendant of RIII) contribution of DNA samples, specifically regarding his SNP markers (which have practically no mutation rate at all given the generational gap between King Dick and the present) and these final "proofs" would be announced "imminently".

What year is this? .....

My own pet theory as to who had been found related to the presence of other buried nuns in the vicinity from the same period. However any other descendants of Lucy can of course also apply ...

Perhaps "Princeps" would be better than "Prince" in this context. Does seem to have had some A-S currency.

Only later, I reckon - when guys occasionally emerging as front runners in the political power stakes needed some kind of appointment ratification from the pope and the old Latin terminology came into play (ironically pre-Saxon Britons would have had more understanding of the term, along with "counts" and "dukes" etc in their original manifestation). But the truth is that we don't even know if the "kings" of the period saw themselves as such, let alone that their "kingdoms" accommodated "princes" of any hue. The same problem exists for the same period throughout all non-Frankish areas from Fresia to Jutland - and even the Franks seem to have had a problem establishing "kings" initially that satisfied their Christian mentors back in Rome regarding what the term described.

Though all this itself simply adds to the complexity of what was really going on in Kent, Essex, southern Norfolk, in and around Sussex, and on the Isle of Wight during the early Saxon period. Traditional history tends to avoid acknowledging direct "foreign" control over these areas as seems to have happened from time to time, and this allows a rather linear progression of Christian conversions and influence in the area in traditional histories. However the whole murky business of Frankish and Merovingian involvement at crucial times, along with an apparent power struggle between two distinct and competitive Christian organisations (or even three if the original British version survived longer than Bede & Co ever gave it credit for), adds a whole new level of interpretation to how kingship itself as well as religious belief developed in the Saxon portion of Britain, both important aspects to how a peculiarly "English" form of Saxon established itself as the cultural and political "norm".