Shrubland Hall Anglo-Saxon cemetery is a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon burial site discovered at Shrubland Hall Quarry near Coddenham, Suffolk. The cemetery contains fifty burials and a number of high-status graves including "the most complicated Anglo-Saxon bed ever found." Bed burials, in which a female body is laid out on an ornamental wooden bed, usually accompanied by jewellery, are rarely found, and are considered of national importance. Only 13 bed burials have been found to date in the UK. The bed burial was one of two graves at the cemetery which were found within wooden-lined chambers. The second chamber contained a male skeleton with grave goods including a seax, a spear, a shield, an iron-bound wooden bucket, a copper alloy bowl and a drinking horn.

The site was uncovered by Suffolk County Council's Archaeology Service in 1999 during exploratory excavations prior to gravel extraction by the quarry operators. Evidence of Iron Age and Roman activity had previously been identified in the area.

Shrubland Hall Anglo-Saxon cemetery

See also

List of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries

List of Anglo-Saxon bed burials

Burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England

Notes

References

Anglo-Saxon burial practices

Anglo-Saxon sites in England

Archaeology of death

Archaeology of the kingdom of East Anglia

Archaeological sites in Suffolk

Burial monuments and structures

History of Suffolk

Shrubland Hall Anglo-Saxon cemetery