Current Archaeology 352

Our cover feature takes us 16 years back in time to revisit a justly famous Essex excavation. Found in 2003, the burial chamber of the ‘Prittlewell prince’ was a remarkable discovery: an undisturbed Anglo-Saxon tomb furnished with well-preserved artefacts. Since then, a battery of scientific analysis has revealed it to be an even richer source of historical information, granting vivid new insights into early Anglo-Saxon Christianity, the importance of the East Saxons, and even the identity of the tomb’s occupant.
/nAnother celebrated burial site is Repton, in Derbyshire. There, excavations in the 1970s and 1980s exposed a mass of charnel thought to be a communal grave for the battle dead of the Viking Great Army. Now new dating analysis and further excavations are greatly enhancing our understanding of the site – which also still has surprising new secrets to give up.
/nOver 260 skeletons were found at Repton, but at our third site more than 800 have been analysed to-date. Poulton, in Cheshire, was once home to a medieval farming community that for centuries worked the land belonging to a long-demolished Cistercian Abbey. Their remains have a fascinating and frequently poignant story to tell.
/nLeaving behind the burial focus of these features, our fourth article retains a subterranean theme, as we take a trip through the archaeology of mining in England.
/nFinally, we visit the first excavation of Liverpool’s ‘court housing’ – the crowded dwellings of the city’s Victorian poor. What did this investigation reveal about the experiences of the people who called such ‘slums’ home?