Time Team recording special at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk

Sir Tony Robinson, pictured in 2005, is recording at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk (Image: Newsquest)

Long-running archaeological TV show Time Team has been in Suffolk recording a special episode at Sutton Hoo.

Original presenter Sir Tony Robinson has been at the Anglo-Saxon burial site near Woodbridge to film the special for the show's YouTube channel.

Time Team was broadcast for 20 years on Channel 4 and released almost 300 episodes, with each one featuring a team of specialists carrying out an archaeological dig over a three-day period.

After the show's original run ended in 2014, it returned as an online show earlier this year and is fan-funded via Patreon.

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Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers

The University of Oxford online course: Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers is currently enroling for Trinity Term when the course will begin on 25 January.

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Early medieval female burial site is ‘most significant ever discovered’ in UK

A reconstruction of the burial site near Harpole in Northamptonshire. 

Photograph: MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)

Find dating from about 650AD in Northamptonshire includes jewelled necklace and changed archaeologists’ view of the period

Archaeologists don’t often bounce with excitement, but the Museum of London archaeology team could hardly contain themselves on Tuesday as they unveiled an “exhilarating” discovery made on the last day of an otherwise barren dig in the spring.

“This is the most significant early medieval female burial ever discovered in Britain,” said the leader of the dig, Levente Bence Balázs, almost skipping with elation. “It is an archaeologist’s dream to find something like this.”

“I was looking through a suspected rubbish pit when I saw teeth,” Balázs added, his voice catching with emotion at the memory. “Then two gold items appeared out of the earth and glinted at me. These artefacts haven’t seen the light of day for 1,300 years, and to be the first person to see them is indescribable. But even then, we didn’t know quite how special this find was going to be.”

What Balázs had found was a woman buried between 630 and 670 AD – a woman buried in a bed alongside an extraordinary, 30-piece necklace of intricately-wrought gold, garnets and semi-precious stones. It is, by a country mile, the richest necklace of its type ever uncovered in Britain and reveals craftsmanship unparalleled in the early medieval period.

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A 1,300-Year-Old Gold Necklace Found in an Early Christian Burial in England Is a ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime Discovery,’ Says Archaeologist

Collection of pendants from the Harpole Treasure. Photo by Andy Chopping; © MOLA.

An exquisite gold necklace from the seventh century C.E. has been found in England at the burial site of a powerful woman who was interred some 1,300 years ago, according to the Associated Press.  

The necklace, known as the Harpole Treasure after the Northamptonshire village where it was discovered, is decorated with 30 pendants and beads fashioned from gold Roman coins and semi-precious stones. The large rectangular pendant features a cross, iconography that suggests the deceased may have been an early Christian religious leader. The use of precious metals and stones suggests she was also very wealthy.

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Who were the Normans?

How did a group of rowdy itinerant Scandinavians come to dominate swathes of Europe for more than two centuries? Alex Burghart tackles the big questions about the origins of the Normans and their enduring influence

The Normans were the violent parvenu opportunists of their day: Vikings who settled in Normandy and became French before conquering England and becoming English.

From obscure Scandinavian origins, the Normans relied on their military proficiency – and ruthlessness – to dominate the institutions and elites of Europe, and assimilated cultures, ideas and whole political systems in their pursuit of glory. Norman knights and generals occupied areas from the lowlands of Scotland to the deserts of the near east, thrusting themselves into the midst of conflicts and seizing chances whenever they appeared. They also left behind some of the most remarkable ecclesiastical and military architecture of the period, which speaks volumes about both their self-importance and their piety.

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