Middle Eastern Bitumen Found in Early Medieval Buried Ship in UK

Bitumen — a rare, tar-like material — from the Middle East is present in the 7th century Anglo-Saxon ship-burial at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, UK, according to a study led by Dr. Pauline Burger of the British Museum, London.

Model of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. The placement of the burial chamber is marked white. Image credit: Steven J. Plunkett / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Model of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. The placement of the burial chamber is marked white. Image credit: Steven J. Plunkett / CC BY-SA 3.0.

The early medieval ship found within a burial mound at Sutton Hoo is one of the most significant archaeological discoveries ever made in Britain.

It was first excavated in 1939 and is known for the spectacular treasure it contained including gold and garnet jewelry, silverware, coins and ceremonial armor of broad geographical provenance.

“No original timbers from the ship survived in the burial, but many details of the construction were retained in the stained sand and nearly all of the iron planking rivets remained in situ,” Dr. Burger and co-authors explained.

“The evidence indicated a 27.3 m long clinker-built boat, the beam maximizing at 4.5 m, with nine strakes on each side and possibly rowed by up to forty oarsmen.”

The site is thought to be an example of the European ship-burial rites of the time, and also includes a burial chamber where a corpse was likely laid.

Fragments of black organic material found in this chamber were originally identified as locally-produced ‘Stockholm tar’ and linked to repair and maintenance of the ship.

Dr. Burger and her colleagues re-evaluated these previously-identified samples, as well as other tar-like materials found at the site, using imaging techniques and isotopic analysis and found the samples had been originally misidentified.

By comparing the samples from Sutton Hoo to various reference materials, the team revealed that the previously-identified Stockholm tar lumps actually displayed the molecular and isotopic characteristics of archaeological bitumen, and specifically bitumen from the Middle East rather than from a local British source.

RTI (reflectance transformation imaging) images of surface morphology on fragments of black organic material from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. Image credit: P. Burger et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166276.

RTI (reflectance transformation imaging) images of surface morphology on fragments of black organic material from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. Image credit: P. Burger et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166276.

“This new multi-analytical study of black organic lumps discovered in the burial chamber of Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo has overturned previous interpretation of the material as Stockholm tar and demonstrated instead that the fragments are composed of bitumen,” the archaeologists said.

“The molecular and isotopic signatures of the bitumen suggest a Middle Eastern source rather than local origin in the UK.”

Archaeological finds of bitumen from this period in Britain are extremely rare and the authors state that this finding is the first material evidence for trading of Middle Eastern bitumen northwards into the British Isles.

“The possible Syrian origin of the bitumen is particularly interesting given that other items in the burial assemblage have been linked to this region,” they said.

“Nevertheless, the significance of the bitumen lumps among the grave goods is not clear as their morphology offers little evidence for their original form: possibly they represent surviving components of perishable objects, fragmentary small bitumen objects or, alternatively, the material may have been valued in its own right as a prestige raw material.”

The results were published online this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

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P. Burger et al. 2016. Identification, Geochemical Characterisation and Significance of Bitumen among the Grave Goods of the 7th Century Mound 1 Ship-Burial at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk, UK). PLoS ONE 11 (12): e0166276; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166276

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