The Dig (novel)

The Dig is a novel by John Preston, published May 2007, set in the context of the 1939 Anglo-Saxon ship burial excavation at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. The novel has been widely reviewed as ‘an account of the excavation at Sutton Hoo in 1939’. As it will perhaps be the first introduction to the subject for many people, it is necessary to place on record the large extent to which the picture conveyed by this literary production may differ from the real events of the Sutton Hoo excavations.

Nature of the work

John Preston is television critic for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. He is also the nephew of one of the excavators, Mrs Peggy Piggott, afterwards known to the archaeological world as Margaret Guido. However, by his own account the author only became aware of the story surrounding the excavation three years ago (i.e. c. 2004) and therefore the content is not derived directly from Mrs Piggott’s narration. Nonetheless the novel is the first account of these events in which the role of Mrs Piggott is particularly emphasised. Although she did not lead the excavation, she was the first of the excavators to discover gold items in the burial chamber within the ship, and therefore experienced the full emotional impact of the discovery.

The psychological and emotional engagement of Mrs Piggott in the discovery, and in relation to the circumstances of her life and the other characters, forms the original contribution of the writer to the subject of the book. Most of the remainder has already been reported more fully and accurately, and also circumstantially, in the work of others.

Sources of the excavation story

A careful historical account of the controversy surrounding the dig, in which all the basic characterization and principal events were set out, derived exclusively from contemporary written sources, was published in 2002 in a short and lively illustrated volume written by Robert Markham for the Sutton Hoo Society (‘Sutton Hoo through the Rear-View Mirror’). This has been on sale ever since at the National Trust Visitor Centre at Sutton Hoo itself. Other first-hand accounts in the forms of diaries, and in the major publications of the find, have been available in print for many years. There is also a large unpublished correspondence in public or departmental archives.

Factual changes for dramatic effect

The events and characters as described in ‘The Dig’ differ materially from the evidence of surviving record and testimony. In an Author’s Note at the end, the author states that ‘Certain changes have been made for dramatic effect.’ He adds, ‘Any mistakes, of course, are entirely my own.’ The reader is left to choose how to apportion deliberate or accidental departures from the truth.

These changes are extremely far-reaching, for they affect the chronology and topography of the excavation, the archaeological methods, the state of knowledge of the excavators at the time, the actual identity and contents of the burial mounds, and finally the character, motivations and integrity of the people involved. Although all the dramatis personae of the book are real historical persons, the words, actions and behaviour attributed to them are in many places scientific or literary fictions. The author has in places scrambled information in a complex way.

Outline of altered information

Note: this is a general statement only. As a list it is incomplete.

• The two seasons of excavation, 20 June – 9 Aug 1938 (during which three mounds were investigated) and 8 May – 3 Sept 1939 (the discovery and excavation of the famous ship-burial), have been rolled into one, which is made to commence in April 1939. The material which, were it historically accurate, should be attributed to 1938 occupies from pages 5-68 (about one-third of the novel).

• Of the three mounds excavated in 1938, the first is partially described (pp15-18, 23-24, 29-32), and includes a fictitious scene in which an attempt is made to lift a wooden structure (the ‘butcher’s tray’), which consequently disintegrates. The tray was in fact defined by a stain, not by physical planking capable of being lifted. These events are attributed to April 1939. (This is probably intended as a symbolic image of the insufficiency of the old local tradition (in the person of Basil Brown) to support the necessary study and interpretation of the archaeology.)

• The second mound of the story is not identified but ought to correspond to the third excavated in August 1938. It is included only to introduce a fictitious story of a collapse of earth from the trench which entirely buries, and almost kills, the excavator Basil Brown (pp34-36). There was a collapse on one occasion at Sutton Hoo, but this was not it, and the excavator was not buried. (This invented story continues and completes the symbolism of the previous one.)

• The second, large, mound excavated in 1938 (now known as Mound 2) is made into the third of the story, but it is merged completely with the ship-mound excavated in 1939 (now called Mound 1). The position and description of the two mounds is deliberately and entirely fused into one (pp 57-60), which is made to contain the ship and forms the context of the story. The mound is described (before excavation) in the story as higher than the others, and visible from across the river (as in fact Mound 2 has become since it was ‘reconstructed’ by Martin Carver in the 1990s, but not as it was in 1938-9) but of irregular shape and curtailed by mediaeval or later activity, with a robber pit in the summit. (This refers to Mound 1: however, in reality the significance of the irregular shape and the location of the robber pit did not become clear until after the excavation had taken place.)

• In consequence of this fusion (technically a con-fusion), the sherds of blue glass from the actual burial chamber of Mound 2 (excavated 1938) become the first discoveries from the 1939 ship mound (e.g. p 61), where they do not belong. (This is apparently used as a ‘linking acknowledgement’ by the author to the fact that he has suppressed the real contents of Mound 2.)

• Also in consequence of this, the first iron rivets discovered by Basil Brown are made (in the story, p66) to be those of the 1939 ship, which were undisturbed and remained in situ within the outline of the ship. In fact, many disturbed ship-rivets were found in Mound 2 in 1938, so that the subject of ship-burial was already being discussed by Basil Brown and Mr Maynard in July 1938.

• In consequence of this, Brown’s recognition of them, and his visit to Aldeburgh to inspect the rivets from the Snape 1862 excavation (here rendered ‘1870’, p68) is transposed from 20 July 1938 (real) to May 1939 (here), after the discovery of the undisturbed ship. Therefore it is falsely represented that Brown did not know what the rivets were when he encountered them in 1939, whereas in reality he had already studied them in 1938, and so recognised them, left them in place and investigated the ship-impression, when he found them in Mound 1.

• Also in consequence of this, Mr Brown and Mr Maynard (Ipswich Museum Curator) in the novel do not consider the possibility that the graves may be Anglo-Saxon (rather than of Viking Age) until the ship excavation is well under way. In fact the realization that some of the finds were early Anglo-Saxon occurred in 1938 (here attributed to Stuart Piggott in 1939, p 141-2), but the throwing-axe from the ‘butcher’s tray’ burial was hard to parallel. It was hoped that the excavation of Mound 1 would resolve the problem. This and the previous points seem intended to suggest the incompetence of Brown and the Ipswich contingent, but it is expressed through misrepresentation.

• In consequence of this, the arrival of Charles Phillips at Sutton Hoo occurs in the story as the result of a telephone tip-off from the Isle of Man, where Basil Megaw had been contacted by Mr Maynard. In reality, the inquiry arose from the 1938 disturbed ship-rivets, and was mentioned by Mr Megaw to C W Phillips on 5 June 1939 during a visit to Cambridge. Phillips found a pretext to visit Ipswich the next morning, and was taken at once to see the new discovery, which was of another ship entirely.

• The official meeting by which the burial chamber excavation was set up, on 9 June 1939 at Sutton Hoo between Mrs Pretty and Messrs Hawkes (British Museum), Baillie Reynolds (Office of Works), Phillips and Clark (Cambridge University), Reid Moir and Maynard (President (not committee chair) and Curator (not deputy) of Ipswich Museum), and Pigot (Suffolk Institute of Archaeology), is entirely omitted. Hence their true roles in the remaining narrative cannot be determined from the novel. This is masked under the fact that it occurs in Mrs Pretty’s and Basil Brown’s ‘narratives’, as if they didn’t know under which auspices the dig continued, but that is not the true case.

• Similar fore-knowledge of much later research conclusions is put into the mouths of various characters in this novel, and in some cases is so completely garbled that one feels it must have been done intentionally. For instance, in the novel, when Stuart Piggott is discussing the first gold find, a pyramid, with Phillips and Peggy in the Bull Hotel, he refers to a comparison with a cloisonné pyramid mount found (according to this story) by Thomas Kendrick (whom he calls a Cambridge Professor) in the ‘twenties’ at Dorchester-on-Thames, stating that Kendrick thought it was of the early seventh century (p141-142). In reality (Sir) Thomas Kendrick was not a Professor at Cambridge, but Keeper of Mediaeval and British Antiquities in the British Museum, London. His actual theories as to the early date of certain Anglo-Saxon metalwork relate not to material of the seventh, but of the fifth and sixth centuries, and had been published not in the 1920s, but in 1938, the eve of the Sutton Hoo discovery. Furthermore, there really was a cloisonné pyramid from Dorchester on Thames (Oxon.), the nearest comparison for the Sutton Hoo example, but Kendrick neither found it, nor published it in his 1938 study. It was in fact published in 1974 by the Sutton Hoo scholar Rupert Bruce-Mitford, who found a drawing and details of it in the MS Minute-Books of the Society of Antiquaries of London for Thursday 28 Nov 1776, and included it in his ‘Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology’ (Gollancz 1974, pp266-270, Plate 86a and Fig 45a). Therefore it is vanishingly unlikely that Stuart Piggott knew about it on the day in 1939 when the first pyramidal mount was found at Sutton Hoo. The inclusion of such misinformation at this specific level might seem to be deliberately misleading, but the author has assured us it is either a ‘mistake’ or a change made for dramatic effect.

• There are several examples in the novel of knowledge which arose from later research being transposed back into the actual moments of excavation. Thus, after a very singular passage in which the excavation of the ceremonial whetstone is described in crypto-priapic terms (pp 163-165) – (and, so far as the real method of its excavation is concerned, quite falsely, for it stood semi-erect in the deposit, not with both bulbous ends simultaneously exposed, and not freed by the mutual undercutting with fingers which the novel suggests) – C W Phillips is made to pronounce that the object is a sceptre, for which he immediately states there is no parallel in Scandinavian or European archaeology (so how does he recognise it?) apart from stone sceptres with a single face upon them found in Ireland and Scotland. The research to which Phillips is made to refer, and the knowledge which it very distortedly represents, was not available to him at the moment of excavation but arose many years later. Furthermore the identification of the object as a sceptre had to await the realization (made around the 1960s) that a ring-mount topped by a bronze stag, thought by Phillips to be part of the iron flambeau, was in fact the crowning element of the whetstone, thereby producing the resemblance to a late Roman consular sceptre. Therefore although he knew it might be a symbol of personal power, Phillips had no reason to think it was a sceptre. On the contrary, this ithyphallic symbolism, culminating in Phillips saying ‘this is the grave of a king’, may seem designed to implant subliminally the disparagement of ‘royal’ interpretations of Sutton Hoo as if they were expressions of the patriarchal obsessions of the interpreters, a point of view not unknown in this field of scholarship. It is not certain that the machinery of this novel is really intended to deliver such recondite propaganda, but even the hint of it produces an entertaining bathos.

• Similarly at the excavation of the large silver dish, Charles Phillips is made to point at the control-stamps and say ‘These, as you may or may not be aware, are control stamps of the Emperor Anastasius I.’ (p 173-174). For one thing, in the novel’s description the stamps have migrated mysteriously from the inner side of the foot-ring beneath the dish, to the rim of the upper surface. For another, it is doubtful if Phillips had a directory of late-antique silver hallmarks in his pocket, or even in his memory, at the moment of excavation. The identification is correct, but was later knowledge. Here, it has the comic-strip power of an Egyptologist reading out the curse from a sarcophagus, a somewhat televisual effect, but not without a certain humour.

• The excavation and lifting of the gold objects is described in a way that does not instil confidence in the work of Phillips’s team. The purse lid (identified as soon as uncovered) is immediately lifted (though photographs prove it was left and carefully cleared). ‘Shall we have it out?’ says Stuart Piggott. ‘As soon as I had prised the purse-lid free, I saw that it had been lying face-down,’ continues the voice of Peggy Piggott (p 150-151). ‘Prised’ is a favourite word of the author’s in describing the technique of lifting objects from the soil. When the great buckle appears, Peggy and Stuart lift it together with their finger tips and then, still holding it between them, they walk across to the ladder. Stuart then presses it into her hand saying ‘You take it. Please darling, I want you to.’ It is essential to understand that, as with the whetstone, and the collapsing butcher’s tray, these accounts of the retrieval of objects are completely the invention of the author and are intended as a series of symbolic expressions of the relationship between Peggy Piggott and those with her. They do not reflect the archaeological method of their real work. Similarly the nested bowls spring apart with a ping (as they really did at the trench-side) just as Peggy is waxing lyrical to Rory about the cellist Beatrice Harrison and the nightingales, the birds being the literary motif around which Peggy's own confession and psychic release in company with Rory is afterwards realised.

• The Ipswich dramatis personae, their roles and relationships, are presented somewhat out of true character. Basil Brown was in fact one of the very few archaeologists in regular employment by a municipal authority in England, and had been so since 1935. Reid Moir was Honorary President (not committee chairman) of the Ipswich Museum, an office in which he succeeded his mentor Sir Ray Lankester, and had been associated with work in prehistory since 1908, with academic colleagues in all parts of the globe since around 1914, and since 1937 being a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is presented here merely as an importunate and slightly slick Ipswich partisan. Mr Maynard (here called Reid Moir’s ‘deputy’) was Curator, i.e. the senior employed officer, of the Ipswich Museum (and an extremely hard-working one) since 1920, (and previously of the Saffron Walden Museum since 1904, in succession to his father G N Maynard), joint Secretary and Editor of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia since 1921 (replaced in 1935-6 by Charles Phillips), and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He had personally encouraged Basil Brown, arranged for his regular employment by the Museum, and supervised and worked with him for four years before the big Sutton Hoo discovery. Basil Brown almost invariably referred to him as Mr Maynard (‘Maynard’ throughout in the novel), while Mr Maynard called him variously ‘Mr Brown’, ‘Brown’, or often (in letters) ‘Basil’. Ipswich Museum was the county museum of East Suffolk and the leading institution of both East and West Suffolk, was the sponsor and repository of all publicly-funded excavation and the only body of publicly-employed archaeological expertise in the county, and therefore the natural supervising body of the original stages of the excavation.

Archaeological validity of the authorial technique

This novel is essentially a work of fiction, into which some historical material and a large number of historical persons have been incorporated in more or less recognisible guise. The difficulty is that although the author has admitted to making the fictional changes, he has also admitted to the possibility of making mistakes which (since the work is admittedly fiction) should not be possible in the fictional environment of his own making. As a result some of his reviewers are discussing his work as if it were more factual than it really is (see external links).

John Preston has defended his approach to the boundary of history and fiction (see external links). From an archaeological viewpoint there are difficulties in his approach because people who are unfamiliar with the true events are likely to be misled over the characters, chronology, topography, scholarship and methods of the original excavations, which remain the subject of scholarly inquiry. The reconstruction of past archaeological excavations can seriously affect the way in which their results are interpreted, and it is damaging to this important process if inaccurate statements gain widespread circulation. Anyone can make a mistake, especially in events which are obscure or remote, but this author has taken the unusual step of retaining the true historical environment, while deliberately corrupting data for which verification is readily available.

Rowland Manthorpe (external links) regrets that the author did not extend his epic subject into more epic form. It is certainly true that a very large amount of information about the excavation, indeed almost the whole texture of the day-to-day progress of the work in the ship, and very many of the remarkable finds such as the hanging bowls, the coptic bowl, the spears, the shoulder-clasps, the cauldron-chain, the mailcoat assemblage, the textiles, the silver 'Vicky' bowl and the toiletry accessories beneath it, the shattered fragments of the helmet, the lyre, and various other items, have been barely mentioned or completely omitted, as have many visits by experts involved in the digging and surveying of the find, and many interested visitors, including royalty, too numerous to mention. This was indeed a heroic subject, and yet one is left with barely any mental picture of the burial chamber and its contents.

In view of the existence of the far more thorough account of the personalities and controversies by Robert Markham, written and published in an attractive and accessible form only two years before the present author became aware of the subject, underpinned by long familiarity with the sources, which could at every stage have furnished a simple guide to the correct chronology, it may seem extraordinary that the present author has not availed himself of that resource, nor made any acknowledgement of it in his book, but has chosen instead to propagate what is certainly a very misleading account, while presenting himself as an originator. He is the originator of a semi-historical romance, but not of a history of the Sutton Hoo excavation, though some of the facts do broadly coincide.

Preston is not the first author to produce a dramatization of the excavation story (which this effectively is), since the playright Pepe Barlow wrote and produced with Ivan Cutting of the Eastern Angles Theatre Company a play centred upon the characters of Basil Brown, Charles Phillips, Guy Maynard, Reid Moir and Mrs Pretty entitled 'The Sutton Hoo Mob', which has been produced in two separate seasons, 17 Feb to 7 May 1994, and resumed/revised in 2006, at many venues in Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. Certain scenes in 'The Dig', such as the Brown/Pretty mound-choosing interview, and the procession carrying the treasure off to Sutton Hoo House, appeared in the play. Similarly the Cocktail party with the showdown between Charles Phillips and Guy Maynard, told by Markham (p32-34) is retold with a good deal of fictional embroidery by Preston (p 176-185). John Preston does seem to have some original material, but if so it is unfortunately unrecognisable among so many materials which are definitely not true.

If his admission of the changes for dramatic effect had appeared at the start of the book, and if, perhaps by reference to Mr Markham's work, he had directed his readers elsewhere for an alternative, more factually truthful account, then this somewhat lamentable ambiguity could have been avoided, and the literary merits of his work should not have been susceptible, as they now are, to the criticism that the historical research will appear shallow, borrowed and corrupted , sometimes ludicrous and bizarre, to anyone who is familiar with the original sources and materials.

Sources

• J. Preston, The Dig (Penguin Books/Viking, London 2007). ISBN 978-0-670-91491-3
• R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology (Gollancz, London 1974). ISBN 0 575 01704 X
• R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial (3 Vols in 4), (British Museum, London 1975, 1978, 1983)
• A.C. Evans, The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial (British Museum, London 1986/9). ISBN 0 7141 0544 9
• C. Green, Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial (London 1963).
• T.D. Kendrick, Anglo-Saxon Art to AD 900 (Methuen & co, London 1938).
• R.A.D. Markham, Sutton Hoo through the Rear-View Mirror (Sutton Hoo Society, Woodbridge 2002). ISBN 0-9543453-0-4
• C.W. Phillips, The Excavation of the Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, The Antiquaries' Journal 20, no 2 (April 1940), 149-202.
• C.W. Phillips et al., The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, Antiquity (March 1940).
• C.W. Phillips, My Life in Archaeology (Sutton, Gloucester 1987). ISBN 0-86299-362-8
• S.J. Plunkett, The Suffolk Institute of Archaeology: its Life, Times and Members, Proc. Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 39 Part 2, 165-207. ISSN 0262-6004

External links

• Follow this link "My buried history" for author's home newspaper publicity for this work.
• Review by Rowland Manthorpe for Observer, May 13 2007 [1]
• Review and author interview/justification, East Anglian Daily Times [2]
• Dramatic rights in works by John Preston[3]