Like many at this time, Pretty was fascinated by “ spiritualism”, the idea that we can communicate with the dead through the use of a spiritual medium. It draws on genuine elements of the central character’s biographies, including Pretty’s bereavement after her husband’s death and the diagnosis of her terminal illness (she died in 1942). The Dig focuses on the relationship between Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) and Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), the local amateur excavator hired to investigate. There were riches garnered from across the known world, including silver bowls and spoons from Byzantium and gold dress accessories set with Sri Lankan garnets. Over 250 artefacts revealed the sophistication of East Anglia in Anglo-Saxon times. The funerary mound contained the remains of a decayed oak ship, 27m in length, which had been dragged from the nearby River Deben to serve as a royal tomb. However, this Netflix dramatisation approaches archaeology with a new level of subtlety and accuracy, probing death, loss and memory – key themes in the archaeological study of the past. Before this discovery, a dearth of written sources was presumed to signal an absence of culture in this period.įilms tend to portray archaeologists as treasure-hunters or forensic detectives – notably the Indiana Jones franchise. It transformed understanding of the “dark age” of the seventh century. Netflix’s The Dig, based on the novel of the same name by John Preston (2007), recounts the tale of this remarkable find. For a nation on the brink of war and facing its own “dark age”, the Sutton Hoo ship burial was a source of pride and inspiration, equivalent to the tomb of Tutankhamun.

In 1939, on the eve of the second world war, she was proven right as the sumptuous ship burial of an Anglo-Saxon king was uncovered. Edith Pretty was convinced that the mounds on her land in Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, held important archaeological secrets.

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