The Sutton Hoo ship burial (review)

Short notices 303 for employment are presented, and the materials available for building are itemized. The list of "Thirty-one great cathedrals' reveals the book's bias toward English Gothic, with eleven English buildings cited, but the remaining twenty include Chartres, Bourges, Ulm, Monreale, Prague, and Seville. An ideal present for anyone who has ever marvelled at medieval cathedrals. Carole Cusack School of Studies in Religion University of Sydney Evans, Angela C, The Sutton Hoo ship burial, London, British Museum Press, 1995; paper; pp. 127; 99 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$26.95 [distributed in Australia by Thames & Hudson]. Thistide,generally known as the 'handbook', is the standard summary to which students and general readers turn for basic information on the finds from Sutton Hoo. This edition is the second edition of the handbook written by Angela Evans, replacing the earlier version by the late Rupert Brace-Mitford, which itself went through a number of editions. For the reader seeking a basic account offindsfrom Sutton Hoo and the circumstances of the 1939 excavations, this book is a readable and mosdy reliable guide. The discussion of the finds is clear and informative for the most part and some of the diagrams are superb, especially those of the site and of the distribution of the gravegoods within the burial. The photographs are very good, though the lack of a scale in most of them is not acceptable, even if it is envisaged that this book is mainly for the general reader. It is welcome that this version of the handbook plays down the 'personality' fixation of earlier editions, which were somewhat preoccupied with the largely unresolveable question of who is commemorated by the burial. Nonetheless, the discussion of the date of the burial still focuses on Raedwald as the candidate, even where acknowledging that the evidence is not fully supportive. The discussion of the coin hoard also hinges upon a presumed date of 625 A.D., which is, on the face of it, more a historical than a numismatic date, 625 being the end of Raedwald's reign. The ghost 'of Raedwald is not sufficiently exorcized at this point and the discussion is too short on detail. 304 Short notices The section on the history of excavation at Sutton H o o provides valuable detail with which to assess the place of this most famous find in Anglo-Saxon studies and in British archaeology. With a feeling for the historical impact of Sutton Hoo upon British archaeology, Evans notes the subsequent fame of even the minor labourers on this site. However, the way in which the discoverer, a 'professional excavator' of lower-middle class origins, was supplanted by more powerful figures, might have warranted a more critical statement. In fact, the style of this book is often rather too coy. Stronger critique could be made of the scholarship surrounding this find and this would make more compelling reading. This volume is something of a transitional work. Though Evans is conscious that the publication of Carver's excavations will soon necessitate a reassessment of this site and its wider context, this edition largely sticks to the older debates. Consequently, while H. M . Chadwick's theory of a possible Scandinavian content to the burial is addressed, more recent questions raised by Ian W o o d and David Whitehouse concerning the possible Frankish and Byzantine influences upon the burial are not. The disclaimer at the beginning as to the evolving nature of our understanding of this site does not entirely excuse the dependency of the volume upon somewhat outdated conceptions and interpretations. While fulfilling its role as a basic guide to the assemblage from Sutton Hoo, this volume also pretends to some historical analysis. In this latter respect we may hope for a fuller revision in the near future. Jonathan M . Wooding University of Western Sydney, Nepean Gal la is, Pierre, La fee a la fontaine et a I'arbre: un archetype du co merveilleux et du recit courtois, Amsterdam and Atlanta, Rodopi, 1992; paper; pp. 355; R.R.P. AUS$?. The marvellous or the magical can never be understood through Frazerianinspired comparative cultural gleaning, backed up with Jungian-style or Freudian-slipped intuition...