The buckle of his sword-belt was made of bronze inlaid with garnets. At his side there was a long sword with a horn pommel, together with an iron knife in a leather sheath. The young man was aged about twenty-five, and had been buried in a rectangular wooden coffin fitted with iron clamps. The horse was a stallion or gelding, five or six years old and about 14 hands high. It wasn’t.Įxcavation revealed two grave pits under the mound, one containing a young man and the other containing a horse. A robber’s pit had indeed been cut in the mound, but had been placed in the centre and had come down between the two grave pits, no doubt puzzling and disappointing the robbers and leading them to conclude that the mound was empty. Every other mound excavated at Sutton Hoo, except the great ship burial of Mound 1, had been robbed, so Mound 17 was extremely unusual in being discovered intact. (Apparently Martin Carver’s golf technique was partially responsible for its discovery). Mound 17 had been so eroded by ploughing that it was hardly visible as a mound at all, just a slight platform of raised earth. I mentioned it in an earlier post on horses in seventh-century England. This unusual double burial contained a young warrior and a horse, and was excavated by Martin Carver’s team in 1991 (Carver 1998). Apart from the famous ship burial, the only one of the grave mounds so far excavated at Sutton Hoo to have come intact into the hands of archaeologists is Mound 17.