Few archaeological finds are as evocative as helmets - many items of war-gear can help paint a picture of ancient battlefields, but in framing (or in some cases directly representing) the face, helmets help to humanise warriors from centuries past. This is particularly ironic given that, at least in some cases, helmets in antiquity were designed to create an intimidating sense of “otherness”, occupying the “uncanny valley” between metalwork and man.

​ It is in our nature to recognise and emotionally respond to faces, and it is hard to stare into the eyes of the Sutton Hoo helmet and not feel as though you have, in some sense, met a person, rather than simply viewed an archaeological artefact. No surprise then, that over and above all the other treasures in that unprecedented burial panoply (including some with considerably higher bullion value) it is the helmet from Sutton Hoo that
has become emblematic of the assemblage, and the most enduring symbol both of Anglo-Saxon material culture, and even of British history itself.
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The Anglo-Saxon period in Britain spanned six centuries, and although it is unfairly reductive to characterise it purely as a time of war, it is undoubtedly true that regular clashes between well-equipped armies peppered the period and dictated the convoluted path taken from locally identifying post-Roman communities to a coherent united England. The scale of Anglo-Saxon armies continues to be debated, and it is not entirely clear how well equipped they were, but archaeological discoveries in recent decades have provided abundant examples of war-gear – especially weapons – to inform our image of Anglo-Saxon warriors. Such gear is most abundant from the early period (5-7th centuries) thanks to grave goods from the ultimately doomed furnished-burial rite, but even from these centuries, that most evocative item of war-gear, the helmet, is exquisitely rare. We just don’t have many examples. There’s a bigger problem though; we don’t even know how many examples we have. Almost all running totals are wrong.
(Originally published in May 2020)

Nothing is more synonymous with Anglo-Saxon archaeology and history than the fabulous treasures which were uncovered in 1939 at Sutton Hoo, yet there is nothing “typical” or “representative” about the vast majority of this truly remarkable assemblage.  The enormous highly decorated shield, for example, integrating hundreds of components, lacks any particularly appropriate English parallels, and its closest comparators come from similarly impressive burials from the roughly contemporaneous Vendel Culture in Eastern Sweden.  So remarkable and “exotic” is the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 (SHM1) shield, that the still foremost study of Early Anglo-Saxon Shields; Dickinson & Härke (1992) all but excluded it from consideration. Anglo-Saxon shields with even modest metallic decoration (such as appliques or boss apex discs hardly visible except at very close quarters) are exquisitely rare and occur mainly from the mid 6th century; it is unclear to what extent this reflects a decline in the fashion or is simply an already rare item among furnished burials becoming invisible with the decline of the rite itself. Variation in the lavishness of shield ornamentation could be a battlefield indicator of rank and status, though most fittings are too small to have been particularly visible in this context, and although it is possible to sort the limited sample of decorated shields into “ranks” of embellishment (Dickinson (2005) and Mortimer (2011)) there is a danger of implying false near-equivalence between the only “top rank” shield of SHM1, and “second rank” shields (the most elaborate from the more commonly regarded “English sample”) such as 6th century Bidford-182 (see our reconstruction and article here) and the Tranmer House Shield (Sutton Hoo Grave 868), which are, in terms of crude count of components, at least 20 times less elaborate. Given extremely limited organic preservation, painted designs, wooden or leather appliques might be feasible, but the picture from grave archaeology is that, despite being the largest, most conspicuous “display surface”, even a high-status Anglo-Saxon warrior’s shield would have looked quite plain.

Contrary to this picture from undisturbed grave-shield finds, fragments of decoration from the robbed Sutton-Hoo Mound 2 (SHM2) equivalent to elements of the SHM1 shield suggest that the latter was not, in fact, unique, and the enormous abundance of jewelled 7th century “warrior bling” in the Staffordshire Hoard (STH / “the Hoard”) provides overwhelming evidence for conspicuous wealth and status display, in the form of jewelled war-gear, on the battlefields of the early-to-middle Anglo-Saxon period.  The most senior battle-companions of the occupant of SHM1 (probably Raedwald – King of the East Angles) would likely be similarly bejewelled, and so would other 7th century kings particularly characters like Edwin and Oswald of Northumbria, and Penda of Mercia, who, through political manoeuvring and conquest would succeed Raedwald as notional holders of Anglian “imperium”; it is hard to imagine these warrior kings – wearers of bejewelled helmets and wielders of gold-hilted swords – not having similarly impressive shields.
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Armed with the precedent set by the SHM1 shield, pieces of possible shield-decoration from the Staffordshire Hoard, and current understanding of 7th century shield evolution, we embarked on a project to produce a shield that would not look out of place in the hands of Penda, Oswald, or one of their lieutenants.