Royal Burial Site Found in Southend-on-Sea | Hacker News Reader

Royal Burial Site Found in Southend-on-Sea

theguardian.com

51 pointsjajag24 comments

This was a Time Team Special in 2005 [Series 18, Episode 138], unfortunately named the "King of Bling". The location was given as Prittlewell, Essex [on the outskirts of Southend]. For non-Brits, Time Team has been a very long-running series on British TV, popularising field archeology to a very wide audience. It took a 'quick hit' approach following-up local suggestions to do a single week's digging with good resources. It reported the week's progress in a single, compact and well-structured broadcast. Much loved, it is now in hiatus, if not gone forever. Why it was not mentioned in connection with this 'discovery' is hard to say...

Because unfortunately, behind the scenes, Time Team is not well respected in the Archaeology community. A couple of their archaeologists were good, but overall they misinterpreted sites and caused problems when they dug (e.g. mattocking through a skull by mistake).

This site is quite old news really, but the notable part is that they've finished some of their analysis and are publishing, hence why it's showing up in the news now.

Source: archaeologist partner

I think it depends on the part of the community you speak to. Yes, they had a very unrealistic dig schedule, but they brought resource that most sites can't dream of to many locations that would otherwise not be investigated, and delivered full reports as well as proper Reithian television.

Source: archaeologist mother & sister, and appeared on Time Team myself... :)

>But it has been possible. The Mola team estimates it would have taken 20 to 25 men working five or six days in different groups to build the chamber and would have involved felling 13 oak trees.

>“It was a significant communal effort,” said Jackson. “You’ve got to see this burial chamber as a piece of theatre. It is sending out a very strong message to the people who come and look at it and the stories they take away from it. It says ‘we are very important people and we are burying one of our most important people’.”

That doesn't really seem like all that much effort. Especially for an era where there was significant downtime between harvest cycles.

I feel like discoveries like this maybe are more of "we don't see a lot of sites that would take this much work" and less so shock at the amount of effort put forth but the wording gets spun around?

I agree with you, it doesn't seem unlikely that a community or multiple communities would put that much work into something.

That's a 21st century perspective; every hour that was available was an hour that could have been used to improve life, always, every day, winter was coming.

I'm not one to whinge about headlines much, but with UK conditions, "Equivalent to Tutankhamun" is one hell of a stretch. Very little gets preserved like in dry Egyptian sand here.

Significant and fascinating, certainly.

Ok, we'll take that bit out of the title above.

Agreed, although the do more or less admit that much in the article. The hyperbolic headline is a title and also the article makes some pretty bold claims that aren't really substantiated--somehow this find means that the region was "the forefront for culture and religion in the North Sea area".

While I also found the title disappointing, you cut a key part of that quote, changing the meaning entirely...

was at the forefront of culture, religion and exchange with other countries across the North Sea.

I noticed because I had to do a double take at the sentence though. There's a lot of "qualified importance", if you will, in the article!

Not sure if I’m misreading, but that doesn’t seem to substantially alter the meaning...

It says as much in the article too, which is very typical:

> Sophie Jackson, director of research at Museum of London Archaeology (Mola), said it could be seen as a British equivalent to Tutankhamun’s tomb, although different in a number of ways.

> For one thing it is in free-draining soil, meaning everything organic has decayed. “It was essentially a sandpit with stains,” she said.

Using it's "vaguely similar to Tutankhamun" probably wouldn't get as many clicks though.

Probably more of a "The best and most completely preserved Britain has seen" and less "Holy shit, there is a secret chamber here which nobody knew about for 3000 years!"

Yup, and the remarkable preservation of much of Tut's tomb. "essentially a sandpit with stains" is not that, or even up there with Mary Rose. :)

It's like comparing Cornwall to the French Riviera. Sure it's nice, but obviously not in the same league.

In terms of ancient monuments Egypt is in a class of its own. Nothing in England even comes close.

The Guardian is a tabloid shaped like a newspaper.

Also https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-48203883, via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19866621.

Also, the official site:

https://www.prittlewellprincelyburial.org/

(which I believe only recently launched)

I found the design of the drinking cups to be interesting. They are made from wood in a globular design, but the edges where your lips would touch are all covered in rounded metals to make it more comfortable than potentially sharp wood. It also uses little metal latches to seal onto the wood which they stylized.

Fascinating story and a great bit of archaeology, but it’s very strange seeing my hometown featured on HN.

I'm not sure I'd call it equivalent to Tutankhamun's crypt given the vast difference in age, and in the number of artifacts found and their condition, organic and non-organic, but it is a great historical find, none-the-less.

This was found in 2003. I hate misleading titles.

They spent the time since excavating and only published the findings this week.

Then I feel it ought to say "Initial findings published on excavation of Southend-on-Sea Royal Burial Site," which is what has happened.

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