Anglo-Saxon burial mounds

The Hallstatt culture which existed in central Europe between c. 750 and 400 BCE utilised chamber burials within barrows as the way of commemorating deceased members of the social elite.

In the German region of Thuringia, several important chamber burial barrows have been excavated, including at a cemetery in Trossingen which dates to c. 580 CE, thereby being contemporary with similar Anglo-Saxon sites.

The practice of Anglo-Saxon barrow burials had been adopted by the Merovingian dynasty Franks, who lived in what is now France, from the mid fifth century CE.

[5] Throughout the sixth century, the south-eastern Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Kent developed political ties with the Merovingian kings in Francia, with their respective royal families eventually being sealed through a marriage alliance.

[5] The importance and influence of the Kentish kingdom across the south of England subsequently led to Anglo-Saxon peoples north of the river Thames also adopting the practice.

[6] Archaeologist Martin Carver believed that this first stage had a symbolic significance in setting aside an inner and an outer zone between where the burial was going to be built and the outside world around it.

Anglo-Saxon specialist Stephen Pollington noted that they were ways of creating "a permanent mark on the landscape" which allowed them to claim "the territory and the right to hold it".

[10] Pollington also remarked that "the burial chamber was an idealised portrayal of the 'house of the dead', the last resting place of the deceased into which they would welcome those who sought them out through spirit travel.

Mound 2 is the only Sutton Hoo tumulus to have been reconstructed to its supposed original height.
A reconstruction of the Hochdorf Chieftain's Grave , a large Iron Age burial mound dating from c. 550 BCE in Baden-Württemberg , Germany. Although constructed a thousand years before the Anglo-Saxon barrows, there are cultural similarities between the two.