Constructed in the seventh century, when the region was part of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, it contained the remains of a deceased individual and their grave goods, now mostly in the British Museum.

Little of the body survived, preventing osteoarchaeological analysis to determine their age or sex, although the content of the grave goods has led archaeologists to believe the individual was male.

The archaeologist Martin Carver argued that the burial mounds erected in the late sixth and seventh centuries were created by practitioners of Anglo-Saxon paganism defiantly displaying their beliefs and identity in the face of encroaching Christianity.

"[3] Blair attributed them to a growing "striving for a monumental expression of status", which in more solidly Christian societies of the time was also finding form through funerary churches and above-ground sarcophagi.

[12] The archaeologist Howard Williams suggested that this prominent landscape location was chosen "to assert claims over land and territory, and express a new identity for the deceased and his kin".

"[12] A similar choice of location, overlooking the landscape, was chosen for the roughly contemporary barrow at Asthall, Oxfordshire, which contained an early seventh-century cremation burial.

"[16] The archaeologists Stuart Brookes and Sue Harrington noted that the individual buried at Taplow has often been considered to be "a Kentish 'prince' by virtue of the sheer quality and point of origin of his material culture".

[17] They added that the burial had "prompted discussion on the strategic importance of Kentish hegemony over the productive Upper Thames Valley" during the seventh century.

[21] The grave goods at Taplow were "not as rich or as eclectic" as those in Sutton Hoo Mound I, leading Leslie Webster to suggest that it was "of somewhat lesser status".

[14] The historian John Blair nevertheless compared Taplow with Sutton Hoo, stating that these were "remarkable for the extraordinary range and richness of their grave-goods, and must commemorate people of more than simply local status.

"[3] Among the grave goods, now in the British Museum, were 19 vessels for feasting and drinking, at least three weapon sets, a lyre, a gaming board, and rich textiles, the whole ensemble "recognisably a version of the standard Germanic princely kit".

The several gold braids in the burial may have been a symbol of royalty, and the largest horns and the belt buckle were apparently already old when buried, suggesting the treasure of a "Kentish princely family".

[23] All at the British Museum, with several displayed in Room 41: Williams suggested that the choice of grave goods placed within the mound alluded to "an aristocratic lifestyle in this world and the next".

[29] Blair raised the point that these churches may have been established in the tenth or early eleventh centuries "to Christianize tombs to which folk-legends attached, and which were identified with ancestors or local worthies".

[28] In October 1883, an excavation of the barrow was made by Mr Rutland, the Honorary Secretary of the Berkshire Archaeological and Architectural Society, with the assistance of Major Cooper King, Joseph Stevens, and Walter Money.

[24] Stevens noted that the grave goods reflected "a strongly marked Gothic element" and thus suggested that the interred individual might have been a Viking, although concluded that an Anglo-Saxon origin was more likely.