“Archaeology is the search for fact, not truth….Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.” –Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

As a research student in the Archaeology Department at the University of York, I can tell you that this is probably the most accurate thing that the world’s favourite archaeologist said. In addition to the library, I spend a fair amount of time in the Yorkshire Museum’s research room examining the goods of some of Yorkshire’s previous inhabitants.

Very rarely do we archaeologists encounter double agents, bad guys with ancient weapons of mass destruction or pits full of snakes, but we do encounter mysteries and puzzles everyday that we want to solve. We take the bits and pieces of information available to us and strive to piece them all together to create a larger picture of history.

Working with the Yorkshire Museum I am attempting to solve a mystery of my own involving seventy-two Anglo-Saxon graves, a pre-historic burial mound and close to two hundred objects.

The site is known as Uncleby, and when it was excavated in 1868 it was considered one of the most important Anglo-Saxon finds of its time. The grave goods weren’t rich and intricate like those from Sutton Hoo, but the collection that was found was interesting nonetheless. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a boom in Anglo-Saxon archaeology, with each excavation outshining the last. Eventually Uncleby became a footnote to the field, with very little work done on the collection since.

As there is very little information on the original excavation, I have to turn to the surviving evidence to begin to understand the lives of the people that were buried over 1,200 years ago.

The Yorkshire Museum has most of the collection in its trust, which is where my investigation began. Just like the contents of your desk top or bookshelf can say a lot about you, the objects that were buried with the Anglo-Saxons can tell us a lot about their owners and their lives.

Boxes and boxes of beads, knives, buckles, swords and other goodies were examined, measured and photographed. We were able to increase the catalogue of known objects from 85 to 115, and in some cases associate the objects with the graves that they came from. The collection of grave-goods will soon be part of the YMT’s online catalogue, bringing Uncleby and its eternal inhabitants into the twenty-first century.

The objects help to tell a fraction of the story that has been buried for centuries, but a lot of work and research is needed before anything can be said with any amount of certainty.

While I don’t have any rapscallions or miscreants lurking in dark corners to thwart my quest for answers, there are some obstacles ahead and some questions that may never be completely answered. But with a little luck, a lot of reading, some perseverance and a dash of imagination I will be able to help solve some of the mysteries of the Anglo-Saxons of North Yorkshire, and find out a little more about the people who were laid to rest at Uncleby.

Abigail Hansen is a PhD Student at York University