There is careful attention to archaeological detail, emphasising that the ship’s timbers had virtually disappeared, surviving as nothing more than iron rivets and a silhouette stained in the sand. The film gives an accurate portrayal of the archaeological excavation in the 1930s, conducted using workmen with just a few skilled excavators and qualified academics. However, dramatic license changes their roles and ages to emphasise the hierarchical character of 1930s archaeology. When the ship is revealed, Pretty and Brown are joined by “professional” archaeologists, the real-life Sutton Hoo excavation team. Spiritualism may have spurred her archaeological patronage, just as it motivated investigations at other famous sites, especially Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset. Like many at this time, Pretty was fascinated by “ spiritualism”, the idea that we can communicate with the dead through the use of a spiritual medium. It draws on genuine elements of the central character’s biographies, including Pretty’s bereavement after her husband’s death and the diagnosis of her terminal illness (she died in 1942). The Dig focuses on the relationship between Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) and Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), the local amateur excavator hired to investigate. There were riches garnered from across the known world, including silver bowls and spoons from Byzantium and gold dress accessories set with Sri Lankan garnets. Over 250 artefacts revealed the sophistication of East Anglia in Anglo-Saxon times.
The funerary mound contained the remains of a decayed oak ship, 27m in length, which had been dragged from the nearby River Deben to serve as a royal tomb.
However, this Netflix dramatisation approaches archaeology with a new level of subtlety and accuracy, probing death, loss and memory – key themes in the archaeological study of the past. Before this discovery, a dearth of written sources was presumed to signal an absence of culture in this period.įilms tend to portray archaeologists as treasure-hunters or forensic detectives – notably the Indiana Jones franchise. It transformed understanding of the “dark age” of the seventh century. Netflix’s The Dig, based on the novel of the same name by John Preston (2007), recounts the tale of this remarkable find. For a nation on the brink of war and facing its own “dark age”, the Sutton Hoo ship burial was a source of pride and inspiration, equivalent to the tomb of Tutankhamun. In 1939, on the eve of the second world war, she was proven right as the sumptuous ship burial of an Anglo-Saxon king was uncovered. Edith Pretty was convinced that the mounds on her land in Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, held important archaeological secrets.
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