There was a gold buckle engraved with intertwined snakes and beasts, a piece so extraordinary that the guardian of the medieval antiquities of the British Museum almost collapsed at the sight of it; shoulder closures and belt accessories with jewelry; a wonderful helmet adorned with a full face mask: the haunting face of some ancient heroes who seem to contemplate the centuries.
What the discovery meant
Brown’s discovery literally caused the history books to be rewritten. The ship and its contents came, as it transpired, from the dark ages, and the discovery illuminated those four centuries between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Vikings, about whom so little was known. The Anglo-Saxons who ruled the various kingdoms of England during this time had considered themselves a crude and backward (almost primitive) people, but here articles of great beauty were made. This was a society that valued skill, craftsmanship and art, and traded with Europe and beyond.
And these relics of a sophisticated and lost civilization appeared just as our Nazis were threatening our destruction. The chief archaeologist delivered a speech to site visitors and had to shout for it to be heard over the roar of a Spitfire.
When author and journalist John Preston, the book of the disgraced British politician Jeremy Thorpe, A Very English Scandal, recently adapted into a successful television series, he discovered that Piggott, his aunt, had been involved in the excavation, he researched the story and immediately recognized what rich sewing he provided to a novelist. The Dig was published to acclaim it in 2007. Robert Harris called it “a veritable literary treasure” and Ian McEwan proclaimed it “very fine, fascinating, exquisitely original.”
Producer Ellie Wood, who has previously worked on several television adaptations, including Decline and Fall, Bleak House and The Line of Beauty, says she wanted to make a film version as soon as she read the manuscript of the novel in 2006, before which was even published.