I hold a M.A. in Archaeological Studies from Yale University and work for the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), an anthropological research organization based at Yale. HRAF produces an archaeological database used by scholars around the world. I also teach a course titled Great Discoveries in Archaeology at the University of Connecticut. When the film The Dig (2021), starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, became available on Netflix, it naturally piqued my interest.
On the surface, The Dig is a dramatized version of a true story about unearthing and preserving the past, hence its name. However, it is also a story about values, the importance of the things with which we surround ourselves that show the world who we are, and how we want to be perceived in both life and death.
The Dig is based on the excavation of the Sutton Hoo treasure from 1938-39 in Woodbridge, Suffolk. England. Sutton Hoo is the name of the ancestral British land the real Mrs. Edith Pretty (played by Carey Mulligan) owned. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “The name is derived from Old English: ‘Sut’ combined with ‘tun’ means ‘settlement,’ and ‘hoh’ translates to ‘shaped like a heel spur.’” The settlement at Sutton Hoo is so old that it is listed in the Domesday Book of 1087 commissioned by William the Conqueror after the Norman takeover of England in 1044. William wanted a complete record of English properties so that they could be properly taxed.
When she purchased Sutton Hoo, Edith Pretty was a very wealthy woman in her own right from money which she had inherited from her father. In the movie, as in real life, there were clear class differences between Edith and Basil Brown (played by Ralph Fiennes), the working class amateur archaeologist she hired to dig up the mysterious mounds on her property.
Mrs. Pretty dressed for dinner as was the custom of members of her class and she dined each night alone in her finery. Meanwhile, Mr. Brown was directed away from the front door to the servants’ entrance whenever he wanted to speak with her. Mrs. Pretty eventually tries to bridge the gap in their disparate social standing by inviting Brown to join her for dinner. He accepts, but the dinner never takes place – I don’t want to give away the whole plot and invite you to find out why not if you haven’t yet watched The Dig.
The heart of the movie is, of course, the treasure hunt. Brown continues to face class struggles in relation to the representatives of the local Ipswich Museum and eventually the British Museum in London who know of the project. Basil Brown believes the mounds – which are almost certainly ancient gravesites – hide treasures from earlier Anglo Saxon days before the Vikings invaded England’s east coast, but the educated museum archaeologists initially question his theories. Brown left school at age 12 and was completely self-taught; how much about archaeology could he possibly know?
However, they all agree that treasure lies beneath as Brown has already dug up a few tantalizing bits and pieces. When Brown discovers the remains of a large ship, the likely burial site of an extremely important personage, Charles Phillips, a well-educated archaeologist from Cambridge University, takes over the dig, and Brown is so incensed at being replaced, he quits. However, at Edith Pretty’s urging, he agrees to continue working on the project as an excavator. He is joined by a number of characters, some of whom are fictional, who help him with the dig and provide an interesting subplot against the background of impending war with Germany.
Basil Brown was correct about the age of the site; Sutton Hoo is an archaeologically significant site of early medieval Anglo-Saxon, not Viking treasures, and what he and the others unearthed changed the world’s perception of the early Middle Ages. In this corner of Great Britain, they weren’t the Dark Ages at all – they were spectacular.
The artisans who created the treasures of Sutton Hoo around 625 CE, before England was even England, were extraordinarily skilled. They illustrate that a vibrant civilization once existed there which engaged in art, textiles, and metal working. The jewelry they made was so intricate and complex that the British Museum believes modern day goldsmiths would find it difficult to duplicate. They created beautiful objects, most significantly the Sutton Hoo helmet made of tin, silver, copper and gold, encrusted with cloisonné garnets as its eyebrows. According to the Museum:
“The helmet is covered in complicated imagery, including fighting and dancing warriors, and fierce creatures. The face mask together forms a dragon whose wings make the eyebrows and tail the moustache. Garnets line the eyebrows, but only one is backed with gold foil reflectors – perhaps a reference to the one-eyed god, Woden.”
The Sutton Hoo helmet in the British Museum
The helmet was the property of the unknown warrior king, whose resting place was the enigmatic ship, painstakingly transported overland miles from the local River Deben, providing him with a safe and dry resting place that had remained untouched for over a thousand years.
A reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo helmet.
Mrs. Pretty generously donated the entire find to the British Museum where it still resides. What struck me as I watched Mr. Brown, alternately toiling in shimmering heat and then in the rain and mud, was that he was always dressed properly, almost formally, no matter what surrounded him. He refused to succumb either to criticism or the English weather. In the movie, we are advised that his wife May (Monica Dolan) washed his shirts and provided him with a series of clean ones. In real life, he often wore his white shirt with a tie and vest even while digging as this photograph shows.
Harold John Phillips, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Brown was unwavering in his convictions about the age of the Sutton Hoo settlement and unwavering in his opinion of himself. The way he dressed helped him stand up to a world that was trying to chip away at his dignity. This is also one of the points of Ivy Style; what we wear helps us to define ourselves in the ways in which we wish to be seen. We adhere to the characteristics of a style we admire, and we pay attention to it in all situations. Although I wouldn’t participate in an archaeological dig in a vest and tie these days, I always strive to be well dressed for every endeavor. The people who prepared the burial site at Sutton Hoo share a similar outlook, reaching out to us across many centuries. How we present ourselves matters a great deal. No detail should ever be overlooked.
A good article and a great film, well worth viewing. I can remember being at an Ashtanga yoga workshop in London many years ago that Ralph was also at, everyone left him alone.
I really don’t know why, but I find this to be interesting. What is happening to me? 🤫
There’s a typo, fyi- Mrs. “Petty” generously donated… Weird, because upon first reading I thought “Pretty” might be a literary device, and “Petty” is the more common name, I think.
Matthew: This is an excellent film, which, as you note, reveals subtle layers of class distinction prevailing in England in the 1930’s. I won’t go into all that since you covered it so succinctly. I thought Mr. Brown’s attire was interesting throughout the film – not Ivy of course, but certainly British traditional of the period. And Mrs. Pretty’s outfits were well chosen to reflect the times. (Rafe Feinnes and Carey Mulligan are two of my British favorites and they did a great job.) When I was stationed in the Air Force in England in 1968-1971, most of the local civilian employees who mowed the grass and trimmed the hedges at our base wore coats and ties. They were not bespoke garments, of course, and their ties were certainly not regimental, club or school ties, but the workers did care enough about their personal appearance to make the effort. And frankly, it would have been difficult to hazard a guess as to when the garments were last dry cleaned. Even the Indian and Pakistani gentlemen who assisted them wore ties, which was in itself a commentary on the prevailing – yet waning – British class structure of the day. As you note, the discovery and unearthing of the Sutton Hoo site was certainly one of the most significant archeological events of the 20th century, and the artifacts from that excavation in the British Museum are crucial to the understanding of early Britain.
With regard to Brown’s choice of attire, at the time in question the photographice vidence shows that “work clothes” were limited to particularly “dirty” locations like coal mines, abattoirs, stables, etc. Manual workers in most factories and workshops wore what to our eyes are rather smart suits and ties and hats (usually caps but not always). These were almost always separate from the “good” suit(s) and worn for work once a bit older. I have seen pictures of gardeners wearing an old suit with a tie, shirt, etc. Very “green” in a way.
I personally do the same. I don’t have special clothes for mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish or any dirty job. I just wear the oldest, most beat-up version of the shoes/trousers/shirts I would wear normally.
Obviously, in our age, that raises eyebrows when i am seen gardening (not often, I admit) wearing khakis, loafers adn a button-down shirt.
My wife and I enjoyed the film a few years back on Netflix.
I too mow the lawn and take care of outdoor chores in khakis (albeit shorts) with short-sleeved summer sport shirts tucked in (long-sleeved OCBD on cooler days), casual belts, and old leather deck shoes unless mowing when I don no-skid lawn shoes. Quite sure I look like I’ve stepped out of a spaceship from another planet. This is Michigan after all.
A well made film replete with plenty of lessons, including: the aristocratic soul is always amateur in spirit and tone (for more of this, revisit ‘Chariots of Fire’); boastful claims of expertise, even if true as a matter of fact, are in very poor taste and reveal the boaster’s insecurities; real, genuine elegance & beauty are found (discovered, revealed) in the unadorned and subtle (Brown’s clothes are proper yet modest & plain). There’s good case to be made that, from a socio-religious perspective, a subplot is the tension between the proper simplicity of Low Church tendencies (think formal, ordered Calvinist Puritanism) and overly regal High Church sentiments that tend toward the showy and ostentatious— worse, the garish and gaudy … and vulgar.
If rustic New Englandy Ivy was once upon a time (heyday decades) well known and praised for the former, we’ve reason to fear that fifty years of “preppy lifestyle”-driven marketing, drenched in nods to monarchies and the coral pink of island summers, have besmirched the style — forever. We could blame a certain damnable handbook, or point the finger of judgment at the human propensity for swagger and pomposity.
Respectfully disagree on these points. The High Church/Low Church matter is about religion, not clothing, and these references do more to offend Anglo Catholics and Roman Catholics than anything else. The “damnable handbook” you mention features J. Press and the natural soft-shouldered 3-button sack suit. These are hardly ostentatious. Please give it another read.
* For the Epicys among us, there’s reason to insist that deepest roots, including Cramner’s Calvinist leanings, were low church Puritan — affirmed by Henry VIII. How to retain retain (“proper”) gentility without venturing toward the gaudy, which so easily becomes kitschy. As a Quaker neighbor observes about most Ralph Lauren ads, sports cars, and Gothic architecture: “A bit much, eh? Too much.”
A good article and a great film, well worth viewing. I can remember being at an Ashtanga yoga workshop in London many years ago that Ralph was also at, everyone left him alone.
Thank you, Terry. Ralph seems like a private fellow, so that was probably for the best.
Well put, sir.
Thank you, Stephen.
I really don’t know why, but I find this to be interesting. What is happening to me? 🤫
There’s a typo, fyi- Mrs. “Petty” generously donated… Weird, because upon first reading I thought “Pretty” might be a literary device, and “Petty” is the more common name, I think.
Indeed, Pretty is an unusual surname. Here is more about Mrs. Edith May Pretty from the British Museum:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/people-behind-collection/edith-pretty
No class has the market cornered on intelligence, dignity and character.
Well stated, and very true.
Matthew: This is an excellent film, which, as you note, reveals subtle layers of class distinction prevailing in England in the 1930’s. I won’t go into all that since you covered it so succinctly. I thought Mr. Brown’s attire was interesting throughout the film – not Ivy of course, but certainly British traditional of the period. And Mrs. Pretty’s outfits were well chosen to reflect the times. (Rafe Feinnes and Carey Mulligan are two of my British favorites and they did a great job.) When I was stationed in the Air Force in England in 1968-1971, most of the local civilian employees who mowed the grass and trimmed the hedges at our base wore coats and ties. They were not bespoke garments, of course, and their ties were certainly not regimental, club or school ties, but the workers did care enough about their personal appearance to make the effort. And frankly, it would have been difficult to hazard a guess as to when the garments were last dry cleaned. Even the Indian and Pakistani gentlemen who assisted them wore ties, which was in itself a commentary on the prevailing – yet waning – British class structure of the day. As you note, the discovery and unearthing of the Sutton Hoo site was certainly one of the most significant archeological events of the 20th century, and the artifacts from that excavation in the British Museum are crucial to the understanding of early Britain.
With regard to Brown’s choice of attire, at the time in question the photographice vidence shows that “work clothes” were limited to particularly “dirty” locations like coal mines, abattoirs, stables, etc. Manual workers in most factories and workshops wore what to our eyes are rather smart suits and ties and hats (usually caps but not always). These were almost always separate from the “good” suit(s) and worn for work once a bit older. I have seen pictures of gardeners wearing an old suit with a tie, shirt, etc. Very “green” in a way.
I personally do the same. I don’t have special clothes for mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish or any dirty job. I just wear the oldest, most beat-up version of the shoes/trousers/shirts I would wear normally.
Obviously, in our age, that raises eyebrows when i am seen gardening (not often, I admit) wearing khakis, loafers adn a button-down shirt.
My wife and I enjoyed the film a few years back on Netflix.
I too mow the lawn and take care of outdoor chores in khakis (albeit shorts) with short-sleeved summer sport shirts tucked in (long-sleeved OCBD on cooler days), casual belts, and old leather deck shoes unless mowing when I don no-skid lawn shoes. Quite sure I look like I’ve stepped out of a spaceship from another planet. This is Michigan after all.
A well made film replete with plenty of lessons, including: the aristocratic soul is always amateur in spirit and tone (for more of this, revisit ‘Chariots of Fire’); boastful claims of expertise, even if true as a matter of fact, are in very poor taste and reveal the boaster’s insecurities; real, genuine elegance & beauty are found (discovered, revealed) in the unadorned and subtle (Brown’s clothes are proper yet modest & plain). There’s good case to be made that, from a socio-religious perspective, a subplot is the tension between the proper simplicity of Low Church tendencies (think formal, ordered Calvinist Puritanism) and overly regal High Church sentiments that tend toward the showy and ostentatious— worse, the garish and gaudy … and vulgar.
If rustic New Englandy Ivy was once upon a time (heyday decades) well known and praised for the former, we’ve reason to fear that fifty years of “preppy lifestyle”-driven marketing, drenched in nods to monarchies and the coral pink of island summers, have besmirched the style — forever. We could blame a certain damnable handbook, or point the finger of judgment at the human propensity for swagger and pomposity.
Respectfully disagree on these points. The High Church/Low Church matter is about religion, not clothing, and these references do more to offend Anglo Catholics and Roman Catholics than anything else. The “damnable handbook” you mention features J. Press and the natural soft-shouldered 3-button sack suit. These are hardly ostentatious. Please give it another read.
* For the Epicys among us, there’s reason to insist that deepest roots, including Cramner’s Calvinist leanings, were low church Puritan — affirmed by Henry VIII. How to retain retain (“proper”) gentility without venturing toward the gaudy, which so easily becomes kitschy. As a Quaker neighbor observes about most Ralph Lauren ads, sports cars, and Gothic architecture: “A bit much, eh? Too much.”
* Episcys