Chicago Botanic Garden

Education — Lenhardt Library

Current Books & Book Reviews

PHOTO: bookcover

Tom Williamson.
Sutton Hoo and its Landscape: The Context of Monuments.
Oxford: Windgather Press, 2008
(distributed in the U.S. by David Brown Book Co., Oakville, Conn.).
paper, 154 pp., ISBN 978–1–90511–925–7, $40.00.

Located in southeastern Suffolk in England, the cemetery at Sutton Hoo is a famous Anglo–Saxon site that has led to much speculation about its origins and connections with the people it served. English landscape historian Tom Williamson sets forth in this scholarly tome to answer the queries that relate to its placement in the landscape. He traces the recorded history of site, looking at the natural environment, the economic and agrarian aspects of the Saxon society, its leadership, and the general geography. He speculates that the site of the cemetery was probably chosen by an even earlier society, and that the nearby river played a major role in the selection of the location.

— Marilyn K. Alaimo, garden writer and volunteer, Chicago Botanic Garden.