Sutton Hoo revealed

In 1938, Mrs Edith Pretty, owner of the Sutton Hoo estate, invited local archaeologist Basil Brown to excavate a group of low grassy mounds on the edge of a 30m-high bluff above the Deben estuary in Suffolk, England. He dug Mound 2 in his first season, uncovering a robbed-out Anglo-Saxon ship burial. He was then invited to dig Mound 1 the following year. The discovery of rusty lumps of iron again indicated a ship-burial. Brown worked out that traditional excavation methods – trenches through the sides or the middle of the mound – would destroy the ‘ship’, for it consisted of nothing more than lines of small rusty objects (rivets) and stains in the sand. http://www.world-archaeology.com/great-discoveries/sutton-hoo/