Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine,

Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm Elli Kothorn. Archaeology, like most aspects of life has been hit by lockdown this year.

But one excavation that has occurred has generated a lot of headlines recently.

The case of Marlow Warlord, a sixth century burial above the river Thames.

Dr Garboe Thomas directed the excavation

and our content director Dave Musgrove caught up with him to find out more.

Today I am joined by Dr Garboe Thomas, assistant professor of archaeology at the University of Reading.

Welcome, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today. How are you?

Very well, very pleased to be here.

So I've asked you on the podcast today because you've been excavating on a fascinating sixth century burial of an individual who was

has been branded as the Marlow Warrior or Marlow Warlord.

Now Marlow being the town in the lower Thames Valley within current commuter distance of London

where the site was found and we'll talk about the Warrior Warlord epithet during the conversation,

hopefully.

So first up, can you detail the circumstances

of this discovery?

It was by metal detectorists who followed good practice and reported their findings to the

portable antiquity scheme. Is that right?

That's right.

So back in 2018, detectorists are members of a local group in the Marlow area who have permission to

detect on this particular land.

We're out one day, interestingly, it was, to them it was never regarded as a particularly productive field.

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