Known as the Bromeswell bucket, the artifact found at England's Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon site likely held the cremated remains of an important person, archaeologists say.

LONDON -- Archaeologists say they have cracked the mystery of a 1,500-year-old bucket unearthed from an Anglo-Saxon royal burial site, with new analysis revealing it contained cremated human and animal remains -- suggesting it was used to bury an important person.

The Bromeswell bucket is a 6th-century artifact that was discovered in 1986 at Sutton Hoo, an Anglo-Saxon royal burial site in Suffolk, England.

For many years after the bucket was discovered, researchers puzzled over what it was used for and why it was buried. It is believed to have made its way to England from the Byzantine Empire, according to Britain's National Trust. Archaeologists began to find answers when missing pieces of the bucket were uncovered in 2012 and last year.

Now, they believe it was used to bury the cremated remains of "an important person in the Sutton Hoo community," National Trust archaeologist Angus Wainwright said in a news release. The person's identity is still not clear.

"We've finally solved the puzzle of the Bromeswell bucket -- now we know that it is the first of these rare objects ever to have been used in a cremation burial," said Helen Geake, an Anglo-Saxon expert with the television program "Time Team," which has documented the dig.

The discovery "epitomizes the strangeness of Sutton Hoo -- it has ship burials, horse burials, mound burials and now bath-bucket burials," Geake added in the news release. "Who knows what else?"

Sutton Hoo is an Anglo-Saxon site that archaeologists discovered in 1939, when they uncovered the remains of a ship containing a burial chamber filled with treasures that revolutionized historians' understanding of early England, according to the National Trust.

Although excavation work has been ongoing at the site for years, archaeologists returned last June for "the most intensive period of excavation at Sutton Hoo since the 2000s." Using metal detectors, they found a block of dirt that turned out to be significant: After scanning and X-raying it, they realized it contained the base of the Bromeswell bucket, and that the bucket was filled with cremated human and animal bones, as well as a double-sided comb that was probably made from an antler.

The bucket's design features a hunting scene, with armed men and animals including lions and dogs. The contents and fragments of decorative features suggest "that it was being kind of reinterpreted and reimagined as a ... very special kind of cremation vessel," because the remains of Anglo-Saxon cremations "were normally contained in ceramic vessels in pots and urns," said Helena Hamerow, a professor of early medieval archaeology at Oxford University, who was not involved in the dig.

"So this, we assume, was a very, very special individual from a very important family whose cremated remains were interred in this extraordinary object," she said in a phone interview Sunday.

The remains include cremated parts of a human ankle bone and fragments of a skull, as well as bones from an animal larger than a pig, which are now being analyzed to "understand the cremation process and determine what was on the funeral pyre," the National Trust said.

The National Trust noted that "horses were often included on early Anglo-Saxon cremation pyres as a sign of status."

Experts believe the bucket came from Antioch, in modern-day Turkey and that it was already 100 years old when it arrived at Sutton Hoo. They don't know how it got there, although they speculate it could have been brought over as a "diplomatic gift" or "acquired by a mercenary Saxon soldier."

That raises interesting questions about the interconnectedness of Anglo-Saxon England with the rest of Europe and the wider world, Hamerow said.

Historians used to think that these contacts were mainly "mediated by the Franks," she said. "But as we find more and more objects from the Byzantine world in parts of England, the question is being raised -- Well, were there in fact direct links?"

It's possible, she said, that merchants from what is now Turkey were traveling all the way to England, or that Anglo-Saxon fighters were recruited into the Byzantine army and brought back artifacts. This could change historians' understanding of the Anglo-Saxons' relationships with the wider world, she said.

"The Bromeswell bucket, because it is such a remarkable find -- it is such a beautiful object and unique really in an English context -- really highlights those questions."