I've noticed that over the years it's become established as an almost unquestioned orthodoxy, whenver TT presenters mention the Anglo-Saxons, to say something like "of course, these were just the same Celtic populations as before, who had taken on an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity from an elite band of military invaders, not a large influx of people from Germany" (I paraphrase). Francis Pryor is particularly keen on this idea, but in a recent re-run on More4 I heard Helen Geake say it too.
In other words, they're trying to re-cast the Anglo-Saxon migration as being of no more relevance, in population terms, than the Roman invasion (maybe 40,000 people, most of whom probably didn't stay long) and the Norman Conquest (which was genuinely a coup by a military elite of probably no more than 10,000). Yet the interesting thing is that this assumption, which has only emerged over the last 40 years, is backed up by almost no evidence, and flies in the face of what evidence there is (e.g. Weale et al's Y Chromosome study from 2002, which showed a fairly definite break in lineage between English midlands and Welsh populations; and the incredibly strong evidence of the language itself: English contains virtually no loan-words from Welsh or other Brythonic languages, representing an almost unheard-of degree of separation between neighbouring languages, let alone languages spoken by populations supposedly co-habiting for extended periods). It's also interesting to note that this "immobilist" view (the idea that the British population has remained ethnically static and all apparent changes in population are merely cultural) is very rare in other countries, which accept the reality of migrations; it's also very rare in other disciplines: historians certainly don't take it seriously, or linguists, or geneticists. So it's a theory that only really exists in an archaeology "bubble", and only in Britain.
Why this theory appeals to British archaeologists so strongly is an interesting question. There are various explanations; my personal feeling is that it might be something to do with post-imperial Liberal English guilt: downplaying the extent of Anglo-Saxon invasions, and asserting that we're all Celts under the skin, might be an unconscious way of atoning for the embarassment of England's historical bad treatment of the other home countries.
What concerns me is that, in a popular programme for non-specialists, this strikingly unevidenced position is being presented without any acknowledgement that it is even debatable.
English contains virtually no loan-words from Welsh or other Brythonic languages, representing an almost unheard-of degree of separation between neighbouring languages, let
Languages can just die out in an area and be almost or completely replaced by another without any major population shift. In wales itself the welsh language had almost died out until it was resurrected in the 20th century.
Same story in the Isle of Man where Manx is now a historical curiosity, Scotland where Scots (not Gaelic) has vanished and it almost happened in Ireland too.
I think the reason for this is that there is absolutely no evidence FOR an invasion, and plenty of evidence that life carried on in many of the large towns for 50 - 100 years (if not longer in some cases) after the Romans left. Certainly, Gildas et al, the historical writers who described the purported invasion, have been shown by archaeology to have largely made it up - there isn't a shred of evidence for any Roman settlements in the UK of any size being sacked and burnt in the 5th century, but all the evidence from the immediate post-Roman period shows gentle decline.
Languages can just die out in an area and be almost or completely replaced by another without any major population shift. In wales itself the welsh language had almost died out until it was resurrected in the 20th century.
Same story in the Isle of Man where Manx is now a historical curiosity, Scotland where Scots (not Gaelic) has vanished and it almost happened in Ireland too.
Thanks for your reply Boltar: I think the crucial thing about those examples though is the political context in which they happened: they are all examples of countries/regions that at the time of language change were politically dominated by a powerful, centralized English state that imposed the English language -- and did its best to suppress other languages -- as a conscious political choice. Even then it was not entirely successful in Wales, Ireland, or the Scottish Highlands and Islands; in Cornwall (a much smaller population) it took about 975 years of political domination by England for the language to die out, and in the Isle of Man (an even smaller population) it took some 600 years.
How are any of these situations remotely comparable to sub-Roman Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries? What are the Anglo-Saxon-Jutish polities enforcing language uniformity? What is the centralizing government structure through which they are doing it? How are they achieving in two to three centuries linguistic change on a country-wide scale when a far more powerful, centralized, and determined state in the following millennium took six or seven centuries to achieve much smaller results? No; there is clearly something far swifter and more profound going on in the 5th and 6th centuries than the later situations you mention.
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I think the reason for this is that there is absolutely no evidence FOR an invasion, and plenty of evidence that life carried on in many of the large towns for 50 - 100 years (if not longer in some cases) after the Romans left.
Thanks for your reply DesG. As I mentioned in my first post, I think there is plenty of evidence FOR an invasion: genetic, linguistic, and historical (though perhaps the terminology is confusing -- "invasion" implies a single, co-ordinated event, as in 43 or 1066; what I'm talking about is a large-scale folk migration). There happens not to be a lot of archaeological evidence, but since the Anglo-Saxons shunned urban life and used organic materials for clothing and shelter, what archaeological evidence are you expecting to find? Sure urban life continued, as the Romano-Britons desperately tried to carry on civilized life; and as the most visible symbols of that civilization, we can surmise that even rural Romano-Britons congregated in them. But just as obviously, that urban life ground to a halt in the sixth century, and the reason is not hard to fathom: a city cannot survive if it does not control the agricultural hinterland that supplies its food. Once large numbers of Anglo-Saxon pagans had established themselves in the countryside, Christian city dwellers would have found it hard to maintain their way of life. Eventually they would, in a series of individual decisions, moved on -- probably moving west to regions in which the Anglo-Saxons were not yet dominant. This underlying dynamic is precisely what would have led to the situation described by Gildas, of an embattled people and culture being increasingly hemmed in to the western peninsulas and uplands of the island.
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Certainly, Gildas et al, the historical writers who described the purported invasion, have been shown by archaeology to have largely made it up
What, exactly, is Gildas supposed to have made up? And how, even in a general sense, can such a thing be "shown by archaeology"?
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there isn't a shred of evidence for any Roman settlements in the UK of any size being sacked and burnt in the 5th century, but all the evidence from the immediate post-Roman period shows gentle decline.
Seems a very debatable conclusion. How extensive is our archaeological knowledge of Roman cities? Our view is a keyhole into isolated pockets of each city, but even so there are plenty of individual buildings that clearly collapsed after a fire. Is your scepticism based on the fact that not every building has been burnt? How great a proportion is required for a sacking? And why is burning the unique signature of conflict? Given the Anglo-Saxons' lack of interest in cities, it seems just as likely that in a fight they would simply be content with killing the people and letting the buildings collapse from lack of maintenance.
If there's one thing that the filmed and televised wars of the 20th century have taught us, conflict produces movements of people on a huge scale -- think of the tens of millions of refugees displaced during and after World War II. Why is it that British archaeologists of the processual school seem to imagine that Britons in the 5th and 6th centuries were somehow uniquely immune to these effects?
Hi Jonathan You raise some interesting points concerning this debate. It is unfortunate that members of TT have only mentioned one interpretation when in the archaeological world debate still goes on. There is no one prevailing accepted theory and that is probably because life's a lot more complicated that we would wish.
There is such a difference in the archaeology between the eastern counties and the south west of Britain for example it strongly suggests that whatever is happening politically, socially and economically is entirely different in different places. You don't for example get any sunken featured buildings (SFBs), or Saxon belt buckles or cremation urns in the south west (i.e. Somerset, Devon and Cornwall).
What you do get is archaeomagnetic dates well into the 5th, 6th, 7th and sometimes 8th centuries from industrial features in Roman towns. This suggests continued living in the same place, using "roman" pottery until it breaks and replacing your stone building after it collapses with a timber one. This slow transition is a contrast with the east or even with central south coast (Southampton) where SFBs are used.
Certainly I can state that the jury is still out in the archaeological world on the nature of the Saxon migration/invasion/political/acculturation debate.
If you haven't seen it already, there's a very, er, lively debate over how the English language became so dominant in such a comparatively short period of time on page four of this forum, entitled 'English Spoken in Pre-Roman Britain.
Thanks for your reply DesG. As I mentioned in my first post, I think there is plenty of evidence FOR an invasion: genetic, linguistic, and historical /QUOTE]
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you on the historical evidence - most of what there is has been discredited by archaeology (more below). Genetics I know is very controversial, and beset with problems, or so I'm informed by those I know who are involved in the area. I believe linguistics also has many problems, but know little about the subject so i'm afraid i'm unable to engage in any sort of cogent debate about it.
[QUOTE]but since the Anglo-Saxons shunned urban life and used organic materials for clothing and shelter, what archaeological evidence are you expecting to find? /QUOTE]
There's artefactual and cultural evidence aplenty. There's very few artefacts in A-S settlements in this country that are of continental origin. If there was large-scale migration, we'd find a lot more of them. There's also classes of common Germanic material culture here that are quite different to those being used on the continent (some pottery and brooches particularly), and also there's some major differences in burial practice. A-S material culture also diverges very quickly from that on the continent generally - it's an independantly evolving culture from the start.
[QUOTE]What, exactly, is Gildas supposed to have made up? And how, even in a general sense, can such a thing be "shown by archaeology"?
Pretty much everything when it comes to his narrative on the end of Roman Britain! He gets the dating and sequence of the Roman walls in the north completely wrong, ditto the saxon shore, dating and name of Aetius/Agitio is wrong, then describes the cities being destroyed and the inhabitants massacred. It simply didn't happen - anything in Gildas that can be investigated by archaeology has been and has been shown to be wrong. That means everything else he wrote is open to question at the very least.
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Seems a very debatable conclusion. How extensive is our archaeological knowledge of Roman cities? Our view is a keyhole into isolated pockets of each city, but even so there are plenty of individual buildings that clearly collapsed after a fire. [QUOTE]
A lot of the large roman cities have had very large areas excavated in total over the years, and the picture is uniformly that of decline. You can tell when a roman city has been burnt down - the Boudiccan rebellion levels in Colchester + London are completely unmissible. nothing remotely like it has been found in the late deposits. Would be genuinely interested if you could point me at the 'plenty of individual buildings that clearly collapsed after a fire' dating to the end of occupation of roman cities, as I know of very few!
[QUOTE]Why is it that British archaeologists of the processual school seem to imagine that Britons in the 5th and 6th centuries were somehow uniquely immune to these effects?
I think you'll find it's the post-Processual school that you're having a go at - the Processualists tend to use your arguments!
If you're not familiar with his work, some of Ken Dark's more recent stuff gives a very good overview of the archaeological perspective on the period. His arguments are not completely watertight, but there's plenty of very interesting data cited.
What concerns me is that, in a popular programme for non-specialists, this strikingly unevidenced position is being presented without any acknowledgement that it is even debatable.
Time Team do appear to be adopting a position on this issue which is reflected in the choice of their 'expert witnesses'. The programme does not reflect the considerable body of opinion which does not agree with the acculturation model. Save for one argument between Helen Geake and Robin Bush, who no longer seems to appear on the programme, I can't remember anyone being invited on to argue the case for mass migration.
Other programmes too, such as Britain AD contribute to creating an impression that all British archaeologists are agreed. It's a false impression however. This particular programme looked at the issue of 'evidence', and claimed that there was none. Dominic Powlesland who investigated one of the largest early Anglian sites at West Heslerton was invited to contribute. DP is a strong believer in continuity of settlement and so this was the view that was transmitted to the viewing public.
A seminar on West Heslerton which was attended by nearly 50 well known archaeologists had different views. Reported by Philip Rahtz and published in Antiquity, the view was:
"Although DP stressed his own belief in continuity, it was generally seen more as one of continuity of place, with a dichotomy between `late Romans' and the new settlers ..."
This much more widely held view not discussed in the Britain AD programme.
Barbara Precious and Maggie Darling discussed the Roman ceramics, most of which, from over 30,000 pottery sherds, were from the late roman period. Rahtz reports:
"No links could be found between the late Roman pottery and the Anglian that followed -- nothing `sub-Roman'; the general impression is still of a social and economic collapse in the latest 4th-early 5th century ..."
'Social and economic collapse' does not easily square with 'continuity' so why feature one person who holds one view whilst excluding the more widely held view? Social and economic collapse doesn't necessarily have to mean invasion of course, but why not discuss the possible causes? Why did the producer fail to mention it?
This whole debate however is not limited to the post roman transition. You may have noticed that recently some people deny that any Celts came to these islands too. It is really a debate about how ideas, religions, language, material cultures, farming methods are spread, by contact or by the movements of people. Demic diffusion versus cultural diffusion is hotly debated for the events in the neolithic too.
"If [this] tide continues to rise, we may, in a few years, have a situation in which ambitious postgraduate students will argue in conference papers that the first humans in the British Isles were not immigrants, but symbolically transformed, indigenous reindeer." Heinrich Härke.
I think the reason for this is that there is absolutely no evidence FOR an invasion, and plenty of evidence that life carried on in many of the large towns for 50 - 100 years (if not longer in some cases) after the Romans left. Certainly, Gildas et al, the historical writers who described the purported invasion, have been shown by archaeology to have largely made it up - there isn't a shred of evidence for any Roman settlements in the UK of any size being sacked and burnt in the 5th century, but all the evidence from the immediate post-Roman period shows gentle decline.
This all depends on who one reads and which part of the country one is discussing.
With regard to the roman urban centres, Neil Faulkner's survey of 1500 buildings from 300 excavations in 17 urban centres including civitas capitals, coloniae and possible municipia, shows a clear pattern:
"Most civic buildings were erected in about AD 75-150, most private town-houses in about AD150-225, and urban occupation (measured by rooms in use) reached peak levels in the early 3rd century. Civic construction work then collapsed as resources were diverted into building town walls in the mid to late 3rd century. There was a partial recovery in the early 4th - the so-called `Constantian renaissance' - but it was a temporary blip, and, from around AD 325, Romano-British towns faced terminal decline. Few new buildings were erected, many old ones were abandoned, and by about AD400 there was little left in most places but a wasteland of ruins and rubbish."
This is not a 'gentle decline' in the 5th cent.
The early germanic speakers didn't have towns or cities in their homelands so one should not expect that they took much interest in the ones they found here. If, as Haio Zimmermann suggests, that one motivation for migration was that of improved conditions for cattle farming, one would expect them to settle in rural areas. No signs of conflict in cities does not equate to no migration at all.
Bodies of men, women and children thrown into the wells at the signal station at Goldsborough or of men thrown into the well at neighbouring signal station at Huntcliffe in the early 5th cent. don't prove an anglo saxon invasion, but it's not a gentle process. It's true that, whilst most villas declined some such as Langton prospered but these too tend to end in conflagration in the early 5th cent. Something happened, roman britain didn't just fade away.
There's very few artefacts in A-S settlements in this country that are of continental origin. If there was large-scale migration, we'd find a lot more of them.
It's true, there is not a lot but what little there is, is still considerably more than anything distinctly British. The 'invisibility' of British archaeology is used by those who favour demic diffusion, the movement of peoples but also explained by those who favour cultural diffusion, ie the adoption continental fashions. If you argue that germanic archaeology means germanic speaking people and that little archaeology means few people, you have to reckon with there being very Britons.
How much archaeology do you expect to find anyway? Most archaeology consists of everyday items, things like shoes, because people have several pairs in their lives and throw them away when they're worn out. Trouble is, they don't all survive. Iron tends to get recycled as do other material like glass.
Common objects that are not recyclable and don't easily deteriorate are things like quern stones. The ones at West Heslerton are imported from the Rhineland, which is requires explanation because they have been produced in the Peak District since the neolithic and up until the 19th cent, as mill stones.
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There's also classes of common Germanic material culture here that are quite different to those being used on the continent (some pottery and brooches particularly), and also there's some major differences in burial practice
From the mid 7th cent maybe. We do get the rise of insular art but this is primarily due to a fusion of germanic art and irish art post Conversion.
The early pottery styles in Deira are distinctly Anglian, that is with their closest parallels in Schleswig, but not Holstein, and the danish island on Fyn. Later we get the fusion of anglian and so called 'saxon' styles typical of the Weser Elbe Triangle. Kent shows distinctively Jutish styles, more northerly in Jutland than the Anglian styles. Several of the metal items found in inhumations at West Heslerton are described by Hines as typical of southern Norway.
As far as burial practices are concerned it is precisely the similarity in shape and the decoration of cremation urns that allows us to conclude their continental origins. You have both flexed and crouched inhumations on the continent as well as in England so I'd like to know what these claimed 'major differences' are.
DesG: processualist/post-processualist -- of course, thanks for correcting me.
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[QUOTE]What, exactly, is Gildas supposed to have made up? And how, even in a general sense, can such a thing be "shown by archaeology"? Pretty much everything when it comes to his narrative on the end of Roman Britain! He gets the dating and sequence of the Roman walls in the north completely wrong, ditto the saxon shore, dating and name of Aetius/Agitio is wrong, then describes the cities being destroyed and the inhabitants massacred. It simply didn't happen - anything in Gildas that can be investigated by archaeology has been and has been shown to be wrong. That means everything else he wrote is open to question at the very least.
Thanks for your reply DesG, and sorry for the delay in mine. I think the problem is that we need to have a more sophisticated view of Gildas than simply to say he made stuff up. The further he is in time and place from the events he's describing, the less reliable he's likely to be. That's true of all ancient writers, of course, but the kind of mistakes Gildas made of late 4th/early 5th century Roman names and chronology tells us something important: that even in the surviving literate Romano-British communities of mid-6th century western Britain, no-one had access any longer to reliable written documentation about the past beyond living memory, and that what Gildas recorded had already been transformed by oral transmission (such as the shift from Aetius to Agitius). We're seeing a culture in the midst of reverting from literacy to orality.
For the period from the later 5th century onwards, Gildas could have been reporting what his parents’ generation had seen with their own eyes, and told him about, so this has greater authority. And for his own time, we can assume that both he and his readers would have known the political situation at least in their own locality. The passage you allude to that seems so problematic is as follows:
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So that all the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press; and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who were carried, at that time, into the high heaven by the holy angels. So entirely had the vintage, once so fine, degenerated and become bitter, that, in the words of the prophet, there was hardly a grape or ear of corn to be seen where the husbandman had turned his back. (De Excidio, ch. 24)
This looks to me pretty much like a poetic evocation of destruction: what it doesn’t sound like is a shopping list of things we should expect to find in an archaeologist’s trench. This isn’t anything as precise as Zosimus describing Alaric’s sack of Rome on 24 August 410, or Pliny’s description of the destruction of Pompeii on 24 August 79. Here, no specific circumstances are mentioned; no dates; no places; no particular individuals. All we have is a summary of a general process that he had heard members of an earlier generation speak of -- perhaps someone who once saw, somewhere, a building being burnt, conflated with another memory of a different person that somewhere else a battering ram had been used, and of a third in another place that the wall of a building had been pushed down. None of those things had to have been common occurrences -- indeed by their very nature they were probably uncommon -- and none of them need have been true of even most places at any any time. Yet the chain of logic you seem to be deriving from this passage is as follows: 1) Gildas described cities being destroyed violently by Anglo-Saxons. 2) We find no archaeological evidence of large-scale destruction. 3) Therefore there were no Anglo-Saxons.
As you can appreciate, 3 does not logically follow from 2. A far more probable scenario is that these were scattered incidents, gathered together by Gildas for rhetorical effect, and that the more general process that went on was a gradual abandonment of cities by Romano-Britons -- begun well before the end of Roman administration, occasionally accelerated by violence after it, but much more often through the untenability of civic life in them -- together with waves of new settlers who had no interest in taking them over, but who established new rural communities instead.
The important point is that Gildas's idea of his own community’s general situation -- an embattled remnant of Romano-British Christian civilization, pushed west out of lowland Britain by a substantial migration of incomers -- was not fantasy or hearsay, but his own experience of his own life, however fuzzy he may have been on the details of how it came to pass, and I don't really see how the reality of that situation -- which implies a major folk migration -- can be dismissed. As J.N.L. Myres writes in The English Settlements, Gildas was writing for an audience who shared the same reality as he did, and “it would have been fatal to his argument to describe in such terms a situation which his readers knew to have been quite different”.
Thanks for your reply DesG, and sorry for the delay in mine. I think the problem is that we need to have a more sophisticated view of Gildas than simply to say he made stuff up. The further he is in time and place from the events he's describing, the less reliable he's likely to be.
Gildas thought Severus built the walls probably because he was working from transcribed copies of original documents such as the Epitome de Caesaribus which is by an unknown author but which is described as "abbreviated from the books of Sextus Aurelius Victor". Another possible document is the 'Breviarium Ab Urbe Condita', by Eutropius.
For example the latter gives:
"His [Severus'] last war was in Britain and, in order that he might protect with all possible security the provinces which he had recovered, he built a rampart for a hundred and thirty-two miles from sea to sea."
What intrigues me about this most fascinating period of history is the way archaeological/historical opinion shifts first in one direction, then the other. Francis Pryor is perhaps the best example of the aculturation perspective whereas Heinrich Harke advocates the invasionist perspective.
Harry is right in one sense, it depends where you look and when but the key criteria has to the speaking of English along the whole eastern coast of Britain. Recent genetic archaeology, particularly Oppenheimer has very interesting views on this. Other geneticists have yet, to my knowledge, to criticise his work so it is well to bear it in mind.
If becoming Saxons was such a good idea to 2 million or so Britons, who changed their language, way of dressing, living and thinking based on the word of 20,000 saxons, why did the Welsh not become acculturalised then? Why was Offas Dyke built?
Why didn’t the whole population not speak Norman after their invasion?
The dna surveys support a process of invasion/settlement and acculturalisation. Why are these being ignored?
Recent genetic archaeology, particularly Oppenheimer has very interesting views on this. Other geneticists have yet, to my knowledge, to criticise his work so it is well to bear it in mind.
Oppenheimer is an amateur geneticist with no formal training in either genetics or archeology. As far as I can tell he is widely regarded as a crank, and his theories are accorded any credibility by professionals in the field (see for example this Language Log post).
"The Assyriology, Egyptology, Biblical scholarship and all of that Talmudic and Midrashic pilpul is, of course, nonsense; but I was impressed by the astronomy."
I like it
........................................................................ Support the PAS Go with the FLO
Francis Pryor is perhaps the best example of the aculturation perspective whereas Heinrich Harke advocates the invasionist perspective.
Pryor is simply borrowing from the likes of Higham. It's not his specialist field. Härke is actually in the acculturist camp, just at the upper end. His ideas on numbers still fall a long way short of those we hear by the likes of Starkey, ie 85%.
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Recent genetic archaeology, particularly Oppenheimer has very interesting views on this. Other geneticists have yet, to my knowledge, to criticise his work so it is well to bear it in mind.
They won't criticise his work because it is not published in a peer reviewed journal. Subjecting one's work to review by one's peers, as opposed to a popular book aimed at consumers is the difference between a statement of new scientific knowledge and everyday musings. Were he to publish, the first criticism would be that he uses his own haplogroup classification system. The second would be that doesn't explain what his classifications are. They cannot be easily matched against other peer studies and so the results cannot be verified or, more importantly in Oppenheimer's case, rejected.
They cannot be easily matched against other peer studies and so the results cannot be ..... rejected.
Now come on, that's conspiracy theory logic. A theory has to be supported by evidence, it doesn't become fact simply because it cannot be disproved (Re:- teapot in orbit around Pluto).
They cannot be easily matched against other peer studies and so the results cannot be ..... rejected.
Now come on, that's conspiracy theory logic. A theory has to be supported by evidence, it doesn't become fact simply because it cannot be disproved (Re:- teapot in orbit around Pluto).
But that's not the full quote. It's both edited and taken out of context. The latter was Duncan's statement:
"Other geneticists have yet, to my knowledge, to criticise his work so it is well to bear it in mind."
to which my answer is that as a non peer reviewed publication it is not likely to be criticised and, as the methods are not standard, it is not measureable against accepted standards.
You claim above the need for 'evidence', you should direct that criticism against Oppenheimer.
