Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain

However, a view that gained support in the late 20th century suggests that the migration involved relatively few individuals, possibly centred on a warrior elite, who popularized a non-Roman identity after the downfall of Roman institutions.

(Gildas, in discussing the spiritual life of Britain does however mention that because of the partition (divortium) of the country caused by barbarians, citizens (cives) were prevented from worshipping at the shrines of the martyrs in St Albans and Caerleon.

However, it is a highly stylized critique of Romano-British politics, society and religion, which treats the Saxons as a punishment sent by God, and gives few details such as dates, and the sections might not have been intended to represent one single sequence of events.

Michael Jones, a historian at Bates College in New England, says that "Procopius himself, however, betrays doubts about this specific passage, and subsequent details in the chapter undermine its credibility as a clue to sixth-century population in Britain.

[30] Gildas' remarks reflected his continuing concern regarding the vulnerability of his countrymen and their disregard and in-fighting: for example, "it was always true of this people (as it is now) that it was weak in beating off the weapons of the enemy, but strong in putting up with civil war and the burden of sin.

However, Barbara Yorke, Patrick Sims-Williams, and David Dumville, among others, have demonstrated how a number of features of the Regnal List and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the fifth and sixth centuries clearly contradict the idea that they constitute a reliable record.

[39][40][41][42] Some of the information there may contain a kernel of truth if the obvious fictions are rejected (such as the claim that Portsmouth took its name from an invader, Port, who arrived in 501), such as the sequence of the events associated with Ælle of Sussex (albeit not necessarily the dates).

[46] The consensus in the first decades of the twenty-first century was that the spread of English can be explained by a minority of Germanic-speaking immigrants becoming politically and socially dominant, in a context where Latin had lost its usefulness and prestige due to the collapse of the Roman economy and administration.

In circumstances where freedom at law, acceptance with the kindred, access to patronage, and the use or possession of weapons were all exclusive to those who could claim Germanic descent, then speaking Old English without Latin or Brittonic inflection had considerable value".

In recent decades, a few specialists have continued to support this interpretation,[59][60][61] and Peter Schrijver has said that 'to a large extent, it is linguistics that is responsible for thinking in terms of drastic scenarios' about demographic change in late Roman Britain.

[125] Eva Thäte has emphasised the continental origins of monument reuse in post-Roman England,[126] Howard Williams has suggested that the main purpose of this custom was to give sense to a landscape that the immigrants did not find empty.

By the late 4th century the English rural landscape was largely cleared and generally occupied by dispersed farms and hamlets, each surrounded by its own fields but often sharing other resources in common (called "infield-outfield cultivation").

Such stability was reversed within a few decades of the 5th century, as early "Anglo-Saxon" farmers, affected both by the collapse of Roman Britain and a climatic deterioration which reached its peak probably around 500, concentrated on subsistence, converting to pasture large areas of previously ploughed land.

[171] Oxygen and strontium isotope data in an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Wally Corner, Berinsfield in the Upper Thames Valley, Oxfordshire, found only 5.3% of the sample originating from continental Europe, supporting the hypothesis of acculturation.

[180] It has been proposed, too, that the genetic similarities between people on either side of the North Sea may reflect a cumulative process of population movement, possibly beginning well before the historically attested formation of the Anglo-Saxons or the invasions of the Vikings.

[91] Oppenheimer, basing his research on the Weale and Capelli studies, maintains that none of the invasions following the Romans have had a significant impact on the gene pool of the British Isles, and that the inhabitants from prehistoric times belong to an Iberian genetic grouping.

[91] Oppenheimer suggests that the division between the West and the East of England is not due to the Anglo-Saxon invasion but originates with two main routes of genetic flow – one up the Atlantic coast, the other from neighbouring areas of Continental Europe – which occurred just after the Last Glacial Maximum.

[190][191][192] A 2018 editorial for Nature argued[193] that simplistic use of this category of data risks resembling the 'Culture-History' model of archaeological scholarship deployed in the early twentieth century, but which many present-day archaeologists consider to be problematic: for example the question of whether "Germanic" peoples can be considered to have shared any form of cultural or ethnic unity outside of their construction in Roman ethnography is far from settled, with some scholars expressing doubt that "Germanic" peoples had any strong sense of cultural affinity outside of speaking languages in the same language family.

Thus, scholars have suggested other, less violent explanations by which the culture of the Anglo-Saxons, whose core area of large-scale settlement was likely restricted to what is now southeastern England, East Anglia and Lincolnshire,[204][205][206][207] could have come to be ubiquitous across lowland Britain.

Higham points out that "in circumstances where freedom at law, acceptance with the kindred, access to patronage, and the use and possession of weapons were all exclusive to those who could claim Germanic descent, then speaking Old English without Latin or Brittonic inflection had considerable value.

[247][248][249] In recent years, scholars have sought to combine elements of the mass migration and elite dominance models, emphasizing that no single explanation can be used to account for cultural change across the entirety of England.

[251] East Anglia has been identified by a number of scholars, including Härke, Martin, Catherine Hills, and Kenneth Dark, as a region in which a large-scale continental migration occurred,[127][252][253] possibly following a period of depopulation in the fourth century.

"[259] In a study of place names in northeastern England and southern Scotland, Bethany Fox concluded that the immigration that did occur in this region was centred on the river valleys, such as those of the Tyne and the Tweed, with the Britons moving to the less fertile hill country and becoming acculturated over a longer period.

"Local and extended kin groups" is one of a number of possible reasons for success, along with societal advantages, freedom and the relationship to an elite, that allowed the Anglo-Saxons' culture and language to flourish in the fifth and sixth centuries.

[264] The Tribal Hidage is evidence of the existence of numerous smaller provinces, meaning that southern and eastern Britain may have lost any macro-political cohesion in the fifth and sixth centuries and fragmented into many small autonomous units, though late Roman administrative organisation of the countryside may have helped dictate their boundaries.

However, a ceorl, who was the lowest ranking freeman in early Anglo-Saxon society, was not a peasant but an arms-owning male with access to law, support of a kindred and the wergild, situated at the apex of an extended household working at least one hide of land.

[283] One Anglo-Saxon cultural practice that is better understood are the burial customs, due in part to archaeological excavations at various sites including Sutton Hoo, Spong Hill, Prittlewell, Snape and Walkington Wold, and the existence of around 1,200 furnished inhumation and cremation cemeteries, which were once assumed to be pagan but whose religious affiliation is now substantially debated in scholarship.

"[285] Indicative of possible religious belief, grave goods were common amongst inhumation burials as well as cremations; free Anglo-Saxon men were buried with at least one weapon in the pagan tradition, often a seax, but sometimes also with a spear, sword, or shield, or a combination of these.

Howard Williams, summarising general trends in the scholarship, has pointed out The emergence of furnished cremation and inhumation graves is thus no longer regarded as reflecting a single and coherent 'Anglo-Saxon paganism'; nor need the decline in accompanied burial relate directly or exclusively to Christian conversion.

Indeed, the very term 'pagan Anglo-Saxon burial' compounds the conceptually naïve assumption that there existed a one-to-one correlation between ethnic affiliation, religious beliefs and ritual practice that archaeologists have been so keen to move beyond.