Sub-Roman Britain
The term was originally used to describe archaeological remains found in 5th- and 6th-century AD sites that hinted at the decay of locally made wares from a previous higher standard under the Roman Empire.
[1] The date taken for the end of this period is arbitrary in that the sub-Roman culture continued in northern England until the merger of Rheged (the kingdom of the Brigantes) with Northumbria by dynastic marriage in 633, and longer in the west of Britain, and Cornwall, Cumbria and Wales especially.
The term "late antiquity", implying wider horizons, is finding more use in the academic community, especially when transformations of classical culture common throughout the post-Roman West are examined.
Two primary contemporary British sources exist: the Confessio of Saint Patrick and Gildas' De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain).
The Historia Nova of Byzantine scholar Zosimus notes in passing that western Emperor Honorius, in the throes of Alaric's invasion in 410, sent a rescript to British cities that they must look to their own defence.
[10] Archaeology provides further evidence for this period, in some cases suggesting that the depopulation of Roman towns and the development of villa and estate organization was already occurring in the 4th century.
[18] Excavations of settlements have revealed possible changes in social structures, and the extent to which life in Britain continued unaltered in certain pockets into the early medieval period.
[19] Archaeology has confirmed Germanic burials at Bowcombe and Gatcombe on the Isle of Wight that took place at least 50 years before the dates suggested by historical sources,[20] concurrent with Honorius's award of land in Gallia Aquitania to the Visigoths in 418.
[30] Later civil wars seem to have broken out, which have been interpreted either as being between pro-Roman and independence groups or between "Established Church" and Pelagian parties (Myres 1965, Morris 1965), a class struggle between peasants and land owners (Thompson 1977, Wood 1984), or a coup by an urban elite (Snyder 1988).
He castigates five rulers in western Britain – Constantine of Dumnonia, Aurelius Caninus, Vortipor of the Demetae, Cuneglasus and Maglocunus (Mailcun or in later spelling Maelgwn of Gwynedd) – for their sins.
Not all of their names, especially in the southeast, are known, nor are the details of their political development; some authority structures left from the Roman period may have continued in charge of some areas for some time.
Bede in Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (completed in 731) wrote that "currently, [there are in Britain] the languages of five peoples, namely that of the Angles (English), the Britons (Brittonic), the Scots (Gaelic), the Picts and the Latins" (HE 1.1).
An explanation of the toponymic and linguistic evidence is that Anglo-Saxon language and culture became dominant due to their political and social preeminence in the south and east of Britain.
The Anglo-Saxon historian Frank Stenton in 1943, although making considerable allowance for British survival, essentially sums up this view, arguing "that the greater part of southern England was overrun in the first phase of the war".
This interpretation particularly appealed to earlier English historians, who wanted to further their view that England had developed differently from mainland Europe, with a limited monarchy and love of liberty.
Though many scholars would now employ this argument,[clarification needed] the traditional view is still held by many other historians, Lawrence James writing in 2002 that England was "submerged by an Anglo-Saxon current which swept away the Romano-British.
[57] According to this argument, internal turmoil in the Roman Empire and the need to withdraw troops to fight off barbarian armies led Rome to abandon Britain.
Laycock (Britannia the Failed State, 2008) suggests tribal conflict, possibly even starting before 410, may have sliced up much of Britain and helped destroy the economy.
These settlers, unlikely to be refugees if the date was this early, made their presence felt in the naming of the westernmost, Atlantic-facing provinces of Armorica, Kerne/Cornouaille ("Kernow/Cornwall") and Domnonea ("Devon").
[61] In Galicia, in the north west corner of the Iberian Peninsula, another region of traditional Celtic culture, the Suebian Parochiale, drawn up about 580, includes a list of the principal churches of each diocese in the metropolitanate of Braga: the ecclesia Britonensis, now Bretoña (north of Lugo), which was the seat of a bishop who ministered to the spiritual needs of the British immigrants to northwestern Spain: in 572 the bishop, Mailoc, had a Celtic name.
The epitome of this process is the adoption of the legendary British war leader, King Arthur, as the national hero of the English, due to the literary work of Welsh historians.
"[72]: 59–60 The difference the lower percentage [clarification needed] in the Later Roman Empire can be attributed to fewer slaves in sub-elite households and agricultural estates[72]: 66 (replaced by a great expansion in various types of tenancy).
Landowners could pay a set fee to prevent any of their tenants from being pressed into the army (slaves were rarely resorted to even at critical moments in exchange for their freedom).
The policy of substituting mercenaries who were paid in gold which should have gone to support the professional standing army and accommodation to their presence spelled the doom of the Western Empire.
According to research led by University College London, Anglo-Saxon settlers could have enjoyed a substantial social and economic advantage over the native Celtic Britons[76] who lived in what is now England, for more than 300 years from the middle of the 5th century.
Stephen Oppenheimer, basing his research on the Weale and Capelli studies, maintains that none of the invasions since 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.
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.
He reports work on linguistics by Forster and Toth which suggests that Indo-European languages began to fragment some 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age.
", the National Museum of Wales note, "It is possible that future genetic studies of ancient and modern human DNA may help to inform our understanding of the subject.
However, early studies have, so far, tended to produce implausible conclusions from very small numbers of people and using outdated assumptions about linguistics and archaeology.
