Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Agraes]

Oh, ha-ha, I guess the joke is, and was supposed to be, on me.

Glad you like the tooth-pick.

Here some other impressive Dark Ages warriors with their typical weaponry.



Ahem! Ok, let's come back on more serious matter.

Pryor really makes me snigger but he is fine entertainment all right! What the Scots call a bahmpot! Harke is very good and, right now, is awaiting his stuff to be reviewed by the Royal Society in London. I think he is right. I think there was an Apartheid enforced by the saxons in the early days and probably as part of and following enforced subjugation in some places. I envisage a scenario where local foederati who stayed on (to collect their arrears in pay) contacted their mates in Frisland and Germany to come on over and get stuck in. Some of these also would have been professionals..either as mercenaires or pirates. It meant swords and metalware...what with their being Pros and all that. Wooden spear points might have been effective and date back to the paleaolithic but they didnt stop the Romans.

I would pick-up the 'in between' view :wink:
I think it can't be denied there was a significant settlement of germanic newcomers in 5th century Britain. They were called by the British autorities as extra muscle in both external and internal conflicts. Nothing new here, good Gildas was the first to write about it. The 'Anglo-saxons' however don't seem to have taken over large parts of Britain before the 6th century.

I really like Stuart Laycock' theories developped in Britannia: The Failed State. Tribal Conflicts and the End of Roman Britain. That the germanic immigrants were settled on the borders of several warring british civitates seems well convincing. So their settlement seems at first to have been organised by Romano-british autorities. The following decades would see here and there political takeovers by germanic elite and strong cultural influence on the Britons. Some germanic leaders may have called then more people from Germanic mainland.
In itself this would not be surprising. The same thing happenned in Gaul and much of the rest of the Western Roman Empire. The Germanic elites had to cope with the local aristocraty and the people. This resulted in two-ways cultural influence and assimilation. If at first there was some distinction between 'Germanic' (ie Frankish, Wisigothic or any other) and 'Roman' such distinctions were going to vanish.
Britain case is different from the rest of late antique/early medieval Europe for several things. The 'Anglo-saxons' seem to have been composed of a wide selection of tribes, not a single people or coalition such as the Salian Franks, Burgonds, Alemanni or Wisigoths. The process of the conquest/political takeover was much slower and progressive than on mainland, nor it was complete. And finally, they never adopted such a romanised culture as their continental counterparts. This is particularly true for the language, which wasn't a dialect of latin or brittonic but a germanic one. The influence of native tongues on it is another matter. In itself, this may had to do with that slower conquest. The 'Anglo-saxons' may have had more time to assimilise the local Briton population.

I think there wasn't one scenario of 'anglo-saxon' settlement but many of those. It wasn't probably the same thing in Bernicia, Wessex, Kent or East Anglia. Some places may have seen a brutal colonisation with Britons beeing killed, enslaved or forced to exile. In other the process may have been set up by British authorities, resulting in the long term on a cultural mix-up between Britons and Saxons (one often quoted exemple beeing Gewissae leaders with brittonic names such as Cerdic and Cynric). While the germanic warlords may have quickly took up the power here and there they likely had to deal with the locals who may still be way more numerous. And in other place where is very little proof of Germanic settlement such as Bernicia, the Anglo-saxon culture may have been made 'popular' through a very limited number of newcomers.

I must admit I may just have been kicking out an open door!