The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[ambrosius]

My reason to bring up Coates was to discuss several of his point about Anglo-Saxon-British interaction.
His treatment of the historical sources is not correct. Starting with Gildas, who writes of Romano-Britons being driven from their cities up into the hills and caves where they starve of hunger, while behind them all their cities burn. Of course, no-one believes that, and archaeology disproves it. Yet Coates uses this to support a ‘vacated east’.

Actually, archaeology doesn't disprove it. Archaeology supports it.

No Mike, archaeology does not support Gildas' claim that all cities burned and were deserted.

I agree with your post about the cities, not about that wave of immigrants pushing west, but I wás referring to Gildas apocalyptic view ..

No, Robert, archaeology does support Gildas's claim that all British
cities were deserted by the time he was writing (c.540). See my previous
post for the evidence. Maybe he was exaggerating about them all being
burnt, but we know from Fulford's excavations at Silchester that after
the British occupation ceased (6th c?) the whole city was actually
demolished rather systematically. In his view, it is a rather pointed act,
which puts a full-stop to occupation, there. And you may not agree with
waves of immigrants pushing West, but the archaeology shows a gradual
and progressive abandonment of these cities going Westwards with time.
What else could any surviving Britons do except escape Westwards,
as the British colonization of Brittany implies. And if no Britons actually
did escape Westwards (and to Brittany) as refugees, then they must
either have been killed or stayed-put within the emerging Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the East. Yet we have no record of Brittonic still being
spoken in the East. So they must have adopted Old English completely.
In which case, they did not continue to speak their native Celtic tongue
within a benevolent incoming culture - unlike the Gauls under Rome.

I really don't think you can criticize Gildas for having written an apocalyptic view of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Had you ever been
invaded, you would probably have exaggerated on the details, too.
You shouldn't dismiss Gildas as not being corroborated by archaeology just because he made political propaganda out of his record of events.
If the archaeology supports his statement of the abandonment of all
British cities by the time he wrote (except Wroxeter - which, as pointed
out, was a special case) then who are you to say that there was no
burning going-on as well.


Ambrosius / Mike