Appearence and tactics of early 5th century Saxons.

[Robert Vermaat]

There is evidence of population movement from the continet to England:
1. Almost complete change in burial rites.
2. Parts of the Jutland peninsula and coastal areas of Germany largely abandoned.
3. New styles of housing - similar to that on continent.
4. New pottery -- just like that on the continent.
5. New jewellery styles -- just like that on the continent and Scandinavia.
6. Weapon types change to Germanic types.
7. The english language has very, very few loan words from the British languages -- if Anglo Saxon men had married British wives you would expect lots of domestic words for food and utensils, etc to have been in everyday use as the women would use them and pass them on to their children. This just did not happen. The Normans were an elite -- and a powerful one -- but they failed to make us speak French after 1066.
8. Quite a few archaeologists and historians have changed their ideas and abandoned the idea of elite dominance and gone back to the idea of a fair sized migration, probably over a long period of time but with large scale replacement in some areas and, perhaps integration or co-existence in others. The elite dominance theory is no longer, particularly in fashion.
Why would there be discontinuity in farming? The incomers needed to eat just like the people who were using the field before them.

1. Not true, such rites existed in pre-Roman Britain and continued to be used, especially in the areas that were later supposedly invaded.
2.settlements were abandoned, sure, but where in the past it was automatically assumed that the folks took ship to Britain, nowadays we are more careful. Maybe they built new houses at another spot, close by or some distance away> It is very common for settlements to 'move' that way. But in the past it was the chiocken and the egg: the folks went so they had to join the invasion, and the invasions happened because the folks semed to be gone.
3. Sure, and that is why i don't like the theories of those who say that none even migrated. But Romans also brought new styles, and they never killed off the population, nor brought a mass migration of Romans to Britain. But when the Saxons are supposed to have arrived we suddenly should look at it differently?
4. Same as above. Such things also happen in prehistoric times, but prehistoric archaelogist learned a long time ago to stop seeing an invasion as soon as new potery or other styles arrived. But somehow historical archaeologist, especially when the Saxons are involved, take up a different appoach.
5. See above.
6. So what are Germanic weapons? Spears are spears, and other types turn up long before any germanic invader supposedly does. Part of the answer is the same as above (styles change when cultural influences change, you don't need invasion for that), but I'd like to add that fighting styles, as described by some sources, also seem to resemble Roman style.
7. And that's the main argument. But then I must add that we don't have any sources that shed light on names and places between 400 and 800, Bede being the fight one and he speaks mostly of other things. My point is, the invasion-theorists say that the change was fast and brutal, with the inavaders forcing a new language upon the vanquished. My answer would be that a new langauage could also have taken up 300 years to push earlier languages out. My best example is the Arab conquest of Syria and North Africa, where former Romans citizens gradually took up a new faith and also a new language. All inhabitants of these areas now speak Arab, and the Arabs did not kill or displace the masses, nor invade with a mass migration in their wake. Sure, the linguistic bother me, i admit that, but contuity on the ground speaks against a displacement of the rural population:
8. When you ara a farmer and you are scared off (or killed), it's totally illogica to suppose that the newcomer, who is a warrior at best, manages to continue the farm in exactly the same manner, with exactly the same means, on exactly the same fields - as if the former owner had left him a manual!