Appearence and tactics of early 5th century Saxons.

[Robert Vermaat]

Obviously because, to them, it wasn't superior. Perhaps,
(dare I say it) because they had a racist disdain for Romanized Britons.
But I think we could drop the term racist, as applied to either our fellow
listmembers, native Britons or Anglo-Saxons, don't you?

Who applied that term to our fellow listmembers? Not I. :x

Well no Saxon forced the Roman Army in Gaul to start
wearing chip-carved buckles, I'll grant you that.
[/quote]
Thank you!

And probably no Saxon
forced British women to drop their native clothing (okay, actually, they
may well have doen that :oops: ) and start wearing the latest Saxon
fashions to come off the Paris catwalk, either.

Kinky!

The simplest explanation
is that if it walks like a Saxon and quacks like a Saxon, then it's a Saxon.

So if it wears a Germanic buckle and carries a Germanic sword it's a Germanic soldier? :twisted:

[color=blue] But graves containing exclusively Anglo-Saxon grave-goods
do appear suddenly c. 450 onwards in Kent

You keep saying that, and so they might, but when Coca-Cola bottles suddenly start appearing in Europe, does that mean we were invaded by Americans and driven from our homes, too? Or did a new style appear with new immigrants that suddenly became the total hot fashion, taken up by the natives who continued to be buried amongst the newcomers, but incresingly indistinguishable?

Now to be honest, I thought, at the time, that you were
contradicting yourself, rather. But I didn't like to point it out to you,
in case you called me racist, or something :lol: So my question, above,
about customs control of importation of Germanic weapons in the century
before 400 still stands. Unless you wish to revise what you said. :wink:

Mike, it's not even nice to use that word in jest now is it?
About the customs, I did not realise you referring to that quote. But sure, why not.
Paul was questioning me about Germanic-style weapons being different from British weapons, not when they appeared. I was at the time under the impression that we were discussing Anglo-Saxon swords from later times. But maybe I was misaten - to answer your previous question about customs - of course traders could sell to Romans who were allowed to carry arms. So soldiers could of course buy weapons from foreign traders - why not? I said the Roman state had a monopoly of arms manufacture, and you of course know that arms exports were forbidden, but that did not means that arms imports were off limits too.

Absolutely. so why did you suggest, in the post I replied to,
that Britons might have been tempted to convert to Anglo-Saxon paganism a century earlier, c. 450? 8)

Oh, I don't know - to get away from the clutches of a church that managed to send guys like Germanus to areas where he had no business, but with an apparent mandate to haul back Pelagian heretics in chains to Rome?
I'm jesting a bit....

He's mentioned as visiting the monastery at
Glastonbury, which, it would follow, had been raided by Anglo-Saxons.
That's in the South West, and would be on the frontline between the
Britons and the Anglo-Saxons, if he was writing near to the mid 6th c.
which was when the A/S penetrated to the Bristol Channel.

Mentioned where? Not by any contemporary source, I think!
If Gildas was writing around 550, which he did not in my opinion!, there would hardly have been anything like an 'Anglo-Saxon frontline' in that area.. In my opinion Wessex (which I think you refer to as 'penetrating to the Bristol Channel') was at that time still as British as the next kingdom. Even the kings had British names. Not even Kenneth Jackson drew his (in)famous occupation frontier that far West for 550AD (Jackson, Kenneth H. (1953): Language and History in Early Britain, (Edinburgh), pp. 208-9).

And of course, by far not all Britons changed their faith - not all were Christian (at least more than nominally)

As spock would say: 'Fascinating'. Do you have any
evidence for that? 8)
Sure, ask Martin Henig about those fascinating pagan details in Late Roman mosaics in Britain: http://www.asprom.org/resources/Lulling ... Henig.html

and as Ken Dark advocated, many Christians were still to be found in ‘Anglo-Saxon lands’ before 597.

Well of course they were. Judging from the placename and
archaeological evidence, there were British enclaves from Walton Castle
on the East coast to London, Silchester, Chichester etc till c.500. There
is no evidence that any of these British enclaves had converted to
paganism, nor that any Anglo-Saxons had converted to Christianity.

Well, there you go then.