Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Ron Andrea]

Some of those Iron Age hill forts may have been so large because whole communities lived in them--including their dogs and horses--er, hosses. However, you could hardly graze them there. Maybe on the outer slopes though.

Your point, however, is that horses could be economically maintained. Maybe, but if sub-Roman Britain was sliding back toward subsistence living, horses may have been a luxury they couldn't afford--no matter how useful mounted warriors might be against the invading Germans. I'm all for the idea of some form of sub-Roman cavalry (obviously) but see it as more ad hoc and defused than anything Imperial.

That's the big unknown: how far and how fast did sub-Roman Britain degenerate? Apparently they were still importing pottery (and things in the pots) from the Mediterranean. Wonder if they were still exporting tin? Socially they re-adopted tribal groupings, though who knows how close their governance resembled what had existed before AD 47. They probably didn't know and didn't care. They were clinging to whatever seemed to be working because Herman (the German) were at their gates.