The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[Robert Vermaat]

Thank you.

My pleasure.
Good thing they are still in draft.....

Anything else you want to check? :wink:

[authun]

Hi Ron,

I knew I'd read about this recently.

There was an area known as the Engilin Gau in the Unstrut/Saale area of Thuringen. It gets its first mention in 772 AD. A Gau is a sort of administrative area also used by the Saxons and which the Franks maintained. The Saxons at Widukind's time had about 100 such areas, each with its own leader.

The interesting aspect of the Thuringians is the title of their law code, Lex Angliorum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum which strongly suggests that Angles and Warnians formed part of Thuringians. Not only is Engilin in Thuringen but there are many place names, Feld-engel, Holz-engel, Kirchen-engel, Wester-engel. The archaeology is also closely associated with east holstein and east schleswig. The neighbouring gau is called Werinofeld which may describe the presence of Warnians. Relations between the Warnians and Angles was probably very close. We see very similar naming conventions: Werin-hard/Engel-hard, Werin-frid/Engil-frid, Werin-drud/Engel-drud, Werin-gard/Engil-gard etc.

The Franks defeated the Thuringians in 531AD and it is possible that they settled Angles there. Charlemagne did something similar much later when he is thought to have settled 'saxons' from north germany in Sachsenheim in the Neckar valley in southern germany after Franconian expansion into the Allemannic kingdom. However, german historians normally talk of Angles having migrated to Thuringen in the 4th cent AD along with the Warnians.

So, exactly what we are looking at with Rudolf's Translatio sancti Alexandri is anyone's guess. It could be Gildas' saxons returning home or it could be one group of germanics being defeated by another, especially if in Kent. The Merovingians claimed parts of kent as their kingdom. Or it could be mercenaries. The german place name researcher Prof Udolph claims many english place names have counterparts in Thuringen so we could even be looking at a different scenario.

best

harry Amphlett

[authun]

I suspect that tribal grouping and identification was not so rigid in those days as we try to make national identification today ...

Hi Ron,

Yes, quite.

I found another version of Rudolf of Fulda's account.

Whereas Rudolf states that they are said to have emanated from the Angles in Britannia, from whence they sailed across the sea and landed at Hadeln in search of new homes, Widukind of Corvey states that his information has been handed down verbally. According to this, the Saxons were an offspring of the Danes and Norsemen. Others made the Saxons the descendants of the army of Alexander the Great. What was certain, stated Widukind, ‘is that the Saxons arrived in their country by ship and first landed at a place called Hadolaun’—the area around Hadeln on the left bank of the mouth of the Elbe.

What I find interesting is that the Saxons of the 9th cent are still wondering about where the saxons came from. The romans, the gallo romans, the british and even the english have written about them for centuries. Yet they don't seem convinced, quite rightly in my opinion.

best

Harry Amphlett

[ambrosius]

Both slaughter of Britons by Anglo-Saxons and failure of them to adopt British words into English are symptoms of hostility towards Britons by Anglo-Saxons. Do you see? 8) What you say, above, merely replaces one paradigm for understanding the hostility from anglo-Saxons towards Britons with another. It doesn't matter whether you choose to say that Anglo-Saxons slaughtered Britons or refused to speak Brittonic. Either way, they were hostile to Britons.

Oh I see, but that’s your point of view, which you are entitled to have. But I have mine, and your arguments have not convinced me on this point.

No, Robert, it is not my point of view. It is Coates's point of view that Anglo-Saxons didn't adopt British vocabulary because there were
no Britons left alive in the East (because they'd killed them, for example)
and it is YOUR point of view that they didn't adopt British
vocabulary out of choice (whatever that choice was). Either way, it is
a fact that they didn't like Britons or their culture, if (as is the case) - BY COMPARRISON WITH OTHER CONQUERORS IN SIMILAR LOCATIONS
AND SIMILAR CIRCUMSTANCES they did not adopt more than 3
native words. And rest assured, Robert - I have long since given-up
hoping to convince you of ANYTHING. But, fortunately, you are
not the only person on this thread or this list. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Your main cause for the extremely low number is the hostility of the Anglo-Saxons towards the Britons. Surely they did not come for High Tea! But I’m more with Coates here, when he offers that Anglo-Saxons had less of a need for Celtic new words.

Oh for goodness sake, Robert! Make up your mind, please! 8) Now you
say you are AGREEING with Coates, after all!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
But I thought you had just complained that Coates thinks the reason
for Anglo-Saxons not adopting British words was that they had entered
an 'empty landscape' (because of either slaughter, exile or famine).

Coates argues that the Romans wouldn't have seen anything new in Gaul, either. I'm afraid that this argument reduces to zero, on this point, Robert - see above. Yet Romans still adopted ten times as many words from Gauls, didn't they. :lol:

You’re wrong there Mike. I for sure don’t know all the Celtic words that entered Latin, but Philip Rance wrote an article about at least one that survived into Byzantine times, a technical word used in horse training. The Romans did learn from the Celts, which is nothing new.

Erm, excuse me, Robert, but it is YOU who are wrong there!!!
I am quoting the reference in Coates's article - which has been
mentioned in this thread a dozen or more times - that says Romans
adopted 40 words from Gallic into Latin compared to the Anglo-Saxon
adoption of only THREE words from Brittonic into Old English.
I don't know what kind of game you are trying to play on us all, here,
but you can't ignore the evidence of linguists - or the evidence of what
has been said in the archives of RAT, either. YOU were trying to
make a flawed point, to defend your Anglo-Saxon friends, by claiming
that they didn't need to adopt British words, as they wouldn't have seen
anything in Britain that they hadn't seen in Germany (like Kangaroos or
Koala Bears, for example). And I made the pont that Coates
points out that the same situation was true for Romans entering Gaul.
THEY wouldn't have seen anything much new, either. So I pointed
out to you that you cannot use this argument to explain-away a lack of
linguistic borrowing of Brittonic into English, as the same situation applies
to borrowing of Gallic into Latin. It becomes a zero-sum argument!!!

The fact still remains (despite your attempts to ignore it and explain it
away) that Romans adopted MORE THAN TEN TIMES AS MANY WORDS
FROM GALLIC THAN ANGLO-SAXONS ADOPTED bRITTONIC WORDS

Ambrosius / Mike

[ambrosius]

The Romans did learn from the Celts, which is nothing new.

Robert, please calm down and stop trying to create arguments where
they do not exist (we have enough already to disagree about). Nobody
on this thread has ever suggested that Romans did not learn from the
Celts. And it is beyond me why you should imply that anyone has. :lol:

I shall repeat: Romans adopted more than 10 times the vocablulary
from Gauls than Anglo-Saxons adopted from British Celts. Period.
Now there is absolutely no reason for you to try claiming that anything
in that statement implies a lack of borrowing by Romans from Celts.

(Btw we’re not speaking about Gallic words here, from what I read: these Celtic words could have come from the Italic Celts, the Gauls, the Celtiberians or the British Celts for all I know).

Nonsense. Read what Coates says in his article (or better still, read his
French reference). About 40 Gallic words were adopted into Latin and
about 120 Gallic words were adopted into Frankish (> French). It is
rather disingenuous of you (to put politely) to try to rubbish the evidence, or reword it, just because you don't like what it proves. :lol: As for
saying that these GALLIC words could have come from the
Italic Celts rather than the Gallic Celts 'FOR ALL YOU KNOW, I
think that tells the rest of us an awful lot about 'ALL YOU KNOW.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Given that the situation is equal for both Romans and Anglo-Saxons in this regard - why do Anglo-Saxons so conspicuously choose not to speak any British.

Your guess is as good as my guess, I guess .

Oh, so now you say I am guessing? Actually, I'm going by the evidence
of Gildas, Bede, Albinus (Arch Bishop of Canterbury, who was Bede's
source about the Adventus Saxonum in Kent) the ASC, the Historia
Brittonum, the Gallic Chronicle (for year 452) St. Patrick's 'Confessio',
the archaeological evidence of the systematic abandonment of British
cities in precise co-ordination with the Westward advance of Anglo-Saxon
groupings through 'England' and the linguistic evidence that over 600
years of Anglo-Saxon hegemony in England, they apparently didn't
adopt more than THREE words from the native population. If that
wasn't a conquest far more hostile than the Roman conquest of Gaul,
then somebody isn't paying enough attention to the evidence. :roll:

You say hostility, some say an empty landscape, some say Apartheid, some say no linguistic reason. My guess would be all of these and maybe others.

Well hooray! You've just conceded my point completely, Robert! :lol:

Yes, of course there was hostility! The empty lanscape, of course,
can also be A DIRECT RESULT OF THAT HOSTILITY if the invading Anglo-Saxons were killing the native Britons off quicker than they could adopt Brittonic speech from them. And 'Apartheid' (though wrongly used in its definiton in the recent paper by Thomas et al) is yet another SYMPTOM of racial and/or cultural hostility! 8)

That vague? Of course, I wasn’t there.

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Robert, far be it from me to say that I always thought you vague. :lol:
You weren't there? What a pity. Had I also been there, no doubt I
(as Ambrosius) would have been giving you (as Vortigern) a darn good
thrashing at the 'discord of Wallop'!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

But I don’t the signs of an empty landscape and
enough remains to suggest hostility was not the rule.

Of course there wasn't an 'empty landscape'. The Anglo-Saxons (for
which read: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks, Geats, Swedes,
Norwegians and no doubt many others) probably found a Romanised,
Christianised, British population in England & Wales of about 4 million
(according to the best archaeological estimates) and 'emptied' that
rather full landscape themselves (through masacre, exile, apartheid
enslavement etc). And when the only documented case of 5th c. Britons
actually INVITING Anglo-Saxons to Britain (you - I mean,
Vortigern 8) - inviting the Jutes to Kent in the Adventus Saxonum)
is cospicuous in its singularity among an estimated immigration of
AT LEAST 200,000 Anglo-Saxons here in the 5th & 6th centuries
(see Harke) and probably a Hell of a lot MORE than that, if some
of the genetic studies suggesting 2 million are correct, then how, exactly
do you not see hostility as being 'the rule'? 8)

My hypothesis is that once more words did exist in English but they vanished over time.

That is a rather unevidenced and unprovable hypothesis, Robert, and
one born of desperation on your part, no doubt, to ignore the simple
and obvious implications of ALL the evidence on this question
(not just the linguistic evidence).

The main difference is that while the Romans’ (like the Anglo-Saxons) first contact with almost every Celtic group was one of conquest, but that afterwards, for centuries, that relationship was neutral to benevolent. The Anglo-Saxons fought the British/Welsh until this very day.

Erm, I quite agree with you Robert...... NO... STRIKE THAT...
IT'S YOU WHO ARE AGREEING WITH ME :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Hostile? Of course! I agree with you! (Again? I must be ill ).

:lol: :lol: :lol: But then, I always suspected this as well... :lol: :lol:

But unlike you (I think at least that’s your position) this hostility did not start on day one –

Of course not. It started about 700 years earlier, when the emerging
Germanic tribes first made contact with the Volcae Technosausages!!!

I see too many signs of co-operation and living next-to each to assume that. I just don’t think the Saxons all arrived on some beach, guns blazing,

Bloode Hell. They had GUNS as well? - no wonder they ended-up
conquering England (but then, the King Arthur movies (one of your
favourites :lol: ) did say they had crossbows, now didn't it) :lol: :lol: :lol:

In my view, the big split between Us English/You Welsh did not develop until later, 6th-7th c.

See above. It was probably about 200 B.C.

Ambrosius / Mike


[/quote]

[ambrosius]

Hi Aryamen,

Hi Aryaman,

Sure, I agree with you. And Coates also outlines that argument, himself
(even if he doesn't make a point of suggesting that as another
possible explanation). But ultimately, of course (as I mention to Robert)
it doesn't really matter whether we're using 'emigration, annihilation or
enslavement' or 'lack of prestige' to explain the lack of linguistic
borrowing from Brittonic to English. Either way, it is equally clear that
Britons were not exactly held in the highest esteem by Anglo-Saxons.
This, then, mitigates against the idea of a peaceful assimilation between the two cultural groups (which idea is one of my pet hates). Mike

To me, it is clear that genetic evidence doesn´t support any idea of genocide, so other explanations should be looked after. I used "social prestige" because it is a notion well established in sociology. It derives from enjoying status and superior position in hierarchical organizations, so Briton language, linked to no social prestige, made little impact (as Robert says probably larger than the surviving examples in modern Engilsh though) on early English. You say you are against the idea of peaceful assimilation because all that proves (and here I agree with you) Britons were not held in high esteem by Anglo-Saxons, but that doesn´t mean war to death, it means simply that conquered Britons had good reasons to forget Britonic and become Anglo-Saxons.

Well, it's very easy to dismiss the idea of an extremely hostile conquest
by Anglo-Saxons by saying that the genetic (or archaeological, or
written or linguistic) evidence does not support genocide. But then,
(leaving aside what Coates may say) neither does the evidence support
the post WWII revisionist movement in British & American Archaeology
to try to make the Anglo-Saxons out to be just misunderstood 'Moma's
Boys', while absolutely demonising the late-Roman Empire in all its
forms in Western Europe (as it is de rigeur in those countries now to
regard any Empire as being inherently evil, and to claim that
whatever replaces them - however distasteful it may be - simply must
be an improvement). :?

By contrast, however, Archaeologists in mainland Europe have no such
delusions about the modern 'rose tinted' retrospective view of invasions
and conquests in the migration-period. This is because, on mainland
Europe (unlike in the UK or US) they have far more recent experience
of invasion, conquest, enslavement, genocide etc - in many cases, still
within living memory.

You make a point of supporting Robert when he claims that there was
probably a larger representation of Brittonic words in Old English than
the THREE words which still exist, today. Okay, well I'd like to
throw that comment back to you (as I've done to Robert) and say that
what's 'sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander'. :lol: How do you
or Robert know that that must be the case for Brittonic in English, but
at the same time, you don't consider the same situation to pertain with
the adoption of Gallic into Latin, or Gallic into Frankish (French)? 8)
Why, I can make the same claim as you, and say that if twice as many
Brittonic words were originally adopted into English, then so could twice
as many Gallic words have been originally adopted into Latin. :lol:

And then, after all this equally futile conjecture, we are left back at
square-one, again, because it is the RELATIVE adoption of the
native vocabulary by Anglo-Saxons verses Romans or Franks which
is the paradigm under examination, here. And when all is said and done,
you and Robert can theorise about hypothetical 'lost' British words in
Old English, but you have no evidence for it at all. No more than I would
have for making the same claims for Gallic. So isn't it more sensible
simply to pay due respect to the actual evidence we have about the
relative adoption of native language by the various conquerors, and
not indulge in the kind of fruitless speculation which doesn't improve
the 'Touch-Feely Anglo-Saxon' hypothesis at all, but only exasperates
those of us who cannot get certain people to accept the evidence. 8)

Lastly, you suggest that the conquered Britons had good reason to
forget Brittonic and 'become Anglo-Saxons (and how does one do
that, I wonder...). Yet you forget that the native Britons in the 5th & 6th
centuries remained staunchly Brittonic speakers in the British West -
that is, in Cumbria, Wales, Cornwall & Strathclyde - and have sought
to do so even down to very recent times. Welsh is still a living language,
and Cornish was also, until recent centuries. And Breton (in Brittany)
survived where British refugees escaped abroad.

And even if a Briton could 'become an Anglo-Saxon', that may only be
out of duress. The difference, to me, is that while Gaul became
integrated into the Roman Empire, with Gallo-Romans, Bretons and
Britons joining forces in the 5th c. under leaders like Riothamus, to try
to defeat the invasions of barbarians in Gaul like Saxons & Visigoths,
the Welsh and English remained at war throughout the hegemony of
Anglo-Saxons in England, until 1066.

Ambrosius / Mike

[ambrosius]

grübenhäuser

Noo no no, the political correct word today is SFB's!
(SFB=sunken featured building).

Oh, indeed. Not 'Grub-huts'. 'Grubby-huts, perhaps... :lol:

Actually, the old idea that these 'Sunken floored/featured buildings'
meant that you walked down inside them, and that the floor was on
the bare earth a foot below ground-level, with the roof lying directly
on the ground, has been revised. At West Stowe, they've reconstructed
SFBs so that floor-boards lay over this cavity, at ground-level, so that
the boards were insulated from the cold and the damp. Unfortunately,
they were used over a wide period, and in the absence of any other
dating evidence, they can't be used to claim an Anglo-Saxon presence
before c.450.

Ambrosius / Mike

[Aryaman2]

Mike
I am a bit confused by your arguments, in the first time you seemed to agree with me that the reason for a low acceptance of Britonic language were social considerations, but in this last post you fully support Coates argument about genocide, that is in no way, AKAIK, supported by genetic research.

[Robert Vermaat]

Oh for goodness sake, Robert! Make up your mind, please! 8) Now you
say you are AGREEING with Coates, after all!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
But I thought you had just complained that Coates thinks the reason
for Anglo-Saxons not adopting British words was that they had entered
an 'empty landscape' (because of either slaughter, exile or famine).

Well, I must apologise for confusing you!
I thought it was common practise that one could agree with some part of an article, while rejecting another part. And since these two need not be the same thing (after all, Coates mentions both as possibilities), I thought I could do that. [smilie for irony seems to be missing here]

Erm, excuse me, Robert, but it is YOU who are wrong there!!!
I am quoting the reference in Coates's article - which has been
mentioned in this thread a dozen or more times - that says Romans
adopted 40 words from Gallic into Latin compared to the Anglo-Saxon
adoption of only THREE words from Brittonic into Old English.
I don't know what kind of game you are trying to play on us all, here,
but you can't ignore the evidence of linguists - or the evidence of what
has been said in the archives of RAT, either. YOU were trying to
make a flawed point, to defend your Anglo-Saxon friends, by claiming
that they didn't need to adopt British words, as they wouldn't have seen
anything in Britain that they hadn't seen in Germany (like Kangaroos or
Koala Bears, for example).

The fact still remains (despite your attempts to ignore it and explain it
away) that Romans adopted MORE THAN TEN TIMES AS MANY WORDS
FROM GALLIC THAN ANGLO-SAXONS ADOPTED bRITTONIC WORDS

Temper temper Mike, calm down. It's not a good thing to write such heated posts late at night.

Stay objective, please, and lay off from statements like "your Anglo-Saxon friends", Or "what kind of game you are trying to play on us all", and such. That gets us nowhere.

My argument was, and is, that even though it's a number that's ten times as much, it's still a low amount when you consider that Romans and Celts were in contact much longer (almost 900 years). Also, the Romans were much more dominant (they conquered all the Celts in their Empire, not live side by side across a hostile border), plus the Romans were culturally more dominant than the Gauls, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, who were by no means that more advanced. And that's a valid argument.


Robert, please calm down and stop trying to create arguments where
they do not exist (we have enough already to disagree about). [/quote]

Well, it's not me who is SHOUTING on this forum. Please remember your webiquette.

Nobody on this thread has ever suggested that Romans did not learn from the Celts. And it is beyond me why you should imply that anyone has. :lol:

Well, it was you in fact who qoted (jan 24) that "Coates argues that the Romans wouldn't have seen anything new in Gaul, either". So your name is Nobody, in fact?

It is rather disingenuous of you (to put politely) to try to rubbish the evidence, or reword it, just because you don't like what it proves.

And there you go again. Can't win this with arguments, so you need to become persoal again?

As for saying that these GALLIC words could have come from the Italic Celts rather than the Gallic Celts 'FOR ALL YOU KNOW, I think that tells the rest of us an awful lot about 'ALL YOU KNOW.

And again. Did I piss you off or something. there's really no need to become that condescending, now is there? Are you a linguist? Why this comment if you don't want to argue with the correct data? Do you, then, know from which celts these words enetred into Latin? If not, then why comment on me stating (truthfully) that I don't know? What's the use?

Oh, so now you say I am guessing? Actually, I'm going by the evidence
of Gildas, Bede, Albinus (Arch Bishop of Canterbury, who was Bede's
source about the Adventus Saxonum in Kent) the ASC, the Historia
Brittonum, the Gallic Chronicle (for year 452) St. Patrick's 'Confessio',
the archaeological evidence of the systematic abandonment of British
cities in precise co-ordination with the Westward advance of Anglo-Saxon
groupings through 'England' and the linguistic evidence that over 600
years of Anglo-Saxon hegemony in England, they apparently didn't
adopt more than THREE words from the native population. If that
wasn't a conquest far more hostile than the Roman conquest of Gaul,
then somebody isn't paying enough attention to the evidence. :roll:

Well yes Mike, like it or not, that's still guessing instead of knowing. Statements about this period, whether coming from you, me, professor Dumville or Professor Coates, the're all guessing. Educated guessing by people who are sometimes extremely educated, but still guessing. You're not the only one who sometimes forgets that (there are some professors, too), but nevertheless, that's the best we all can come up with, not having been there and watching what really went on or not.

Of course there wasn't an 'empty landscape'. The Anglo-Saxons (for
which read: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks, Geats, Swedes,
Norwegians and no doubt many others) probably found a Romanised,
Christianised, British population in England & Wales of about 4 million
(according to the best archaeological estimates) and 'emptied' that
rather full landscape themselves (through masacre, exile, apartheid
enslavement etc). And when the only documented case of 5th c. Britons
actually INVITING Anglo-Saxons to Britain (you - I mean,
Vortigern 8) - inviting the Jutes to Kent in the Adventus Saxonum)
is cospicuous in its singularity among an estimated immigration of
AT LEAST 200,000 Anglo-Saxons here in the 5th & 6th centuries
(see Harke) and probably a Hell of a lot MORE than that, if some
of the genetic studies suggesting 2 million are correct, then how, exactly
do you not see hostility as being 'the rule'? 8)

Well, there seems to be a lot of confusion about that 'empty landscape' and what caused it or not. Coates seems to quote Härke, but has a different opinion about origins. Härke (I’m told) saw a sharp population drop around this time, and saw an end to the drop when the Anglo-Saxons arrived (again, not my view), whilst Coates saw an ‘empty landscape’ as a reason why Anglo-Saxons and Britons had not been in touch, linguistically.

Now we both agree that the western Roman Empire saw a sharp drop in economy, building, manufacture of luxury goods and all those niceties associated with a stable civilization. Roofs were no longer tiled, building no longer built in stone but of wood, good-quality pottery became extremely rare. And not just in Britain, but also in Gaul, Spain, Italy.
As a result from hostility? In part, sure, but these parts of the Empire never saw anything of invasion, depopulation and linguistic processes as we find in Britain. Yet the effects are there, but apparently not caused by anything like a massive invasion/migration (or plague) as is so often proposed as the reason for similar effects in Britain. So is Britain unique? Similar effect, different causes? If so, why?

That is why I see hostility as being “aâ€

[ambrosius]

Mike Mike, you’re doing it again, just when I thought you had began to discuss in a more pleasant way.

Shucks. I'm always just as pleasant as you, Robert. So long as you
stick to the evidence and don't ignore the facts, I'm happy. 8)

First of all, PLEASE get your [quotes][/quotes] right, you’re not making yourself more clear by muddling who actually said what.

Don't be silly, Robert. There's NOTHING wrong with my
quotation marks. Please show all of us any evidence to the contrary.
[moderated] I shall respond
by admonishing you for persistently refusing to acknowledge the
linguistic evidence of hostility/lack of assimilation between Anglo-Saxons
and native Britons. I think it must be clear to everyone that you are
never going to accept it.

Secondly, I was talking in absolutes as we were discussing an absolute issue.

No we were not! The entire argument about the Justinian plague
apparently only affecting Romanised Britons in the West of Britain,
and NOT the Anglo-Saxons in the East of Britain was two-fold:

A.) There was negligeable trade or cultural contact between Britons
in the West and Anglo-Saxons in the East.
B.) The Byzantine trade-ships bringing the plague to Britain only
entered ports in the British contolled West. You, I note, have failed
to do as I invited, and offer us any archaeological evidence for the
landing of Byzantine trade-ships at ports in the ANGLO-SAXON
held East of the country. Whatever minimal Byzantine goods MAY
have got into Anglo-Saxon hands in the East (always assuming that
they weren't simply plundered from Britons in the West) passed
through many other intermediates on the continent before being
traded with the Jutes in Kent by the continental Franks (for example).
Hence the RELATIVITY of the trade in Byzantine goods when
comparing the Britons and the Anglo-Saxons. :roll: And it's being
generous to allow that there was ANY with the Jutes in the 6th c.
at all. However, to deny the possibility would be to insist on this debate
being one of absolutes. I'm not as dogmatic as that - I'll allow you
the possibility. However, from the archaeological evidence, there was
relatively much MORE Byzantine trade with the Britons.

I’ll explain my point again, because I see you did not grasp that. I’m not talking about relative trade, but about absolute trade. Absolutely!

No, I understood what you said. You, however, are pretending not to
have understood what I said, nor to have understood what anyone
else was talking about. :o

The point under discussion was the theory (not necessarily one supported by either of us) that the British were affected by the Justinian plague, whereas the Anglo-Saxons were not, because the British traded with the Byzantines and the Anglo-Saxons did not. That was a theory already heard of in the 1970s, but recently this was expanded into a new theory. In this theory the Anglo-Saxons were not hit by this plague because they did not only not trade with the Byzantines, but the also did not come into contact with the British.

And precisely why do you imagine that I didn't understand this? :roll:
As a matter of fact, I certainly DO support the above theory,
as do several others on this thread.

My point is that this does not stand when built on the theory that the plague was the Justinian plague.
The points:

1) The Anglo-Saxons did not trade with the Byzantines directly. I agree to that.

D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D

2) The British did trade with the Byzantines directly. I’m not sure about that (much Byzantine goods does not prove direct Byzantine trade), but it seems highly likely.

Robert, I'm sure that MANY things seem unlikely to you (or, at
least, you would claim so) which are perfectly reasonable to others.
Both Dr. Ken Dark and Dr. Anthea Harris are convinced of it. The fact
is that the pottery sherds found imported at Tintagle & Bantham, and
dating from the mid 5th to the mid 6th c. include those of amphorae
from Syria, Turkey, Greece & North Africa, at a time when Syrian
sailors are known to have conducted the trade in the Eastern Med.
The implication is both clear and unambiguous: Syrian merchants were
stopping throughout the Mediterranean to collect various goods to
bring all the way to Spain, Western Gaul & Western Britain. And among
those amphorae were the B2 versions which Justinian was using to
supply all the military units in the East with Annona. 8) 8) 8)

That looks like direct Byzantine trade, to me.

Ambrosius / Mike

[ambrosius]

With that, the added argument that this supposedly proved the lack of direct contact between British and Anglo-Saxons, also fails.

You’re darned right I’m talking about absolutes.

Actually, you're wrong there, Robert. Whatever you like to call it,
if a plague like epidemic (whatever its origin) only affects the British
community in the West of Britain, then it certainly DOES imply
a lack of direct contact between British and Anglo-Saxons.

[moderated]



Ambrosius / Mike

[ambrosius]

Hi Authun,

Do you have numbers and dates for them. Von Kalben lists the graveyards used but neither of these are mentioned. However, as far as I recall, around a dozen criteria are used to determine whether a burial is classified as christian or not. Harry A

I've been ploughing my way through Robert's replies and have only
just got to this one. I'm at work, at the moment, and it's 0600, here
in Britannia Prima. 8) I'm just about to clock-off shift for the night
and (hopefully) get some sleep, today. I've got several archaeological
reports at home on Romano-British cemetaries, which I'll dig-out.
The Class I & II memorial stones in the West Country and Wales dating
to the 5th & 6th c. are completely missing from the East. This shows
how cultural and trade contacts with Romanised Gaul were limited to
the West of Britain. The conclusion about what was left alive in the East
is anyone's guess. But it wasn't the Romano-Christian lifestyle which
we see in the West. Later. 8)

Ambrosius / Mike

[Magnus]

Take it easy on the caps Mike.

[ambrosius]

Mike
I am a bit confused by your arguments, in the first time you seemed to agree with me that the reason for a low acceptance of Britonic language were social considerations, but in this last post you fully support Coates argument about genocide, that is in no way, AKAIK, supported by genetic research.

Oh well, it seems everyone is confused, now. 8)

Yes, I agree with you that the failure to adopt the language of the
conquered is due to many causes; primarily among those would be
your (and Coates) point about lack of prestige. Also (I said to leave
aside what Coates says about genocide - that is, a complete
massacre of the natives) the murder of the native population - to
greater or lesser extents - may be another factor (the significance
depending on the extent, of course). The point I was trying to make
in my last post to you is that it would be helpful to forget the term
'genocide' (as in, exterminating the entire population who once lived
in the East of Britain) and simply accept a lesser degree of massacre,
which subsequently led to both commensurate exile of the natives in
the West/over the sea to Brittany and of the survival of those who
remained as serfs/slaves among the incoming migrants. This would
allow for your hypothesis of the surviving natives 'becoming Anglo-
Saxon' - but under duress.

Thus there is no need to dismiss, entirely, the evidence for Anglo-
Saxon hostility to native Britons simply because we cannot prove
some kind of 'holocaust' of the natives. And the various genetic
studies certainly do imply the possibility of 25-50% population
replacement in the East. Though they cannot be sure about how long
ago that happened, and the studies, so far, have been limited in scope.
As I pointed-out, before, simply because we may have a reasonably homogenous genetic composition to the population of England, today,
it does not, at all, figure that this situation pertained 1,500 years ago. Wales, on the other hand, definitely is genetically distinct from England (most probably for the reason we're discussing, since they
were the original Britons).

Ambrosius / Mike

[ambrosius]

This means that they had likely captured the river-crossing of Aylesford - and the site of the Roman villa (and church) at the nearby hamlet of 'Eccles'. The fact that the name survived at Eccles shows that the (pagan) Jutes recognised the church as such (even though they would have no use for it, themselves, for another 150 years, until St. Augustine came to convert them). :lol:
[..]
All it says is that the Jutes who captured Aylesford recognized the nearby church as being what it was.
A church. That's all we can say. The site may well have already been abandoned by the native Britons, seeking refuge from the advancing Jutes. Certainly, I wouldn't expect there to have been any British civilians hanging around at Aylesford to see the outcome of the coming battle. Any still there when the Jutish forces arrived would presumably have been killed or fled.

Mike, that's just rubbish. Advancing pagan Jutes who not only recognise building as churches, AND retain the name! If that would really have happened, they would most likely have torched the place and renamed it after one of their own gods! :lol:

You're quite wrong, again, Robert. Pagan Germanic tribes from East of
the Rhine frontier would be perfectly well aware that the Romanised
Gauls and Britons were Christians in the 5th c. and would have had
plenty of opportunity to see church buildings for themselves on the
continent, before coming to Britain. As for retaining the name (and
'Eccles', from Latin Ecclesia is a generic name for any
church building - that is, a cruciform Basilican hall with apsidal ending
and font) this is no more unusual than retaining the also generic, also Latin loan-word 'Castra/Castrum' in the form 'Chester/Caster/Caister'
to describe almost all the Roman walled-towns and forts which the
anglo-Saxons encountedred across England. (Here I go, yet again,
having to explain the same thing to the same people for the - I forget -
is it the fifth or sixth time...? :lol: :lol: :lol: )

As for your next suggestion - I completely agree with you! On
encountering these abandoned churches, they probably did
torch them - after having stripped them of any church-silver which
the Britons (very unlikely) left behind. Unless raiding-parties had
already got there and taken the silver in a surprise attack. After all,
Anglo-Saxons were pagan - as far as we know - from 450-597. They
had no need for churches. And since they seem to have been virtual
protoypes of the Vikings (who shared their origins and many of their
apparent cultural attributes) they probably made a point of making
a 'Bee-line' for the nearest church as soon as they landed, in order
to strip it of its presumed valuables. Isn't that what Vikings did? 8)
It would pay them to be able to identify Roman churches and be able
to locate them in the landscape. And they may well have torched
them afterwards, as you say - which rather belies your previous claim
of these churches continuing as active British churches, doesn't it? :lol:

As for your next suggestion, we know that Anglo-Saxons renamed
many British sites after their own gods. Woodnesborough, the first
'English' village you come to moving inland from the Saxon Shore Fort
of Rutupiae (Richborough, in Kent) etymologises as 'Woden's Burgh'.
This is probably the oldest English village, since it would be the first
'Jutish' settlement after the Jutes managed to cross from the Isle of
Thanet and occupy the maniland of Kent. As for paganism in general,
yes, we know that Christianity had to be re-introduced to Kent in 597
onwards, and St. Augustine makes no mention of any of the Jutes in
Kent being Christians... only the Frankish wife of King Aethelberht,
who was using an abandoned Romano-British church, just outside
Canterbury, as her chapel. Note the 'abandoned', there. :lol:

Talk about unwarrented assumptions - I like your sense of humour!

Yep. I talk about unwarranted assumptions. Usually yours. :lol:
I prefer to rely on the actual archaeological and written evidence
which we have - see above. You know... the kind of stuff I could
prove in court... (not, of course, that I'm saying it will necessarily come to that...) :lol: :lol: :lol:

Let's face it Mike. I see signs of Britons living among the Anglo-saxons, how few or many I can't tell, but I see signs.

Robert, you can see little green men if you really try hard enough;
it makes no difference to me. I only see the evidence - either what's
written or what we dig up from the ground.

You have a different model - no contacts at all, and that means you must explain awy every such sign that points into the other direction.

Wrong again, actually. :roll: I see plenty of contact. All hostile!
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Lots of spears and seaxes and all kinds of pointy stuff like that. 8)

That's your good right, but I see no point in discussing that any further - it's down to differences of opinion and neither of us can really prove what happened for real.

Well I'm glad you agree that you cannot prove anything. Personally,
I have a good deal of evidence backing me. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Ambrosius/ Mike