King Arthur's Britain: The Truth Unearthed

[armchairgeneral]

Just wondered if anyone saw this documentary?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bkvw8v/king-arthurs-britain-the-truth-unearthed?suggid=b0bkvw8v

In summary the archaeological and DNA evidence indicates there was no significant conflict between the Britons and the Saxons. The Saxons gradually migrated across to England after the Romans left intermingling and inter-marrying with the resident British with little evidence of friction between the two peoples.

[Sterling Moose]

I'm familiar with the theory but not sure if I agree with it.

[commissarmoody]

Modern DNA evidence seems to support it more and more.
I am leaning to the idea that it was a mixed bag. Some places integrated peaceable while others fought it out. And even in the places they fought, out right massacre' s of the local none warrior class was not the norm. (Why kill the people that make you wealthy and work your field's?)
I am of the mind that it was like when the Danes invaded and imposed Dane law, or even when the Normans took the crown.
 Just a change of upper management but, the people for the most part remained the same.

[fred]

I saw it the other week, and it seemed convincing. There is a mix of evidence, the DNA results showing lots of homengenity for much of England (except the SW). The lack of evidence of any battles, but lots of evidence of habitation. They showed analysis of a piece of Saxon jewlry that had British elementd.

What was also interesting was the idea of viewing the seas as the highways, and this in part is why the East and SW were separate, because they were both trading by sea, but in different directions. And communications across the middle of the country were lesser.

[Inkpaduta]

Now that is interesting. I was not aware of that.
How do they explain Cornwall, Wales remaining more Britain
than Anglo-Saxon?

[guitarheroandy]

They quoted figures of 2% of burials from the period having sharp weapon injury, so clearly some conflict did happen, just not on a massive genocidal scale. There wasn't an explanation of how the West remained 'British' but logically it must be because there was less far Westward movement of those Saxons/Angles who did come over and blend in with the British. I always thought that the old 'Saxon invasion and slaughter of the Britons' thing was unlikely due to the cultural norms of the time.
Advances in archaeology seem to be leading to some radical rethinks of several things - am very intrigued by some re-thinking of the early Roman Republic (for example) based on new archaeology and different interpretations of the available evidence and less reliance on written sources which are fraught with problems (as any student of the 'Arthurian' period knows only too well!)

[Captain Blood]

Didn’t see it, but the arguments are well rehearsed.

The old theory of the 1000 year epoch of invasions, was that successive cataclysmic waves of incomers drove their predecessors into the west, with subjugation, extinction and wholesale changes of population.

The more recent, revisionist theory, mainly based on advances in DNA over the last 20 years, is that the population as a whole didn’t really change very much at all - it was just, as mentioned, a ‘change of management’, with a different nation of overlords arriving and imposing themselves with each wave. The poor old worker bees simply had to readjust to the new cultural norms handed down from the new ruling class, whilst basically staying put and doing what they had always done.

Being the Dark Ages of course, no-one can possibly say for sure. There were probably elements of both things happening at different eras within the great timespan, and in different geographies within these islands.

I still base my views on all this on my favourite boardgame of all time, Britannia.
As long as the Welsh can sack York in turns 7/8, all is well 

[Roo]

 

[Jemima Fawr]

I saw it as well, but wasn't convinced at all.  They seemed to have a pre-determined agenda ("Uncontrolled mass immigration is good m'kay, is nothing new and is what makes us British...") and then set about twisting the paltry evidence to fit the theory, while ignoring what didn't suit the theory.

The suggestion that the Romano-British population was 'massacred' is a strawman argument.  Neither the Danes or the Romans or the Normans 'massacred' the population en masse, yet there can be no question that theirs was a violent and brutal subjugation of the pre-existent populace.

2% of the population is a perfectly normal ratio for a population engaged in warfare if you ignore the 'massacre' hyperbole.  I'd also add that in any case, the total number of bodies found from the period is small - is it really a sufficient quantity to be statistically representative of the population at the time?

Some comparison with similar stats from the Roman, Norman and Danish conquests would have been useful, but wasn't given.  I suspect that the stats would probably be similar and would therefore shoot down their theory, so weren't presented.

What was the Saxon Shore fortress network built for, if there were not a massive existential threat to Britannia from the East?  Yes, this was before the period we're looking at, but did the threat to Britannia suddenly vanish because the Roman armies sailed away?

Why does the archaeological record show a massive wave of re-fortification in previously-abandoned hill forts at this time?

Why does Welsh literature abound with tales of war with the Saes? 

Why is it that by the time documented history resumes, Romano-British language seems to have been completely erased from everywhere east of the Severn, within only a couple of centuries?  The amount of Latin/British absorbed into old English is vanishingly small.  Latin didn't replace the pre-existing language and nor did Norman-French, so what made English so much more dominant?

I don't think we can ever possibly know, but I firmly believe that the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes of their strawman 'The Saxons massacred the British' argument and the pink & fluffy revisionism of 'The Saxons were welcomed as immigrants and made Britain a stronger and better place'.

[Lost Egg]

I don't think we can ever possibly know, but I firmly believe that the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes of their strawman 'The Saxons massacred the British' argument and the pink & fluffy revisionism of 'The Saxons were welcomed as immigrants and made Britain a stronger and better place'.

Agreed.

I wonder how much blending of the Britans & Saxons occurred before the Romans left, it would not surprise me if trading networks assisted with genetic spread over to the north and east as it did with the Atlantic facade in the south and west.

[tin shed gamer]

Caught the thread earlier and got round to watching it last night. I must thank you chaps Im full of cold and that cheered me up no end.I put that on par with that juvenile
Hunt for Nazi gold .
As some one who works alot within the field (number three son is an archeologist to boot.) I know There's some serious ego's and reputations bouncing through that twaddle. All ignoring one of the basic principles of modern archeology.
Absence of proof is not. Proof of absence.
It chooses to ignore some very simple observations. It's very uncommon to find multiple victims of a battle in a graveyard related to a settlement.
If your victorious against a raid then as a social group its very unlikely you'll dig graves for your attacker's in your sacred space. ( you can see examples of this right through to modern conflicts) Also your casualty rate is likely to be very low.
It's also common to bury the dead near the battlefields(if at all) not in Civil cemeterys. Has been for thousands of years.
It's a needle in a haystack provenance . If you don't know the site of a battle then you don't have a starting point to find evidence of conflict.

It also ignores how little resistance is put up by a civillian population as a milita moves through.

It's possible to take a stretch of land inwards from the Atlantic coast of Europe and find bugger all evidence of the two major conflicts of the 20th century( even more so in a thousand years). Theories are tailored by evidence. Not the evidence tailored to fit a theory.
Holding up cultural artifacts as proof of an integrated and peaceful society is twaddle.
You can find modern examples of dress and music being influenced by conflict. Alot of music has Persian and Arabic influence that werent evident before confict in those theatre's.

Definitely a view influenced by the social and political climate of today rather than subjective.

It felt dated . All I could think about is how well this would fit in with the Timewatch specials that review previous programmes noting the political climate of the period.and its influenced on interpretation.
This had more in common with Mortimer's ( born and bread British imperialism ) view of the Roman conquest . Or Magnusson's bias , a thinly veiled distaine for the English establishment.

[Cubs]

Jehovah save us from academic ego and the manipulation of evidence to flog a trendy theory. Experience has convinced me that revisionist history is an oxymoron by definition.

[Arlequín]

... but all history reflects the mores and world vision of both the historian and his time, so at one time the 'traditional view' was itself revisionist twaddle. I'll mention that Teutonic Invasion fit into the zeitgeist of the Late Victorian Era as one example.

To talk of Britons and Saxons as if they were both national entities is the biggest fault in most depictions of the time, it's as valid as using 'Yugoslavian' or 'Soviet' in today's world.

Trendy theories or misinterpretation/manipulation of evidence perhaps, but there is hard science at the root of it. People look to Gildas, Nennius and Bede for the 'true story', but turn a blind eye to portents, duelling dragons and other fantastical portions of their writing at the same time.

[tin shed gamer]

 
Its the bane of my life.
The amount of times I've been. Dragged to stand next to a muddy hole in the ground . So I can be a one-man audience.
When all they want is a model of a roundhouse.

Actually in this case the hard facts are only isolated tit bits. Totally ingnored the dig Alice Robert's took part in on the same site. So not. So new evidence.
As for an 11km survey although comprehensive and a wonderful training ground . The problem is where ever there's the edge /limit. Sod's law says you missed something by an inch.
There's nothing at all to say the settlements either side of this survey weren't destroyed or ravaged by conflict.
The only truth that is solid is that the settlements found in the dig.show no evidence of conflict .

[Patrice]

It's difficult to be sure of anything, but the whole (?) population of Lloegr was speaking English quickly enough after they were invaded. So there may have been some dramatic changes taking place.

In Gaul it's the Franks who adopted the local language (somewhat changing it, of course, but it remained more latin than germanic), as did later the Vikings in Normandy; and so did the Normans in England (except that they wanted to eat mutton and not sheep, and not bother with declensions).

The Romans managed to have latin spoken in Gaul but it took hundreds of years and it was perhaps not even completed everywhere at the end of the Empire.