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Britain and the End of the Roman Empire
 
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Britain and the End of the Roman Empire (Paperback)

by Ken Dark (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: NPI Media Group; New edition edition (1 Aug 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0752425323
  • ISBN-13: 978-0752425320
  • Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 17.2 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 93,532 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #5 in  Books > History > Ancient History & Civilisation > Rome
    #27 in  Books > History > Europe > Italy
    #40 in  Books > History > Britain & Ireland > Early British & Roman Britain

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Product Description

Product Description
Questioning many current assumptions, this wide-ranging study presents a radical reinterpretation of Britain in the period AD 400-600.

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars THE expert on the subject, 28 Feb 2008
By J. Greenhow (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is the scholarly summary of what is known from the archaeology of the period between the end of the Roman involvement in Britain and the period of the Anglo-Saxon era where we begin to have reliable records again.

This is not a rivetting read by any means, because it relies very little on guesswork, nor does it attempt to prove a peronal theory. Because it has no such agenda, almost all conclusions are qualified, explaining as much about what we DON'T know as what we do.

It is of interest to those serious students of the period, and should also be in the library of those people as a background to any "Arthurian" research.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Yet another interpretation, 27 April 2009
By C. P. Dixon "Clive Dixon" (Devon, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
How things change. A couple of decades ago you might have been forgiven for thinking that the history of the 200 years after Britain's final secession from Rome was all sown up and there was nothing more to say. Written sources seemed to lie at the centre of it all, and there was a bit of an obsession about the 'historical Arthur'.

Nowadays you'd think that there are more interpretations of this period than there are historians. Ken Dark here takes yet another view. Beginning with a discussion of the nature of the evidence available, on the literary front Gildas and Patrick are admissible - everything else is largely dismissed. Archaeology however is king.

Dark then proceeds by looking in turn at the archaeology of four regions of the former Roman Britain over the years 400-600: Eastern Britain, Western Britain (excluding South West & Wales), the South West Peninsula and Wales, and Northern Britain.

The discussion of Eastern Britain is particularly fascinating. Dark shows just how complex the interpretation of burial sites is. The conclusion is one of gradual change and cultural mixing, not one of catastrophic cultural and ethnic replacement.

For Western Britain, Dark regards it as having been much more integrated into the Christian Romano-Byzantine culture than has heretofore been acknowledged; furthermore it retained this culture through the period under discussion. Urban life carried on largely unchanged.

In the South West peninsula and Wales, at the beginning of the period, these regions were still not heavily Romanised, displaying a clear archaeological distinction. Ironically, once Britain had seceded from empire, the Christian Romano-Byzantine culture from further east of Britain spread into these regions too, aided by direct trading contact from Byzantium. (Dark discusses the intriguing possibility that some of the Cornish saint cults originated from Byzantium.) By the end of the period, these regions are archaeologically indistinguishable from the Romano-British civilisation futher east.

The situation is similar in Northern Britain. Romano-British Christian culture continues to push north beyond the Wall, into the Gododdin, Strathclyde and southern Pictland.

The picture we are left with, according to Dark, is that in this period the majority of the island retained and even spread a unified Romano-British Christian culture. In effect, Britain was the last surviving Roman province of the West.

Dark is not always the clearest of writers. Sometimes his conclusions seem contradictory to something said earlier, and some sentences you have to read two or three times before you can parse them correctly. Much of the data presented in this book is open to interpretation of course, but it's a valuable contribution to the wide open debate about this veiled period of British history.

And there's hardly a single mention of the 'A' word.
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Not what's needed, 17 May 2009
By K. J. Marsh "KJ Marsh" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
There's a need for a new interpretation of the centuries between the end of Roman rule and the arrival of St Augustine ... but this isn't it.
Ken Dark's academic credentials are impeccable - but his work is polemical and extraordinary in many ways.
His thesis is simple enough - that post-Roman Britain was not the failed state that earlier scholars assumed. It was, instead, a mainstream European state of late antiquity. It's just that previous scholars have missed it. Continuity is his watchword ... in spite of the evidence.
Professor Dark strains the evidence that might support his thesis so much so you can hear it snap. And as for the evidence that counters it ... well, by and large he simply ignores it or declares it 'inadmissible'.
It's easy to lose count of the times 'possibles' harden into 'probables' on the way to 'certainties' if they point to Romano British continuity.
Professor Dark appears to absorbed nothing of modern politico-economic studies of the way states fail - and there are enough similarities between Britain in the period 390 to 420 and modern states such as Somalia, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan to make anyone pause a moment; the loss of elites, skills and the mechanisms of trade and exchange.
There is so much well-intentioned, romantic drivel written about this so-called Arthurian age that a new, well-sourced and careful assessment of the evidence is overdue.
We're still waiting.


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