After the Romans left Britain, the lights went out until Alfred burnt the cakes. A parody of the popular view of British history post 410AD, but perhaps not too exaggerated. Francis Pryor sets out an alternative picture, in detail and backed up with evidence. The lights didn't go out. Most people carried on doing what they always had. There wasn't a huge Saxon invasion. Things changed slowly. This is a compelling story, well told - and he doesn't ignore the fact that it is controversial or brush aside the evidence against it. So, well worth a read.
There are problems with this book - they were shared by the TV series on which it is based. These are big questions, and the book isn't (could not be) long enough to go into the detail one really wants. For example, I think that much more needs to be said about language: we (the English) speak a basically Germanic language, not one derived from Celtic/ Latin. That takes a lot of getting round and the book says very little about it. (The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language argues though that there was at least a substantial body of English speakers in "England" even before the Roman conquest - which is a shocking idea, to put it mildly). And personally, I didn't see the need to bring King Arthur into it. But still well worth buying and reading.
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You've probably seen Francis Pryor on the telly; he is a regular contributor to Time Team and has fronted two series for Channel 4.This book is the tie-in to the second.
Pryor is an engaging and authoritative commentator, both on screen and in print, and this book is a very good read. Pryor is firmly in the camp of the ancient Britons and in Britain AD he argues against the migration theory of the origins of England. He puts forward some interesting arguments based on recent research, but I have to say that Pryor's pudding has far too many eggs for my liking.
Explaining cultural changes by way of migration theory has long been out of fashion in the archaeological world (remember the Beaker folk; whatever happened to them?) But in Britain AD, Pryor takes a revisionist step too far by effectively erasing the early English from history. Pryor uses inverted commas whenever he mentions the Anglo-Saxons (sorry, 'Anglo-Saxons') to ensure that the reader is left in no doubt of their mythological origins. Even King Alfred gets reduced to the legendary status of Arthur, even though he is a known historical figure.
Pryor's belief is that no more more than a tiny trickle of continental immigrants came to Britain in the Dark Ages and that the English are simply the indigenous population with a new language and new clothes.
The number of Anglo-Saxon immigrants is arguable and there is little doubt that much of the population of early England would have had British roots. But Pryor's theory that such huge changes to society were simply due to the adoption of continental fashions or influences strikes me as highly improbable.
The English language is Pryor's main hurdle and proves to be insurmountable. Only 20 or so words from the Celtic language were recruited into English. The contrast between the failure of the Celtic language in lowland Britain and the continuation and eventual triumph of English after the Norman Conquest (where it is known that there were just a few thousand immigrants who replaced the ruling classes) is striking.
My one other criticism of Britain AD is that I wish Arthur hadn't crept in quite so much. The use of Arthur's name in the sub-title will presumably increase sales but the Arthurian themes seem a bit of an add-on.
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Other writers have wished to remove King Arthur from history, but in doing so they always try to retain the traditional picture of post-Roman Britain from which he emerges, and for which Leslie Alcock’s Arthur’s Britain represented a kind of late summary. They want to keep Arthurian Britain with its complete and sudden collapse of romanitas, hordes of lusty Saxons raging from sea to sea and loss of contact with the continent, but find the king himself something of a romantic embarrassment (anyone for Hamlet without the prince?). The resulting inconsistencies and double standards have been well described by Christopher Gidlow in The Reign of Arthur. By contrast, Francis Pryor shows that he is quite willing to dispense with the idea of an historical Arthur for the simple reason that he doesn’t think that Britain was ever really Arthurian.
In the Pryor version of things, post-roman civitas polities evolve into British and Saxon kingdoms and there is no more migration than usual, while the Saxonisation of eastern Britain is explained by cultural influence rather than wholesale immigration. In doing so, he takes a position even more extreme than that of Saxon expert NJ Higham, who explained this change as the influence of a small Saxon warrior elite that rapidly seized power in lowland Britain.
So how well does he prove his case? In archaeological terms, pretty well. Pryor has been excavating around Peterborough for more than thirty years, and if there was any evidence for mass immigration from across the North Sea, it would certainly show up here, in fertile farmland easily reached by Saxon keels rowing up the brackish river Nene. In fact, as he shows, there are none of the sudden changes in building and farming that would be expected, only the partial switch from grain production to stock raising predictable from the loss of Roman era long-range trade. On the way, he comprehensively demolishes the idea that the “Saxon shore” forts were actually built to keep out raiders, showing that they are much more consistent with use as secure supply ports for the Roman army (though he doesn’t mention their obvious usefulness in the event of a rebellion).
The traditional objection to this more mundane view of the Dark Ages is that since English contains very few Celtic words, there must have been wholesale population replacement. Although I knew that Hungarian was a Finnish-related language adopted by a Germanic people, I always found this objection persuasive. The change for me came when I moved to a triple language border in Europe and began to raise children bilingually. By talking to other people in the same position it quickly became clear that people just do not learn languages “mixed-up”. Bilingual children do make mistakes but they’re very quick to correct themselves, and find switching from one language to another as easy and natural as putting on a posh accent to answer the telephone. All that’s needed for complete replacement is several generations in which one language confers a higher attainable status than another and is therefore more worth retaining. That’s why the main threat to Europe’s minority languages is not any risk of merging with other languages but rather the risk of being wiped out completely by their low percieved status.
So with that objection out of the way I was ready to read this book without thinking “Ah yes, but what about language” all the time. This is a more impassioned book than Pryor's Britain BC or Seahenge, and he doesn't justify or reference his claims as systematically as he did in those books, but this also makes it a more exciting read.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Some unfortunate lapses into political correctness, 21 Sep 2004
By A Customer
The ideas concerning the continuity of settlement and culture from the prehistory through the Roman to the post Roman period are well argued. Many interesting points are raised such as about the level of literacy in Dark Age England based on the stone inscriptions preserved in the SW and Wales. However the last section which argues that the Anglo-Saxon invasion was invented by Bede is most unconvincing. While we may accept the "invasion" was limited to a relatively small number of individuals probably over a long period. To claim it is pure invention by a biased monk can hardly be supported by the evidence. Bede like most of us was influenced by his own society and beliefs, but that does not mean we can dismiss everything he says as a fiction. The claim that "Saxon shore" forts are just some kind of gloried trading warehouses rather than defensive military installations is ludicrous, as is the assertion that the native British suddenly decided for some reason (unexplained) to abandon their Celtic language and learn English. The Old English language may well contain some Celtic influences (that would be hardly surprising) but few would deny that it is primarily shaped by Germanic influences. True the possession of a "Saxon" style artefact does not mean the owner was a Saxon. However, entire populations do not suddenly abandon their former language and learn a new one unless something pretty drastic forces them to. At the very least this would imply some kind of political take over by a ruling Saxon elite. It may not be politically correct to accept that sometimes immigration can lead to the replacement of a native culture by a new one. But this does not justify trying to deny past events simply because they are politically inconvenient or uncomfortable in the light of present issues. Our ideas about the past can and should be continually reassessed, but only in the light of cold hard evidence not political bias. This kind of propaganda disguised as history would seem to be at least as bad as poor Bede's much maligned efforts.
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An interesting book, but Francis Pryor appears as a very 'subjective' opinionist regarding a difficult section of Britain's history. His continual use of the word absurd to describe the Anglo-Saxon 'folk' movements was highly irritating. Mr Pryor's argument is built on the foundation that as there were no large scale movements of people into Britain in the Bronze & Roman age there couldn't possibly be for the Anglo-Saxon period. I found this extremely poor logic.His comments that people don't just up and move in large numbers were extremely amusing. Perhaps he might like to explain the almost total flight/expulsion of up to 20 million Germans from Prussia during WWII? There is no discussion of archaeolgy proving that vast tracts of land in Northern Germany and Denmark were depopulated during the 5th & 6th century (where did they go?). No mention that early English records refer to Wealas for the wergild. If we were all still Romano-British why make the distinction and why would Romano-British supposedly elites just up and change completely to the Anglo-Saxon language, clothing, customs? Mr Pryor appears highly hypocritical as he accuses past scholars of bias and then tris to build weak arguments. Like many academics he is capable of only one extreme point of view and picks elements of research he feels supports it. The truth regarding this period is that both academic sides are probably right and the truth lies somewhere in the middle i.e there was a strong migration into the South-Eastern counties and on a much lesser scale in the north. Gradual expansion was likely on a much lesser scale with counties in the west possibly completely British and adopting A-S language and customs. Not dissimilar to the Roman period but with larger numbers of migrants in the early stages. Also it would be a different scenario in every area with some peoples happy assimilating, some left alone and some fleeing/moving. It is a shame there are so few experts in this field who are prepared to be objective and look at all sides of the argument.
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Britain AD is a fashion statement by an archaeological guru. In the book of the 3 channel 4 films, Anthony Prior gathers the threads of research from friendly experts along with his own favourite patterns and images to weave a coherent new history of post-Roman Britain.
Prior's love of the power of Arthurian legend is reflected in the well written and carefully crafted plot which draws on the latest archaeological, historical, linguistic and genetic interpretations of evidence in an attempt to comprehensively discredit the established story of England's Anglo-Saxon origins. And if you are swept up by the passion in Prior's voice then by the end, he might even persuade you to discard Arthur as an obsolete hero without a cause.
The author draws on his knowledge and deductions about British Iron Age society to point out possible instances of continuity of belief and practice through Britain's Roman interlude and beyond. We are then encouraged to believe that 5th-6th C men born in England who spoke English and carried Anglo-Saxon weapons, dressed in the style of the English, lived in houses of the English, used the household goods of the English and who persuaded the native Britons around them to speak English could have been British fashion icons rather than foreign mercenaries hungry for power.
Despite such stretching of the evidence, Prior is able to convincingly undermine the traditional image of Anglo-Saxons sweeping the native Britons aside, so recently rehearsed in the Hollywood Arthur film. But he has also fallen into the trap of selectively using evidence to support his case whilst dismissing anything that doesn't fit as utter rubbish. In one part of the book he points to Gildas as a beacon of high quality British education, but where Gildas's words don't suit his argument Prior dismisses the source as being unreliable. The author is happy to accept the traditional end of Roman rule in Britain as being 410 AD and the stories of Patrick and Niall without question, yet goes to great lengths to dismiss equally valid Anglo-Saxon and Welsh tales that don't fit.
Like Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, Britain AD is a book of its time with both a personal and national agenda. Banished are the politically incorrect Victorian thoughts about racially pure Anglo-Saxon heroes stamping their authority on lesser nations. Welcome now to a modern multi-ethnic tolerant society that we find has its roots in the very heart of Dark Age Britain. The book is a stimulating fresh evaluation of the Dark Ages suitable for enthusiasts and general readers alike. Those who believe some of the written history or need the comfort of an Anglo-Saxon past or even Arthur need not fear as there are reassuring holes in the arguments to be found throughout. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to you as a signpost on the route to the true history of Dark Age Britain.
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I am not denying Pryor is an intelligent man or that he writes well. It is just a pity that he uses these abilities to publish a controversial work rather than a proper analysis of the Dark Ages using all evidence available. Pryor comes across as a hypocrite in this book when he talks about the unreliability of Bede when, infact, he is doing the same thing albeit from a modern day perspective. Pryor also contradicts himself when he uses Gildas as support for a point, then later dismisses him as unreliable. It seems that Pryor also fails to put the events in Britain into context with the rest of Europe. Across the continent Germanic tribes were sweeping across the weakened Roman provinces and taking them by force. He also doesn't seem to consider that the Germanic people were warlike and unmaterialistic by nature, probably because it completely disproves his web of lies/theory. Pryor is pandering to a growing pacifist culture and society of political correctness, which is a kick in the crown jewels of good historical/archaeological analysis and argument. All in all its a good read, its just a pity none of it is true and frankly Pryor angers me by clearly attempting to influence people who know less than him about the subject.
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Reading Britain AD one wonders if the Joint Intelligence Committee is not infinitely the poorer for Francis Pryor's decision to pursue a career in archaeology. In this book he exhibits exactly the same interpretive skills as those who allowed their desire to find WMD in Iraq to override the paucity of the evidence. Pryor allows a rather naive obsession with continuity and the innate reasonableness of humanity to arrive at some odd conclusions. No-one is likely to object to the idea that the majority of British society carried on in generally much the same way it always had following the Roman occupation, and it is easy to accept that the Arthurian legends, whilst enjoyable, are irrelevant to the history of the time. Where Pryor's beliefs lead him astray are where they coalesce with a particularly unpleasant strand of English revisionism in history and archaeology. This revisionism seems to have a problem with the idea that God's chosen people, the English, could ever have done anything so horrid as to invade somewhere, kill a lot of people and steal their land. The fact that this would make the English Germans makes the concept even more repellent to these writers. The upshot of this crisis of English identity which Britain AD seems to have inadvertently joined, has been a plethora of iconoclastic works attacking the concept of Celtic Britain, the idea of a 'Saxon' invasion and even the idea of a change at all in British society during the Dark Ages. The one area of difficulty for these revisionist has been the complete change of language which they have so far failed to explain, even to their own satisfaction. The usual throw away line that it was a style thing is such a bizarre imposition of 21st Century concepts onto the past as to almost defy rational engagement. The argument that Pryor and others seem to espouse is that three men and a dog turned up one day trading from Germany and the Brits were so enamoured of them that they immediately converted the entire culture and language - an odd view of continuity - and it was all jolly chummy really. The English emerge as really British after all and they are decent chaps who have never invaded anybody. Such is the difficulty of interpreting the archaeology and the fragmentary nature of the textual evidence for the period that it has been difficult to counter this revisionist flight of fancy. In postmodern analysis all texts have validity and this narrative is as good as any other. Unfortunately for Pryor and the revisionist wing, the most recent scientific DNA research has put a realist spoke in their postmodern wheel. The majority of current English males descend from people who migrated here from Europe in the last 1500 years whilst the majority of Welsh males do not. No invasion? If not it looks like Hengist and Horsa were very busy chaps indeed populating the whole of England on their own. Maybe completely converting the language was small beer compared with that feat? All in all a book of imagination which seems to have been superseded almost as it was published by a rare outbreak of facts regarding the period.
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Francis Pryor writes well, and this book is certainly good read. However, it should be treated as such, and not as a serious contribution to the study of "Dark Age" Britain. Pryor makes no bones of the fact that this is not his period; this would not be a problem in itself, but the approach that he brings to the topic certainly is.
Pryor's hypothesis is that there were essentially no Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain. Rather, he would argue, the indigenous population of what is now England simply decided to copy the people of the continent. This theory might(just about) work if it is confined to Pryor's own discipline of archaeology - his premise is that an anglo-saxon style broach could not only have been worn by an Anglo-Saxon. However, he wilfully ignores any evidence that goes against him, and crucially he totally ingores the evidence of language. It is one thing to imagine the Romano-British people of South East England adopting Anglo-Saxon clothes; it is quite another to think that they could have abandoned their own language entirely (bringing only a miniscule number of loanwords into Old English) and simultaneously changed the majority of their placenames, in favour of a foreign tongue.
Pryor makes it a point of principle to reject almost all contemporary written sources for the period (it has been remarked elsewhere that the fact that he does so because those sources have their own political purpose is highly ironic). It is absolutely right to treat those materials with an eye to the context in which they were written, but Pryor throws the baby out with the bathwater. He also totally ignores some important early sources (in particular, all continental sources and Y Gododdin spring to mind).
In support of different parts of his argument, Pryor is magnificently inconsistent. Consider, for example, (a) "Viewed from the perspective of prehistory, the very idea of a 'migration period' is absurd: why would people suddenly decide to move around in this perculiar and hyperactive fashion"; (b)"Maybe it is because we have tended to look at permanent structures...that archaeologists...have generally underestimated the extent to which the population of Britain and Western Europe moved around. We know that pottery and coins move... but we do not then go on to say that people themselves must have moved too" (page 213).
In his conclusion, Pryor writes that the idea of the Anglo-Saxon invasions "patronises the indigenous people, because it assumes that the post-Roman inhabitants of Britain would not have been capable of 'inventing' England themselves." This statement exemplifies the peculiar academic bias which he brings to his consideration of the subject. It is probably true that the Romano-British could not have invented "England", which is an Anglo-Saxon country. What they would have invented would have been Britain.
I could go on quite a bit longer, but writing this review has helped me come to terms with some of the irritation that reading the book has caused in me. Do by all means buy and read it, but please don't take it seriously.
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Come on. You never believed that the Romans came, changed everything, went away and we started eating mud while the Anglo-Saxons moved in, did you?
Francis Pryor talks sense. Anyone who has given a moment's thought to the first thousand years of the common era will have realised that the history of Britain at that time, as ever, was politically spun. People adapted to the changes the Romans and other people from overseas brought, but carried on their way of life. In this book, Pryor calls for light to be shone on the Dark Ages, and for this fascinating period of our history to be reclaimed from the clouds of New Age mumbo-jumbo. No silly dressing-up in the TV programmes either. It's enjoyable and you feel satisfied and liberated by the lack of cant.
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