Britain AD by Francis Pryor

An interesting book

I have been reading this rather learned paperback, published ten years ago, about the archaeology of Britain. It covers the period after the end of the Roman Empire (usually taken to be 410AD) and up to the historical account of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the seventh and eighth centuries. What we were taught at school were the "Dark Ages".

Archaeology was never part of my studies, but the history of the English Language was right in the centre of my university work.

The hot academic news in the early fifties, in my area of study, was the first report of the archaeologists who discovered the Anglo-Saxon graves at Sutton Hoo, in eastern England. The discovery was made in 1939, but the work was put on hold during the war, and the first analysis came out during my last year.

Among the items shown in the report was this gold clasp, labelled by the experts as a "purse lid" though there was considerable doubt as to what it really was.

The main idea of the book is that the old story of waves of raids followed by an invasion by Angles and Saxons was wrong; what really happened was that the inhabitants of Post-Roman Britain, who had always had regular contacts with the continent, dating back many centuries, adopted Anglo-Saxon culture, language and customs of their own volition, probably because they regarded them as highly prestigious. There may have been a small class of warrior-chiefs who arrived and took over the leadership, but there was in fact very little one-way migration.

The evidence for this is just that the archaeological record does not indicate much disruption; and most of the change involved a return to Pre-Roman customs, rather than something new. There is also lots of evidence of comings and goings all over the North Sea and the surrounding countries over several millennia.

 

Pryor puts it this way in the last paragraph of his book:

 

"....the fifth and sixth centuries were never truly Dark. There was no population collapse, the countryside never reverted to woodland, field systems continued in use, towns quite rapidly appeared and then stayed for good. Yes, there were major social and political changes, and yes, we can see the effects of real raiding in the Viking depredations of the mid-ninth century that were followed by the collapse of long-distance trade. But where is the evidence for such happenings in the 'Dark Ages', when communication with mainland Europe and the Mediterranean was a regular occurrence, both by land and sea? If we are looking for English origins, we should forget the 'Anglo-Saxons' and turn instead to the resident population, who had been there, in their millions and their various cultures and communities, all the time. I refer, of course, to the real heroes of this book: that diverse group of people -- the British."

 

Now I haver to accept his expertise in the archaeology, but he does not discuss the language in the body of his argument, claiming that to be outside his area. He then seems to me to make a large question-begging leap by later claiming the language evidence supports his claim that the archaeological evidence trumps everything else.

 

Anglo-Saxon, Old English language has not a shred of residue of Celtic (British) vocabulary or structure, which one would expect if Pryor's thesis is correct. What he proposes as the summary of the 'Dark Ages' actually happened at the Norman Conquest: the Norman French language left marks in English everywhere, but not in the basic everyday vocabulary or the basic structures.

 

So until the archaeologists come up with a theory that reconciles their findings with the language evidence I remain unconvinced.