Britons in Anglo-Saxon England

268 Pages·2007·2.47 MB·English

by  Nick Higham (editor)

PUBLICATIONS OF
THE MANCHESTER CENTRE FOR ANGLO-SAXON STUDIES
Volume 7
Britons in
Anglo-Saxon England
The number of native Britons, and their role, in Anglo-Saxon England has been
hotly debated for generations; the English were seen as Germanic in the nine-
teenth century, but the twentieth saw a reinvention of the German ‘past’. Today,
the scholarly community is as deeply divided as ever on the issue: place-name
specialists have consistently preferred minimalist interpretations, privileging
migration from Germany, while other disciplinary groups have been less united
in their views, with many archaeologists and historians viewing the British
presence, potentially at least, as numerically significant or even dominant.
The papers collected here seek to shed new light on this complex issue,
by bringing together contributions from different disciplinary specialists and
exploring the interfaces between various categories of knowledge about the
past. They assemble both a substantial body of evidence concerning the pres-
ence of Britons and offer a variety of approaches to the central issues of the
scale of that presence and its significance across the seven centuries of Anglo-
Saxon England.
Nick HigHam is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the
University of Manchester.
PUBLICATIONS OF
THE MANCHESTER CENTRE FOR ANGLO-SAXON STUDIES
ISSN 1478–6710
Editorial Board
Donald Scragg
Richard Bailey
Timothy Graham
Gale R. Owen-Crocker
Alexander Rumble
Leslie Webster
Published Titles
1. Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote
Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, ed. Donald Scragg
2. Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Kathryn Powell
and Donald Scragg
3. King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker
4. The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah
Larratt Keefer and Karen Louise Jolly
5. Writing and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Alexander R. Rumble
6. Anglo-Saxon Royal Diplomas: A Palaeography, Susan D. Thompson
Britons in
Anglo-Saxon England
edited by
NICK HIGHAM
THE BOyDELL PRESS
© Contributors 2007
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 2007
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
ISBN 978–1–84383–312–3
The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc,
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, Ny 14620, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Printed in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
List of Tables viii
Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xii
1 Nick Higham 1
Britons in Anglo-Saxon England: An Introduction
Part I: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives
2 Catherine Hills 16
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
3 Howard Williams 27
Forgetting the Britons in Victorian Anglo-Saxon Archaeology
4 Lloyd Laing 42
Romano-British Metalworking and the Anglo-Saxons
5 Heinrich Härke 57
Invisible Britons, Gallo-Romans and Russians: Perspectives
on Culture Change
6 Nick Higham 68
Historical Narrative as Cultural Politics: Rome, ‘British-ness’
and ‘English-ness’
7 Gale R. Owen-Crocker 80
British Wives and Slaves? Possible Romano-British Techniques
in ‘Women’s Work’
8 Damian J. Tyler 91
Early Mercia and the Britons
9 Martin Grimmer 102
Britons in Early Wessex: The Evidence of the Law Code of Ine
10 Alex Woolf 115
Apartheid and Economics in Anglo-Saxon England
11 C. P. Lewis 130
Welsh Territories and Welsh Identities in Late Anglo-Saxon England
12 David E. THorNtoN 144
Some Welshmen in Domesday Book and Beyond: Aspects of
Anglo-Welsh Relations in the Eleventh Century
Part II: Linguistic Perspectives
13 Peter ScHrijver 165
What Britons Spoke around 400 AD
14 RicHard Coates 172
Invisible Britons: The View from Linguistics
15 Hildegard Tristram 192
Why Don’t the English Speak Welsh?
16 O. J. Padel 215
Place-Names and the Saxon Conquest of Devon and Cornwall
17 DuNcaN Probert 231
Mapping Early Medieval Language Change in South-West England
Index 245
Illustrations
4.1 Map: distribution of Anglo-Saxon metalwork employing enamel 45
4.2 Types of pennanular brooches found in pagan Anglo-Saxon contexts 48
4.3 Map: distribution of Class C pennanular brooches found in 50
Anglo-Saxon contexts
5.1 The Marlboro Cowboy in Russia 63
5.2 Russian rubbish: packaging favours the visibility of imported goods 64
11.1 Map: the Welsh borders in the late Anglo-Saxon period 131
12.1 Map: Domesday Wales 151
12.2 Genealogies of Rhys Sais and Roger de Powis 156
12.3 The family of Owain ab Edwin 159
12.4 Map: Domesday Archenfield 162
15.1 Map of English regional dialects 206
15.2 Map of the present participle in Middle English 210
16.1 Map: distribution of the place-name element tre in South-West 216
England
16.2 Map: distribution of the place-name element bod in South-West 218
England
16.3 Map: distribution of the place-name element tÃn in South-West 220
England
16.4 Map: distribution of the place-name element cot in South-West 222
England
16.5 Map: Cornish and Old English place-names in eastern Cornwall 224
17.1 Map: borrowings of Brittonic /Ã/ and /ü/ into Old English as 236
preserved in place-names
17.2 Map: borrowings of Brittonic /m/>/μ/>/v/ into Old English as 238
preserved in place-names
17.3 Map: evidence for Brittonic ‘pretonic reduction’ and ‘internal 241
i-affection’ preserved in English place-names
Tables
9.1 Comparative wergilds of Saxons and Britons in Ine’s Law Code 105
12.1 Welshmen in Domesday Book 146
12.2 Welsh (and possible Welsh) names in Domesday Book 152
Contributors
Prof. Richard Coates, University of the West of England
Dr Martin Grimmer, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
Dr Heinrich Härke, University of Reading
Prof. Nick Higham, University of Manchester
Dr Catherine Hills, University of Cambridge
Dr Lloyd Laing, University of Nottingham
Dr C. P. Lewis, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Prof. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, University of Manchester
Dr O. J. Padel, St Neot, Cornwall
Dr Duncan Probert, University of Birmingham
Prof. Peter Schrijver, Universiteit Utrecht
Dr David E. Thornton, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Prof. Dr Hildegard L. C. Tristram, Freiburg, Germany
Dr Damian Tyler, Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr Howard Williams, University of Exeter
Mr Alex Woolf, University of St Andrews