THE ROMAN WITHDRAWAL FROM BRITAIN 410 OR 435 A FRESH PERSPECTIVE (original) (raw)
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These three reviews give an idea of changes, and sometimes lack of change, in approaches to Roman Britain as judged by four major texts published in 1981, 1989 and 1995. They are clearly written from a personal point of view, in reasonably polite language, for established journals.
Roman state involvement in Britain in the later 4th century, an ebbing tide?
The distribution of classes of material related to the late Roman state, coins and 'official-issue' metalwork, shows a marked retraction into the South and East of Britain from the last quarter of the fourth century with a corresponding near-absence in the North and West. Was the late Roman state refocusing its priorities in the diocese away from the traditional 'military zone'? iin N.Roymans, S.Heeren, W. de Clercq eds.: Social Dynamics in the Northwest Frontiers of the Late Roman Empire: beyond decline or transformation
Review of Hassall, M. 2017. Roman Britain: the Frontier Province. Collected Papers
2019
Closing Comment We would like to thank the respondents to our paper for their contributions to the unfolding debate over Brexit and its relationship to archaeology and heritage. These essays reflect in diverse ways the complex intersection of the scholarly, the political and the personal that has perhaps always been with us, and increasingly commented upon, but which Brexit has brought to a moment of crisis from which we can only hope a positive outcome is still salvageable. Since writing the Changing Europe 2017), o sector (Schlanger 2017). M perhaps, the tone of de in some media outlets h further and universities i come under attack as ba erism'. Just prior to writi Conservative politician Ch MP was in the news for se about the teaching of Brex all UK universities (BBC 201 motivation behind this, the FORUM
This is a pre-publication draft of my expensive book The Recovery of Roman Britain (2008). I thought that I would make it more available. It does not have the illustrations and was altered a bit after editorial input from the publisher.
A Brief Account of Political and Ecclesiastical Relations between Britain and Rome until the coming of St. Augustine of Canterbury.
American Journal of Archaeology, 2022
We stand at an exciting point in the study of the complex transformations described in shorthand as "the end of Roman Britain. " A struggle for the heart and soul of the debate, a battle over the very relevance and validity of long-held research priorities, is being fought in the usually, but not always, polite and measured discourse of academic debate. Terminology, periodization, approach, significance, and relevance are at stake. Whether a new consensus will emerge, or a polyvocal plurality of approaches, remains to be seen. It would be easy to describe, and perhaps dismiss, Fleming's book as a piece of revanchist neo-catastrophism that exposes, in exquisite detail, the implications of Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civiliza tion (Oxford University Press 2005) for the province of Britannia. I think that doing so would be to fundamentally misunderstand the nuances and implications of Fleming's approach. What we are offered in nine short chapters is a materialist social history of the end of Roman Britain. Some of these chapters rework the arguments rehearsed by the author in the pages of academic journals, yet they are concerned not with the experience of squabbling warbands but with the lives of the masses. The disappearance of the Roman tax-pay cycle produced a time of dislocation, a loss of skills, and an economic reorientation with profound effects. Charting how those effects manifested themselves is Fleming's task, pursued through an analysis of the life cycles of objects and materials. Some of the "orthodox" big questions around ethnicity and identity get, rightly in my view, short shrift. We have tied ourselves in knots trying to separate and define ancient avowed and ascribed identities from language, material culture, isotopes, DNA, and aDNA. Where has this gotten us? Up a creek without a paddle, writing the retrospective perceptions of a minority of Early Medieval literate men onto the physical remains of the fifth and sixth centuries. This book refreshingly demonstrates how other narratives and, most importantly, other actors-local and immigrant peasants and artisans-can be placed center stage.
Those who study the military remains of Roman Britain tend to interpret them on the basis of their perception of the power of the Roman army. These different perspectives colour all interpreta tions of the evidence. The implications of this polarized narrative on Roman Britain are explored, focusing on the interpretation of the northern frontiers and the military organization of the province. Consideration is also given to the language we use to describe specific types of archaeological remains. This paper was given as the Presidential Address to the Royal Archaeological Institute on 11 May 2011. The style of the lecture has largely been retained, though with the addition of references.
2013
How did Roman Britain end? This new study draws on fresh archaeological discoveries to argue that the end of Roman Britain was not the product of either a violent cataclysm or an economic collapse. Instead, the structure of late antique society, based on the civilian ideology of paideia, was forced to change by the disappearance of the Roman state. By the fifth century elite power had shifted to the warband and the edges of their swords. In this book Dr Gerrard describes and explains that process of transformation and explores the role of the 'Anglo-Saxons' in this time of change. This profound ideological shift returned Britain to a series of 'small worlds', the existence of which had been hidden by the globalizing structures of Roman imperialism. Highly illustrated, the book includes two appendices, which detail Roman cemetery sites and weapon trauma, and pottery assemblages from the period.