Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Ancient and ArchaeologyΒ  permalink

Who were the Anglo Saxons in England

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by beethovenspiano (U5093596) on Thursday, 12th August 2010

  Of the many Anglo Saxon kingdoms that existed in the UK from the 6th century on, it seems only the people at the very top of society are recorded in history - the many different Kings that ruled in these regions etc.
  
  But who were they ruling over?
  
  Were there millions of Angles/Saxons and others travelling across the North sea to settle/invade? Who made up the rest of the population, there must have been hundreds of thousands maybe millions of people in England at this time 6th C onwards, what were they doing? Who were they?
  
  The many Anglo Saxon cemeteries that are found today, are the people in them all DIRECTLY descended from the Angles/Saxons?
  
  Im very interested in what the ordinary people were doing at this time and who they were.

  Link to this forum: Who were the Anglo Saxons in England

  Report message1

• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Prof Muster (U14387921) on Thursday, 12th August 2010

  Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms? 6-th century?
  NOW LET ME SEE,
  
  Little does the amateur historian realize that the Angles and the Jutes in England arrived from the same German coast as later the Saxons did.\
  
  I have been told that Caesar of Roman Germany named Emp.Julian in 355 ad, allready enlisted Saxons from the German shore
  
  to transport British Wheat through the Cannal via Holland(=Germania inferior.) to Trier where the Roman Gouvernor of Germania Superior resided
  How they got that shiploads of wheat up the Rhine river-banks is another story,
  
  But SAXON-german/British traderoutes must have existed alrerady during roman times in Brittain.
  
  if only king Vortigern had not invited Captains Hengist & Horsa, as sea-warriors from upper-Saxony(= Germania-Superior.)they would not have been the first Saxon settlers in England, or were they?
  
  Your question for an Englishman is somewhat simple
  since the Saxons enchroached on the sitting landlords the Angels or Anglii they were given one third of the existing estates each as tenants.
  
  Hence the term 'Anglo-Saxons '
  So the Saxon Kings must have usurped Landlordholdings or That one third-of each estae was a fee for the new rulers
  
  anyway if you ask what people the Anglo-Saxon kings were ruling around 500/700 ad in England must already have been a mixed race.
  
  I am no expert on this as you can gather, but the fact is that before the Saxons settled as accidental rulers in mid-England, their tradesman already had a flourishing interaction before
  history noticed them.
  
  You may have read in other topics that the brake-away Kingdom of Posthumus and his successors before 350 ad made recurrent use of Saxon shipping and fleets, employing only the Roman military galleons as a command-flagship for an otherwise mercenary -Saxon-navy !
  
  The transition from Saxon socii/tradeers to Saxon rulers that must have taken place after 450 ad needs a specialist native historian which is beyond my reach.
  
  I mean I have so many bck-up history to catch on that the brittish history must be of secondary importance in general.
  
  Anyway I hope that I have cleared /probed, some problems of early brittish history for you,
  and I am sure more able amateur historians will follow my drift.
  
  The following is, a bit off-Topic perhaps, but helpfull for further research?
  
  I can only add that for the English/Tudor dynasty around 1000/1200
  a russian history researcher FOMENKO picked-up the notion that PLANTA-GENET is synonym to greek PALEO-LOGOS and that either the dynasty copied the christian names of the grek rulers, or the greek Paeologii were ruling England during that time,
  
  but FOMENKO, reasoned that by the burning of English castles by the Saxons, so many current King-records were lost, that later historians filled in the Brittgish rulers dynasty blancs with inserted glosses of byzantine rulers.
  
  Sincerely,
  Prof Muster.
  

  Link to this forum: Who were the Anglo Saxons in England

  Report message2

• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Thursday, 12th August 2010

  Hi BP
  
  You are absolutely correct. The 'long march of everyman' is virtually unknown to history. I mostly work on the late Victorian period in my home town, and even then trying to establish exactly what ordinary people did and thought is extremely difficult. In the period that interests you ordinary people only exist 'to be massacred or converted' to use Dr Catherine Hills's insightful phrase. In archaeology things are quite different, and some would say that this discipline is the means of giving back a history to those without a history. Even to archaeologists the 'Dark Ages' are difficult to explore being positioned between two periods with very strong archaeological signatures, the Roman and the Middle Saxon.
  
  The rest of your question is highly pertinent and we have discussed it on this message-board on many occasions without the slightest risk of reaching a consensus! With the greatest respect to Prof Muster, he is not English and his highly 'independent' views on geology, astronomy and history must be treated with great caution. If you are patient enough simply reading through the 'Why was York important....' thread will touch on most of the issues that interest you.
  
  The population of early Norman Britain has been estimated at 1-2M people. In view of the density of Roman settlements the population of Roman Britain cannot be less and has been estimated at 2-3M. Obviously such estimates are by their nature imprecise. The conventional view, popular 50-100 years ago, was that hundreds of thousands of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes left their continental homelands to migrate to Britain around AD 450. Initially they were resisted by the natives but in the end Anglo-Saxons massacred their way to success in lowland Britain. Surviving Romano-Britons were pushed into 'the Celtic fringe' in the west, or perhaps fled to Armorica, which became Brittany.
  
  I can't subscribe to this view myself. I see Germanic foederati being moved to Britain by the Romans at least a century earlier, a process that may have continued in post-Imperial times. The later Anglo-Saxon migrations were individual episodes of 'elite replacement' consisting of 'a few keels'. Groups of hundreds may have been involved although they were certainly helped in their new homeland by their fighting qualities and the fact that their technology was ideally adapted to post-Roman conditions. I see later 'Anglo-Saxons' as Britons who have embraced the new cultural package and may have married into the new groupings. I would say that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to identify Anglo-Saxons ethnically in cemeteries although there have been attempts to to this by means of skeletal features or grave goods. In the long run measurement of several stable isotopes in tooth enamel should indicate where the owners' of the teeth were born so this difficult question will finally be answered.
  
  Several regular posters take a very different view of this period and I expect you will be hearing from them any time now!
  
  TP

  Link to this forum: Who were the Anglo Saxons in England

  Report message3

• Message 4

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by ChrisB5 (U14582135) on Thursday, 12th August 2010

  It would seem that the people were made up of what might be loosely organised into groups - firstly the ruling class: These were the warrior elite and would have been Anglo-Saxon in origin, but are suspected of making appropriate political marriages as cicumstances dictated. These would have included intermarriage with the existing Romano-British elite. The bulk of the warriors would be of this group - probably.
  
  Secondly: The rest of the population - who mainly worked on the land. These would be made up of Romano-British stock intermarried with the decendants of Roman Auxilia (who could've come from pretty much anywhere) and also probably intermarriage with the Anglo-Saxons too.
  
  Genetically, we are now mostly indistinguishable from the inhabitants who were here in the late stone age, who must've made up the bulk of the population throughout the whole time up to the present.
  
  It is likely that quite a large number of people migrated to Britain during the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries from the homelands of the Angles in particular (mid western parts of what is now modern Denmark, and the offshore islands there), as the steady rise in sea level post ice age was still ongoing(as, indeed, it still is now), causing encroachment of the sea onto their land. This, in conjunction with population pressure and the knowledge that Britain was no longer defended by the Roman army would have provided plenty of impetus to drive an invasion. It should be remembered that this invasion was spread over a couple of centuries, so quite large numbers could easily be involved.

  Link to this forum: Who were the Anglo Saxons in England

  Report message4

• Message 5

  , in reply to message 4.

  Posted by beethovenspiano (U5093596) on Wednesday, 18th August 2010

  Interesting stuff. Especially the genetics.
  
  Does anyone remember a program on CH4 several years ago presented by Neil Oliver called Face of Britain? It used DNA to try and establish participants distant ancestry. I remember one woman from Cornwall and her obvious delight in hearing news of her perceived ethnic celtic purity. I thought there was quite a sinister under tone to the whole program really.
  
  Participants were described as being 6/7 times more likely to be Anglo Saxon or Cetic - whatever that means Basically everyone in England was Anglo Saxon everyone in Scotland Celtic etc.

  Link to this forum: Who were the Anglo Saxons in England

  Report message5

• Message 6

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Wednesday, 18th August 2010

  are you sure it wasn't this bit - not so much !ethnic purity" but a family link?
  
  
  (ignore the bit that asks for a username & password)

  Link to this forum: Who were the Anglo Saxons in England

  Report message6

Back to top