Appearence and tactics of early 5th century Saxons.

[ambrosius]

There is always going to be some continuation. But that is
not to ignore the changes. As they say: 'The Devil is in the details!'
Raedwald is right. And Dr. Heinrich Harke (whom I know you know of)
puts it very succinctly: We know that the coastal lands were abandoned
in Frisia, Anglia & Jutland at this time. If the migrants did not arrive in
Britain, then there must be many thousands of longships at the bottom
of the North Sea :lol:

Again, Mike, I answered this to Redwald before, July 28:

settlements were abandoned, sure, but where in the past it was automatically assumed that the folks took ship to Britain, nowadays we are more careful. Maybe they built new houses at another spot, close by or some distance away> It is very common for settlements to 'move' that way. But in the past it was the chicken and the egg: the folks went so they had to join the invasion, and the invasions happened because the folks seemed to be gone.

Which would be a safe place where you would be safe from proving where the went. But so far, no massive waves of 5th-c. Germanic immigrants have been attested. Those who come into the island, seem to have done so at leisure, not in massive waves. The West Hestlerton case nicely shows that. Härke assumes, as so many did earlier, that the settlements were emptied by folks who took ship for Britain. But they did not leave notes about their whereabouts, did they? It’s a fact that no research was done about continuation of settlements nearby, maybe on higher ground.

Okay Robert. You live in Holland. So please tell me what
'higher ground' you see out of your window right now. :lol:

Right. We have Frisians, Angles, Jutes, having their coastal farmland
flooded by the sea. Up until the 450s, they are also feeling the push of
refugees being forced West by Attila the Hun. Yet you are suggesting
that they might have migrated South East, inland, into the teeth of the
Huns and the flood of refugees trying to escape them. I doubt it.

Can you not simply accept that perfectly respected Germanic
(for want of a better word) migration-period scholars like Heinrich Harke
and Michael Gebuhr have no problem with seeing the only logical route
of migration for Frisians, Angles & Jutes as being across the North Sea
and to Britain? As for the migrants arriving at their leisure, that's not
a problem. You know I think that there was an attenuated migration over
maybe 150-200 years. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hostile

It's not 'racist' to prefer your own material culture to that
of an invader/migrant. That's simply a matter of personal preference.
It's especially not racist to resent being invaded :roll: As for preferring
quality over lack of quality, would it also be 'racist' for you to prefer a high quality BMW to a Lada?

Not at all, but it is racist to assume that Britons could not possibly have wanted to prefer Anglo-Saxon culture over their own, which is what is implied by those who maintain that everywhere remains of that culture are found, an immigrant must be assumed.

It's certainly illogical to assume that when the first Anglo-
Saxon weapons burials appear in Kent c. 450 that 400 years of Romano-
British burial culture goes out the window and Romanized, Christianised
Britons suddenly swap all their jewellery and clothing for Anglo-Saxon
styles, and revert to pagan weapons burials. You are always exhorting
people to use Occam's Razor. Well, please try it yourself, now. What's
the simplest and most logical explanation for these weapons burials
suddenly appearing? That they are Anglo-Saxon imigrants, or that they
are Romanized Britons pretending to be Anglo-Saxons, just to fool us?
It's the same question palaeontologists put to creationists. What is the
most logical reason for the occurrence of fossil animals, dating back
hundreds of millions of years, in the Earth's crust? Is it because the
God who created the World 6,000 years ago wants to confuse us all,
by causing us to doubt the Creation story? Or is it that life actually took
eons to evolve, and that what we see in the ground is genuine evidence?

As for any culture, of whatever type, it would be a very strange thing
for them to prefer someone else's culture to their own so completely
and so immediately. The Britons took decades - if not centuries - to
become Romanized (so people keep telling us). Why would they take
to Anglo-Saxon culture so much more readily?

Cheers,
Ambrosius/Mike