Appearence and tactics of early 5th century Saxons.

[ambrosius]

If what you say holds water, then why did the Anglo-Saxons not immediately drop their culture for the apparently superior Romano-British culture?

Obviously because, to them, it wasn't superior. Perhaps,
(dare I say it) because they had a racist disdain for Romanized Britons.
But I think we could drop the term racist, as applied to either our fellow
listmembers, native Britons or Anglo-Saxons, don't you?

Because the Roman soldiers adopting 'Germanic style' buckles
in the 4th/5th c. were doing so out of choice or practicality. They were
not being forced to adopt them by invading Germanic peoples. Whilst
at the same time, they still retained established 'Roman' equipment or
fashions, such as crossbow-brooches.

Exactly! Free choice and practicality! Exactly what is advocated in the 'acculturisation' model - no Saxon forced anyone to do anything

Well no Saxon forced the Roman Army in Gaul to start
wearing chip-carved buckles, I'll grant you that. And probably no Saxon
forced British women to drop their native clothing (okay, actually, they
may well have done that :oops: ) and start wearing the latest Saxon
fashions to come off the Paris catwalk, either. The simplest explanation
is that if it walks like a Saxon and quacks like a Saxon, then it's a Saxon.

But for British women to suddenly drop all their old cultural modes of dress/jewellery does not sound realistic. If they weren't actually Saxon women, but British, then why not retain some of their own 'Celtic' or Roman styles of dress alongside the 'adoptive'
Saxon ones?

No-one says anything about suddenly.

But graves containing exclusively Anglo-Saxon grave-goods
do appear suddenly c. 450 onwards in Kent

But these new weapons being brought in by Germanic traders - how are these supposed to get past the 'customs officials'?
Are traders in Roman Britain allowed to import arms into the country?
And are civilians allowed to buy them? I don't think so.

Mike, we're talking about a timeframe when those customs officials had all long gone home to Rome.

Now Robert. That's definitely not what you said before,
and it's not what I was replying to. But don't worry, old man. If you
need reminding of what you said to cause me to reply as I did, then
I can quote you, once again:

"I'm not sure what you mean. I guess you are referring
to Roman weapons. Well, Romans did not allow their citizens to carry
arms, and for the better part of a century before we call Britain 'post-
Roman', the state had a weapon monopoly. So any new weapon would
very easily be brought in by Germanic traders, long before 400."

Now to be honest, I thought, at the time, that you were
contradicting yourself, rather. But I didn't like to point it out to you,
in case you called me racist, or something :lol: So my question, above,
about customs control of importation of Germanic weapons in the century
before 400 still stands. Unless you wish to revise what you said. :wink:

Highly unlikely, Robert. Gildas criticises the Britons for many things in the mid-6th c. but paganism isn't one of them. 8) As for the paganism of the Saxons, they all seem to have shared the same gods (especially Woden) from placename evidence. And we know that they weren't converted to Christianity till 597 onwards, and even then it was a slow and fitful process.

Gildas wrote at a time when a reversion to paganism would still be in it’s early stages, don’t you think?

Absolutely. So why did you suggest, in the post I replied to,
that Britons might have been tempted to convert to Anglo-Saxon paganism
a century earlier, c. 450? 8)

Besides, if he indeed wrote in the North or the West of Britain, that would put him far away from the regions in the Southeast that we’re talking about.

He's mentioned as visiting the monastery at
Glastonbury, which, it would follow, had been raided by Anglo-Saxons.
That's in the South West, and would be on the frontline between the
Britons and the Anglo-Saxons, if he was writing near to the mid 6th c.
which was when the A/S penetrated to the Bristol Channel.

And of course, by far not all Britons changed their faith - not all were Christian (at least more than nominally)

As spock would say: 'Fascinating'. Do you have any
evidence for that? 8)

and as Ken Dark advocated, many Christians were still to be found in ‘Anglo-Saxon lands’ before 597.

Well of course they were. Judging from the placename and
archaeological evidence, there were British enclaves from Walton Castle
on the East coast to London, Silchester, Chichester etc till c.500. There
is no evidence that any of these British enclaves had converted to
paganism, nor that any Anglo-Saxons had converted to Christianity.
In fact, the Byzantine, Christian silverware in mound 1 at Sutton Hoo
looks like it was made in the reign of Anastasius (c.500) for Romanized
Britons in the West, and was possibly pilaged from British sites to be
buried in Raedwald's (no offence, Paul 8) ) grave a century later. That's
probably the closest the Anglians got to Christianity before lapsing,
again, after Augustine had tried converting them after 597.[/quote]

Cheers,
Ambrosius/Mike