No Saxon invasion?

[Chilperic]

Could I just say that of course I have read Weale et al? Also that my comment about scepticism was based on a conversation with a senior archaeologist (now at Cambridge) who worked on this sort of material who actually said (something like) 'I think it's impossible to get usable DNA from ancient samples'. That was the basis of my 'understanding' of 'scepticism' in c.2005. To state that "there was no scepticism" is simply untrue.

My original discussion of this was based on a seminar at York, with archaeological scientists and archaeologists, which went over Weale et al with a fine-toothed comb. I've also run this by hard scientists to get their opinion of it. There are problems with the samples and their choice, etc. etc. I've also spoken to other geneticists who are sceptical. And I don't ignore their 'genetic frontier'; I don't believe it; I don't think the evidence cited, rigorously scrutinised, supports it. You do me a disservice, Mr Amphlett, to suggest I haven't read or thought critically about this material and its scientific methodology.

I've never claimed to be in a position to discuss the actual analysis of DNA chains; my opposition lies in the methodology used in terms of sample selection, and the historical conclusions drawn from it.

I would also say that Haerke's input into that piece contains more holes than a swiss cheese. Not a single one of the documents he cites actually supports his case and much of the archaeology is essentially based on circular arguments. I could use your argument, Mr Amphlett, to say you shouldn't read these people because they don't read or understand history.

As others have said, your chromsamomes etc don't tell you what you are. There is no such thing as 'Gothic' DNA; there can't be. Simple as. DNA doesn't have an ethnicity. You can't - ever - get from genes and chromosomes, or tooth enamel and stable isotopes, to ethnic identity. All you can do is say is where people are concentrated who have similar DNA, although it seems to me (and others) that the DNA pool in Europe has been so mixed since the Neolithic that any such conclusions are pretty dodgy. And if you can say that then you can suggest where people may have moved from. But I have seen the self same maps used to prove the spead of Indo-European language via population movement and the migration of th Anglo-Saxons. And I have also seen bits of maps which would allow a range of equally plausible geographical origins have only that bit cited which fits the particular story the scientist wants to tell, usually that which fits the historical preconception, usually the one to do with Viking or Saxon migration - in turn usually the one the media most want to hear. This is another reason why samples need to be chosen carefully and scientifically, and those used by Weale et al, simply enough, weren't. They were chosen with an answer already in mind. Jim Wilson's claims to be able to detect 'Pictish', 'Scottish' etc. DNA are equally ridiculous. But he makes a lot of money from Americans who want to prove their Pictish origins...

To suggest that a certain proportion of specific DNA components suggests that there was mass migration, I am profoundly sceptical about, for good reasons, but I may well be wrong. If my arguments make those presenting the DNA-based migrationist case make their argument more refined and subtle, and it still shows the same thing, I'll be happy enough to change my mind.

What I feel more strongly about is the suggestion of an 'apartheid-like structure' (which is itself self-contradictory, since they then go on to talk about inter-marriage) because it assumes an ethnic difference on the basis of a genetic difference. Ethnicity isn't genetic. People with very similar DNA can have all sorts of different ethnicities and, more importantly, different levels of ethnicity. Did a Saxon in the Roman army think of himself as a Saxon or a Roman? What governed his relative chances of marriage and procreation, his Saxon origins or his Roman status? I suggest it was the latter. To reduce ethnicity to a single level, based upon genetics and claims ade about geographical origins runs precisely the risk I said it runs, which is to make ethnicity something you are born with, and therefore to revive the idea of the nation.

If you know your way around this material you will know that Thomas and Haerke are in cahoots with Peter Heather, who thinks barbarians brought down the Roman Empire, so the migration is the explanation. Not only that but this material and the ideas it is being used to support are then wheeled out to support a right-wing view of the present. Cp. Heather: : “the connection between immigrant violence and the collapse of the western Empire could not be more direct.” (Empires and Barbarians, p.339). To write in those terms is either stupid, irresponsible or wicked, or some combination thereof. To me it's not surprising that he might espouse a view that brings back the 'nation state' via primordialist ethnicity. The fact that Haerke et al accuse the likes of myself of simple 'political correctness' rather backs up the point. I am politically correct, as it happens, and proud to be so, but that's not what drives my history; it's a concern to read the data in as sophisticated way as possible.

Grubenhaus, by the way, doesn't have an umlaut (except on the a in the plural), and its 'Germanic' (whatever that means) character needs serious rethinking. SFBs are now showing up all over Europe, half way up the east coast of Scotland, in Spain, in Italy (in Rome even) and France. It and the hall increasingly seems to be part of a standard architectural repertoire responding to an economic crisis/shift producing an inability to maintain stone building.

Which leads me to another point, which is that there were human links across the North Sea in both directions in late antiquity. If (*if* - because I don't think this has been remotely securely demonstrated) there was an increase in the similarity of the DNA of insular and northern German populations in the C5th, you need to think very hard about the mechanisms explanation for that. Weale et al, following Haerke, simply assume that the cause must be migration from Germany. In other words, they decide upon the basic mechanism (i.e. movement *from* Germany, but want to look at its scale) rather than interrogating it. But if there was, instead, an upsurge in the cultural contacts and exchanges around and across the North Sea in the fifth century, which a more subtle reading of the historical and archaeological data suggests, the reasons for an increase in intermarriage could be rather more nuanced.

If you actually read what I wrote, you'll see that what I was essentially arguing was in no way based upon shortcomings of scientific analyses. I argued at length that, even if we had an extremely unlikely data set which as good as proved the case for a migration, genetically, and for a linkage between that migration and a cultural dichotomy within a cemetery population, it would fall way short of an explanation for social and cultural change. And if that data set was any less than perfect, that explanation would become exponentially weaker. That was my point.

Everyone sane knows migration happened, from 'Saxony' to England. What is worrying is that migration then serves as an explanation: as though the mere presence of incomers will suffice as the cause of stress and cultural dichotomy. What needs to be explained is the migration itself. By all means, use the study of DNA regionally to help medical research, but stay out of history. Shifting from medical uses to very simplistic historical arguments, answering questions posed in the terms of the 19th century is not doing the subject any good, even if it does seem to make good copy. And anyone in HE at the moment knows that getting publicity is important, which is why it's not necessarily denigrating to suggest that an important objective is to get the lab into the news. Don't blame me for pointing that fact out.