The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Chapter Ten
Early Historic Britain
Catherine Hills
BACKGROUND
The second half of the first millennium AD saw the emergence of England, Scotland and Wales
from what had been the Roman provinces of Britannia and the parts of modern Scotland that
had remained outside the Empire (see Hill 1981). After the withdrawal of Roman authority in the
early fifth century, Britain fell apart into numerous small warring groups led by chiefs of a variety
of ancestries, both indigenous and invaders. However, by the seventh century, a number of larger
kingdoms had emerged which formed the basis for the medieval kingdoms of England and
Scotland; in England, the major kingdoms were Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent and
Wessex (Figure 10.1). By the eighth century, it seemed that the Midlands kingdom of Mercia,
under King Offa, would form the core of a consolidated England, but Mercia fell victim to the
ninth-century Viking invasions, and it was instead the kings of Wessex, Alfred and his descendants,
who first created a strong West Saxon kingdom south of the Thames and then, during the tenth
century, conquered the rest of England. In Scotland, the dominant people were originally the
Picts, but the Scoti, rulers of the kingdom of Dalriada, centred on Argyll, who were of Irish
descent, eventually imposed their rule on all of Scotland except for the regions in the north,
including the Orkneys and Hebrides; these fell under Scandinavian rule from the end of the
eighth century. In Wales, larger kingdoms did emerge, including Gwynedd and Powys in the
north, Dyfed, Gwent and Brycheiniog in the south, but it was never united under one ruler
except, ultimately, after conquest by the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England.
TERMINOLOGY
The history of this period has always been complicated by its role in national creation myths, and
it is difficult even to find a name for it that does not betray a specific perspective. The popular
name ‘The Dark Ages’ is a term that derives from the way in which people of the Renaissance
saw the time between the Classical world and their own world, in which the glories of Greece and
Rome were seen to have been ‘reborn’. In between was a black hole of medieval superstition and
ignorance. This contrast between antiquity and the Middle Ages is now not so sharply drawn, and
our ignorance of the early medieval world has lessened to the extent that the term ‘Dark Ages’
has almost disappeared from academic works.
Some terms are relevant only to parts of Britain. In England, ‘The Anglo-Saxon period’ is
commonly used, taking its name from the dominant peoples amongst the fifth-century settlers.