Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the north-western provinces 499
Alongside the literary texts there is the witness of archaeology. On the
whole, however, the archaeological material for the period, rich though it is,
illuminates general trends, particularly in burial custom and living conditions.
Such information is not easily combined with a written record that
deals primarily with matters ecclesiastical and political. Despite the vast
numbers of cemeterial finds from the fifth and early sixth century, it is rare
to find a grave that is so firmly dated that it can be fitted into a precise historical
context: the one obvious exception is the grave of the Frankish king
Childeric at Tournai, which is especially valuable because it is the grave of a
known individual whose career is recorded and whose death can be ascribed
with some certainty to the year 481 or thereabouts. Leaving aside the cemetery
evidence, that of treasure hoards is also awkward. Of the British
hoards, Mildenhall, Water Newton and Hoxne antedate our period, though
in the latter case, only just. The hoard from Traprain Law in Scotland may,
however, belong to the early fifth century, and show something of the
Roman treasure available to a native prince, living in what had been the frontier
zone of the Roman province. From the continent, the hoard from
Kaiseraugst seems to belong to the mid fourth century, and the treasure
named after Sevso, its owner, who lived apparently in Pannonia, may be
dated a little later. There is, in any case, always a danger in trying to associate
a hoard, or indeed a destruction layer in a villa or town, with an individual
crisis, unless the archaeological finds and the literary texts can be shown to
dovetail precisely. Even a text as precise about urban destruction as the Vita
Severini is difficult to correlate with the archaeological evidence currently
available for Noricum. In Britain the discoveries of sub-Roman structures
built in timber at Wroxeter and Birdoswald are reminders of how much may
have been missed by earlier generations of archaeologists. 7 Urban archaeology
in France is also shedding increasing light on the history of the late
Roman town, and it seems likely that over the period as a whole there was
a marked urban decline, although at the same time, in parts of Gaul at least,
this went hand in hand with the development of new suburban foci, notably
around the increasingly significant shrines of martyrs and saints. 8
Although it is possible to construct a narrative for the period, it can at
best be a sketch of a time of intense military activity and social change. In
406 or 407 the Rhine frontier broke, and hordes of Vandals, Alans and
Sueves crossed first into Gaul and then into Spain, where they fought each
other as much as they plundered the Roman province, until the Vandals
departed for Africa in 429. In 411 the Visigoths left Italy, in the first
instance for Aquitaine. They too moved on to Spain, only to be recalled to
Aquitaine in 418 or 419. 9 From their base in Toulouse they usually acted as
7 On Wroxeter, Barker (1990). 8 See in general the volumes of Gauthier et al.(1986–).
9 On the question of the date Wood (1992) 15.
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