Reassessing Roman Britain

[guy]

This is an interesting commentary on the Roman presence in Britain from The Guardian. Roman Britain was not some bleak and dreary outpost that quickly collapsed after the central government in Rome suffered setbacks. Roman Britain was, instead, a flourishing and luxurious community that withstood many of the pressures that assailed the central government.

Quote

”The past 12 months have been a good period for Romano-British archaeological finds – more drips of exciting new information that intriguingly mess with the rules of the historical game.  
That evidence adds fascinatingly to an already complicated-seeming picture for Britain at the end of its Roman period. Some parts of the country, especially in the west, seem to have to pursued a Roman way of life long after official ties were cut, whereas in the south-east, burials – in Colchester, for example – suggest that Germanic peoples were established in the region well before the end of the Roman period.“

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/05/the-guardian-view-on-roman-britain-a-constantly-shifting-picture

Edited November 6, 2021 by guy

[caldrail]

I'm a little amused by this because it appears to me the reassessment is from a later generation. I've known for a long time of the early Saxon settlement in Britannia thanks to antiquarians of the late 19th century (who, it must be said, range from  the perceptive to the almost fantasist), but articles written in archeological magazines of the period list various finds and sites which are sometimes hard to ignore. On the plus side, the research we're getting now is likely to be more reliable.