Is the Fifth-century Fault-line a Hallucination?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-05-06

The role of migration as the stimulus for catastrophic changes in material culture, language, and political organisation in fifth-century England has a long historiography reaching into the early nineteenth century. It remains a fundamental premise for contemporary models and explanations for the emergence of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ England including the replacement of a Romano-British aristocracy by a Germanic warrior elite, and the development of cultural identities from a core of imported beliefs (ethnogenesis). This paper takes an alternative view, framed by the work of Braudel, Ostrom, Bourdieu, and Holling. Its premise is that all aspects of a stable, sustainable, farming economy depend on rights of property over land: they enable an individual to make a reasonably predictable living, provide opportunities to generate a surplus or acquire goods, and allow personal interaction with elites through tribute, gift-giving or taxation. Focusing in particular on shared property rights, the paper explores the development of new models for explaining the fifth century. It suggests that stabilities in underlying social-economic systems, visible in the landscape, provided a safe foundation for post-imperial invention and experimentation with new political forms and social relationships; and that migration, material culture and language may be less significant than previously supposed.

Susan Oosthuisen (University of Cambridge)