The primitive Anglo-Saxon calendar

Antiquity ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 284-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
Western World ◽  
Anglo Saxon

When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, about the middle of the fifth century, they came as barbarians in the proper and Roman sense of the word, illiterate and unpolished. At the beginning, too, their religion was a paganism at variance with imperial Christianity. Yet they cannot have been the blundering creatures they are sometimes taken for: within a few generations this assortment of tribes had produced scholarship of European standing, in the persons of Aldhelm and Bede, and as to the decorative arts their jewelry and illumination of manuscripts—not forgetting Irish influence—were a match for anyone in the western world. Fierce and warlike at first, guilty of unprovoked aggression, most of them soon settled down to become peaceful farmers.

scholarly journals Memories of migration? The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ burial costume of the fifth century AD

Antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (370) ◽  
pp. 954-969
Author(s):  
James M. Harland
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Image Position

Abstract

Regional identities Angles and Saxons?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Burial Rites

Writing in the early eighth century, Bede described how three separate peoples— the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—had settled in Britain some three hundred years earlier, and ever since the genesis of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ scholarship in the nineteenth century archaeologists have sought to identify discrete areas of Anglian, Saxon, and Jutish settlement (e.g. Leeds 1912; 1936; 1945; Fox 1923, 284–95). The identification of these peoples was based upon different artefact styles and burial rites, with most attention being paid to brooches. The degree of variation in the composition of brooch assemblages across eastern England is shown in Table 9.1. Cruciform brooches with cast side knobs, for example, were thought to have been ‘Anglian’, and saucer brooches ‘Saxon’ (although even in the early twentieth century Leeds (1912) had started to doubt the attribution of applied brooches to the West Saxons). In recent years, however, this traditional ‘culturehistorical’ approach towards interpreting the archaeological record has been questioned, as it is now recognized that, rather than being imported from mainland Europe during the early to mid fifth century, regional differences in artefact assemblages emerged over the course of the late fifth to late sixth centuries (e.g. Hines 1984; 1999; Hilund Nielsen 1995; Lucy 2000; Owen- Crocker 2004; 2011; Penn and Brugmann 2007; Walton Rogers 2007; Brugmann 2011; Dickinson 2011; Hills 2011). In early to mid fifth-century England, in contrast, it now appears that Germanic material culture was in fact relatively homogeneous, with objects typical of ‘Saxon’ areas on the continent being found in so-called ‘Anglian’ areas of England, and vice versa. The earliest material from East Anglia, for example—equal-arm, supporting-arm, and early cruciform brooches—are most closely paralleled in the Lower Elbe region of Saxony, with the distinctive ‘Anglian’ identity of EastAnglia onlyemerging through later contact with southern Scandinavia (Hines 1984; Carver 1989, 147, 152; Hills and Lucy 2013, 38–9). Indeed, many elements of the classic suite of early Anglo-Saxon material culture actually developed within Britain as opposed to having been created on the continent (Hills 2003, 104–7; Owen-Crocker 2004, 13), with new identities beingmade in Britain rather than being imported frommainland Europe (Hills 2011, 10).

Meander, Qui Vitae Ostendit Vitam…

1968 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
W. G. Arnott
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Western World ◽  
New Type

Theghost of Aristophanes still breathes over the shoulder of any body who wants to discuss, praise, or debunk Menander. Aristophanes' spiritual presence is both inevitable and irrelevant. Inevitable, because to our western world Aristophanes is the Athenian comic poetpar excellence, who achieved that miraculous synthesis of imaginative fantasy, vicious satire, elegant parody, comic invention, civic shrewdness, witty obscenity, and the evocative poetry of precise observation. But the ghost of Aristophanes is also an irritating irrelevance when one is considering Menander. An irrelevance, because Aristophanes and the genre that he and other contemporary practitioners had perfected in the last quarter of the fifth centuryB.c.were as extinct as the great auk a century later, when Menander and a new type of comedy reigned supreme if not unchallenged.

New light on the Anglo-Saxon succession: two cemeteries and their dates

Antiquity ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 83 (322) ◽  
pp. 1096-1108 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.M. Hills ◽  
T.C. O'Connell
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotopes ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Interesting Problem ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Rigorous Approach ◽  
High Level ◽  
Very High

The origin of the English is an interesting problem – and not only for them. In one short century, the evidence from texts, burial, artefacts, stable isotopes and now DNA provides several different answers to the question of whether England was invaded by Germans in the fifth century and if so in what manner. The rigorous approach by our authors tips the balance back in favour of a population changing its cultural allegiance – rather than being physically overwhelmed – but, as they emphasise, any new reading must depend on a very high level of archaeological precision – perhaps only now coming within reach.

The Location and Relationship of the Sancton Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries

1976 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Lindsay Faull
Keyword(s):  
Local Field ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Village

SummaryExamination of the Rolleston papers and local field-work have permitted identification of the site of the Sancton II cemetery and ascription of objects in the Ashmolean Museum to individual burials described by Rolleston. It can now be seen that, during the sixth century A.D., a small, predominantly inhumation cemetery close to the village was in use concurrently with the large cremation cemetery, which had begun on the top of the wold in the early fifth century and which was possibly used by surrounding communities, and that the Christian church was eventually built on the same site as the inhumation cemetery.

One British Thing: A Fifth-Century Ceramic Beaker

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-178
Author(s):  
Robin Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon

AbstractA post-Roman folded beaker allows us to see traditional Romano-British material culture and material practices continuing into the fifth century and helps us understand the problem of the blanket labeling of all objects made after ca. 400 as “Anglo-Saxon.”

The Alloys of a Sample of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-Headed Brooches

1993 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Brownsword ◽  
John Hines
Keyword(s):  
Copper Alloys ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Metal Alloys ◽  
Gold Content ◽  
Potential Importance ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Detailed Measurement ◽  
Progressive Decline ◽  
Direct Observations ◽  
Metallurgical Analysis

The Potential Importance of the detailed measurement and study of the proportions of different elements in metal alloys used for early Anglo-Saxon artefacts has been appreciated for several years now. Such analyses add, for instance, to the direct observations of early Anglo-Saxon metalworking practice that can be made, and have a contribution to make to attempts to construct absolute and relative chronologies. Two ranges of alloys in particular have been profitably studied: alloys predominantly of gold, of the late sixth and seventh centuries, in which a progressive decline in the gold content allows dating estimates to be made on the strength of the results of metallurgical analysis (Hawkes, Merrick and Metcalf 1966; cf. Brown and Schweizer 1973 for the application of such results), and the predominantly copper alloys that are characteristic of the diverse and plentiful range of artefacts—particularly dress-jewellery—found in Anglo-Saxon graves of the Migration Period, dating from the fifth century to some point in the second half of the sixth. Study of these copper alloys has been organized in terms of particular artefact-types—for instance studies by Peter Northover and Tania Dickinson of saucer brooches and by Catherine Mortimer of cruciform brooches (Mortimer 1990: the unpublished results of Northover and Dickinson's earlier work are reported in this thesis)—and in the form of comprehensive surveys of the material recovered from individual cemeteries, such as Spong Hill, Norfolk (Wardley in Hills, Penn and Rickett 1984, 38–40), Watchfield, Oxfordshire, and Lechlade, Gloucestershire (Mortimer, Pollard and Scull 1986; Mortimer 1988).

Military and Civilian: Reconfiguring the End of Roman Britain in the North

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Petts
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The North ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Underlying Processes

This study explores the impact of recent discoveries on our understanding of the transition from the Roman to early medieval periods in northern England. Using the Tees Valley as a case study, it shows how modern interpretations of this process have focused primarily on the afterlife of the military sites in the region. However, the increased identification of significant Roman civilian settlements forces us to reconsider the dominant narratives and rethink the underlying processes that influenced the move from Roman-controlled frontier society in the fourth century to a fifth century society comprising both culturally Anglo-Saxon social groups and sub-Roman successor polities. A wider consideration is also given to how the changing patterns in the use of space and in refuse disposal strategies can be used to shed light on wider patterns of changing social identity in the later fourth century AD.

The “African Enslavement of Anglo-Saxon Minds”: The Beechers as Critics of Augustine

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Thuesen
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Social Reformer ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
Catharine Beecher ◽  
African Context

Harriet Beecher Stowe, who achieved international fame for her 1852 antislavery novel,Uncle Tom's Cabin, is best known to historians of American religious thought as a critic of New England Calvinism and its leading light, Jonathan Edwards. But in airing her frustrations with the Puritan tradition, Stowe also singled out a much earlier source of the problem: Augustine, the fifth-century bishop of Hippo. At his worst, Augustine typified for Stowe not only theological rigidity but also the obdurate refusal of the male system-builders to take women's perspectives seriously. Consequently, in the New England of the early republic, when “the theology of Augustine began to be freely discussed by every individual in society, it was the women who found it hardest to tolerate or assimilate it.” In leveling such criticism, Stowe echoed her elder sister Catharine Beecher, a prominent educator and social reformer, whose well-known writings on the role of women in the home have often overshadowed her two companion volumes of theology, in which she devotes more attention to Augustine than to any other figure. Yet for all her extended critiques of Augustinian themes, Beecher buried her most provocative rhetorical flourish, as one might conceal a dagger, in the last endnote on the last page of the second volume. Seizing upon the African context of Augustine's career as a metaphor for his deleterious influence on Christian theology, she concluded that reasonable people have a duty to resist the “African enslavement of Anglo-Saxon minds” no less than to combat the “Anglo-Saxon enslavement of African bodies.”

The Fenland Frontier in Anglo-Saxon England

Antiquity ◽  
1934 ◽  
Vol 8 (30) ◽  
pp. 185-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Darby
Keyword(s):  
Political Geography ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
The North ◽  
Frontier Region

It would seem that the Anglo-Saxon invasion of a great part of eastern Britain in the fifth century radiated fan-wise from the gateway of the Wash and of the Fenland Gulf. If this is true, it is not surprising. The position of the continental base of the Anglo-Saxons made the area a natural entry into the Midland plain; and the invaders, with the Wash behind them, gazed upon no unfamiliar scene. The region into which they came may not have been so different from their former homeland on the flats of northern Germany, the homeland which Bede tells us they had so completely deserted. They penetrated by way of the Fenland rivers, up the Nene, the Welland, the Ouse, and the Witham, and this big spread was supplemented to the north and to the south by the smaller river entrances, the Bure, the Yare, the Waveney, the Humber and so on. The archaeological finds, as plotted by Mr Thurlow Leeds, are located along the courses of navigable streams and their tributaries, and are disposed concentrically around the Fenland. Dr Cyril Fox has moreover indicated affinities, during the earlier Saxon period, between the opposite shores of this marshy gulf. All had changed, however, when the tribes emerged into the light of history. The Fenland basin, characterized at an earlier epoch by a certain cultural unity, had now become a frontier region, separating peoples and exercising a repelling action revealed in the making of the Anglo-Saxon States. Kingdoms, finding their limits here, partitioned the marshy wastes between them, and the barrier of the Fens became a permanent feature in the political geography of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.

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