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Sub-Roman Britain is the period of late antiquity in Great Britain between the end of Roman rule and the Anglo-Saxon settlement. The term was originally used to describe archaeological remains found in 5th- and 6th-century AD sites that hinted at the decay of locally made wares from a previous higher standard under the Roman Empire .
From Julius Caesar’s first landing on the shoreline of England in 55 BC to the famous ‘Look to your own defences’ letter of AD 410, the Romans played an important part in British history for over 400 years. In this article, we take a look at the ups and downs of this often fraught relationship!
Roman Britain was the territory that became the Roman province of Britannia after the Roman conquest of Britain, consisting of a large part of the island of Great Britain. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410.
"Sub-Roman Britain" is a label applied by specialists to Britannia in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. Geographically, Britannia is that territory south of the Forth-Clyde line that was part of the Roman Empire from AD 43 to 410. Gaining their independence from Rome, the sub-Roman Britons created a culture that was a unique hybrid of Roman ...
- Introduction
- Identifying Ethnicity in The Archaeological Record
- Dating Sites: Coins, Pottery, and Scientific Methods
- Conclusions
"The darkest of the Dark Ages" might be an apt description of the fifth and sixth centuries in Britain, a time commonly referred to as the sub-Roman period. Not dark in the sense that this era lacked character or achievement: there are certainly enough real (St Patrick) and legendary (Arthur and Merlin) associations to attract modern interests. Any...
The nature of the archaeological evidence for sub-Roman Britain poses several problems. One is our ability, or more often inability, to identify "ethnicity" in the archaeological record. Structures, coins, pottery, jewelry, and military equipment have all traditionally been used by archaeologists to identify settlements and graves as Romano-British...
Dating is a crucial problem which plagues both historians and archaeologists working in this period. The scarcity of coinage and chronological indicators in the written sources erodes confidence in assigning precise dates for artifacts and settlements. For this survey, I have tried to avoid precise dates for settlements; I am only concerned with wh...
I would now like to offer a few conclusions drawn from the archaeological evidence collected in the Gazetteer. 48 What must be obvious to anyone looking at this evidence is the diversity. The great variety of settlement types in the fifth and sixth centuries prove the Britons to be neither truly urban nor completely rural, but rather a mixture that...
After a profusion of source criticism began to shake these foundations (see Dumville 1977 and Snyder forthcoming) many archaeologists felt free to ignore the written record entirely and treat sub-Roman Britain as a prehistoric subject.
Aulus Plautius led the Roman invasion of Britain in 42 AD and served as governor of the new province until 47 AD when he returned home to Rome. He was replaced by Publius Ostorius Scapula.
