Mountain Grill

[Jon Jarrett]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Stephe Lindas wrote:

>  Hi Eric, Would the Saxon part of Anglo-saxon, not be German? I'm no
> historian, but weren't alot of the Romans that occupied Briton of
> Sarmatian and German descent, rather than Italian? Cheers Stephe

        The Roman army in Britain certainly had a lot of Germanic
auxiliaries, we have a fourth-century document recording the disposition
of the Roman forces c. 380 which makes this clear and archaeologists have
found stuff which they reckon these people wore (though of course this is
rather hard to prove from methodologies that amount to `it looks a bit
like it came from Germany'). What's recently been found to be lacking is,
apart from possibly at Wroxeter, any continuity between this Germanic
settlement and the subsequent one. Obviously the idea of solkdiers going
native is a good one, and it surely must have happened; but it's not so
far been possible to find any place bar Wroxeter where such forces may
have based which then turned into an Anglo-Saxon settlement. This is
puzzling a fair few people.

        Um, anyway! Yours,
                           Jon

ObCD: Hawkwind - _Hawkwind 1997_ (I forget who was after this but the band
should really make more, it's not half bad).
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)