OFF: settlement of England (was: Re: Mountain Grill (!))

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:

> On 27-Feb-2005 21:56, Jon Jarrett wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Maybe it turned out that a good place for an auxiliary garrison was just
> not a good place for a farming settlement?  Perhaps once the imperial
> pay cheques were no longer coming in, the soldiers decided to "get out
> of town" and set up somewhere else?

        It's a theory. Most of these auxiliaries may well have been
farming for their keep already, but I don't think, even though this was
done elsewhere in the Empire, anyone's ever managed to *prove* it was done
in Britain. One theory is of course that they were just withdrawn with the
other troops, following the pay... But if they had done as you suggest,
I've no idea how we'd go about establishing it archaeologically. Roman
military kit in new settlements I guess; but how to tell this from spoil
and so on?

        This sort of thing is why I started working on a filed with
evidence :-) Yours,
                    Jon

ObCD: Blue Oyster Cult - _Secret Treaties_ (I've been lucky with my
listening on these off-topic posts so far... )
--
                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)