Customer Reviews
Interesting and provocative - By: Corieltauvi, 24 Dec 2008 
I see this is one of 9 books nominated by Current Archaeology mag for their Book of the Year 2009. I'm voting for it.
Highly plausible, not quite convincing - By: C. P. Dixon, 13 Oct 2008 
Too long the history of sub-Roman Britain has relied too much on doubtful small snippets of written evidence, often from authors on the other side of Europe writing over a century after the events described, which too many people have accepted at face value. Really the only thing we can rely on for sure is the evidence from archaeology.
Laycock presents here a thesis, which he attempts to back up from the archaeological evidence, that the tribal kingdoms of pre-Roman Britain retained their boundaries, their identity & their accompanying tribal hatreds, throughout the Roman period. Despite the Roman administration, the province never became unified. Many of the "barbarian attacks" of the Roman period may actually have beenin effect civil wars between rival tribes. Furthermore, he asserts, these tribal mini-states formed the nuclei for the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Each broughtin various Germanic tribes from the continent as foederati to fight for them against their immediate neighbours, as opposed to the standard historical modelin which they were intended to fight against outside invaders such as Picts & Irish. Subsequently these Germans, either peacefully or by coup d'etat, took over the leadership of the mini-states & turned them into kingdoms. The spread of the Anglo-Saxons as indicated by archaeology has always seemed far too rapid to me compared to the standard historical model based on the written sources, & such a scenario as posited here with geographically widespread Anglo-Saxon immigration right from the start seems more consistent. (There's even serious discussion these days about the possibility that some of the peoples of south-eastern pre-Roman Britain were Germanic speakers rather than Brythonic speakers. See for example The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story.)
I would say that Laycock's thesis is highly plausible, more plausible than many other scenarios presented by historians & archaeologists, but not quite enough evidence to be totally convincing. Like much archaeology & history writing, there is plenty of phraseology used of the form "we may suppose that" or "there is no reason to doubt that" as a prelude to certain conclusions. We may have to wait to see what further archaeological evidence build upin future.
Certainly a valuable contribution to the history of pre-Roman, Roman & post-Roman Britain, & recommended reading.
Throw away your old textbooks....... - By: Dr. Nigel Sewell, 12 Jul 2008 A number of commentatorsin recent years have noted how the human propensity for stories, hard wired into our minds, provides the mechanism by which humans understand the world. Myths are stories we generate to serve as starting points to sharing our understanding of a subject, & sometimes to preserving a particular social or cultural point of view. The mythic Fall of the Roman Empire generates new books & cinema releases on a regular basis. One of greatest mysteries coming out of that fall is the transmutation of the Roman province of Britannia into Anglo-Saxon England despite the doomed heroism of the often reworked figure[s] of Ambrosius/Arthur.
In 1980, a revolution occurredin our stories explaining another popular conundrum, What Killed The Dinosaurs? Before the Alvarez Hypothesis, various theories ranging from the theft of their eggs by the rising tide of mammals, to poisoning by the emerging flowering plant genera took centre stage. Then the discovery of the KT Boundary radically altered our perception of the end of the Carboniferous, a thin layer of iridium swept all the old stories into oblivion. Stuart Laycock's radical new take on the middle, late & post-Roman periodsin Britannia are based on more prosaic materials, limestonein walls & earthin ditch complexes well away from apparent battlefronts & times of conflict, & veins of cast bronze military material finds snaking their way along the pre-Roman frontiers & concentrated along ancient points of friction re-emerging from the smothering Pax Romana demilitarization. He demonstrates how our timeline for the events of Roman Britain, so surein the Latin textbooks of our youth, are based on fragments & accounts written long after the events, roughly aligned like early Dead Sea Scroll pieces, the gaps filled with assumptions & baked into their familiar shapein the fire of legend. He shows how the mysterious warsin Britannia recorded on coins & alluded toin eulogies between the high water mark of Agricolan expansionin the 80s & the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367 are as likely to have been internal civil conflicts as against external enemies. He demonstrates the regionality of late Roman military equipment, & then pieces together the pattern of finds as surely as `Geofizz' on a TimeTeam villa dig. He accounts for the quick deep apparent penetrations of early Saxon material by showing their concentration on the military flashpoints between the peoples of Britannia, exactly where you would expect foederati to be placed once you understand that they were the peoples plural, & not singular. The book is logically set out, very readable & well illustrated. There won't be a crater & some shocked quartz to be found to prove this hypothesis, but it blows a hole as big as Chicxulubin the existing Legend of the Fall.
Highly stimulating - recommended - By: A. Browne, 08 Jul 2008 I very much enjoyed this book- the central premise is that the tribal system that pre-dated the Roman invasion began to re-asserted itself after the legions left.
It draws very stimulating parallels with the post-Tito Balkans where Bosnian/ Serbian / Albanian/ Slovenian ethnic rivalries similarly re-emerged after decades of Yugoslav rule.
The analysis of brooch types- potentially identifying tribal/ ethnic groupings- was new to me- & convincing. It also made sense of some of the obscurer parts of Gildas on the entry of the Saxons.
Very much recommended for those interestedin how Britannia changed from a Roman province to the Anglo-Saxon/ Romano-British kingdoms- well-written as well.
