Arthur's dykes

[aligern]

Might I suggest that a British  'reconquest' might depopulate some areas,  giving rise to the movement to the  Continent that I think Procopius refers to and leave other areas of German settlement untouched. Some of the Germans are foederati, perhaps garrisoning a town and it dependent area and thus persona grata with the Britons.  Many  of the groups , as suggested earlier are quite small and not them selves a threat   and will pay tribute, but it would be a major move to take down a series of dykes and physically incorporate them in a new state and possibly the settlement that ended the war left the defeated with autonomy? So perhaps we would not see any change to the pattern of dykes. The ' Arthurians '   may have won a victory, which lopped off  the heads of various small kingdoms but it might well not have been so absolute  as to roll back the boundaries of settlement, especially as the Britons had no structure to put in its place.

[Erpingham]

but it would be a major move to take down a series of dykes

It would be a major undertaking, whose value would be symbolic at best.  Obviously, many were not taken down as they still exist.  In the hypothetical situation described, one might imagine a "decommissioning" with the removal of anything of value which is easily accessed and the suspension of maintenance.  Any forces assigned to the dykes, if such there were, would be re-assigned and any service requirements on local communities would fall into abeyance.  It would be quite difficult to distinguish such a decommissioning from a natural process of decline, though, so I wouldn't expect to see much evidence for it.

[Jim Webster]

but it would be a major move to take down a series of dykes

It would be a major undertaking, whose value would be symbolic at best.  Obviously, many were not taken down as they still exist.  In the hypothetical situation described, one might imagine a "decommissioning" with the removal of anything of value which is easily accessed and the suspension of maintenance.  Any forces assigned to the dykes, if such there were, would be re-assigned and any service requirements on local communities would fall into abeyance.  It would be quite difficult to distinguish such a decommissioning from a natural process of decline, though, so I wouldn't expect to see much evidence for it.

If there was any sort of dry stone facing that might pretty soon get robbed. Even timber too old rotten to be reused would burn well enough when allowed to dry 

[Patrick Waterson]

Five minutes in and Jim is telling us the word 'cam' means river when it actually means crooked.

I wonder if the River Cam confused him (apparently there are three: one in Cambridge, one in Gloucestershire and one in Somerset).

but it would be a major move to take down a series of dykes

It would be a major undertaking, whose value would be symbolic at best.  Obviously, many were not taken down as they still exist.  In the hypothetical situation described, one might imagine a "decommissioning" with the removal of anything of value which is easily accessed and the suspension of maintenance.  Any forces assigned to the dykes, if such there were, would be re-assigned and any service requirements on local communities would fall into abeyance.  It would be quite difficult to distinguish such a decommissioning from a natural process of decline, though, so I wouldn't expect to see much evidence for it.

Concur.  Dykes can probably tell us something useful about the 'before' and 'after' but not the 'during' as far as Arthur (or 'Arthur') is concerned.  We can hypothesise about roads being reinstated during his reign by having the relevant part of the dyke cut away (and rebuilt thereafter when the Saxons regained the upper hand) but unless excavators have noticed different soil patterns in the vicinity of the roads, hypothesising is all we can really do.

[aligern]

The thing with roads is that they soon disappear if not used. Lengths may stay, but landslips  and overgrowing  soon cover them There was a greenway near us that was cut iff and in two years it was unwalkable. I would conjecture that a road that has been cut by a dyke has lost its purpose of getting stuff from A to B as A and B are no longer in a conversation.  Of course, if there is a third or higher power than A and B that needs the road and can compel maintenance  that is a different matter, but is mostly what we do not have in the Vth century. He thing tgat keeps the local network going  is trade into jarket towns, one wonders whether British and Saxon markets overlapped or were distinct?

One thing that does get carried forward as a duty is bridge work.
Roy

[Imperial Dave]

one thing we need to be mindful of, and has been touched only in passing so far, is that we must not be linear (no pun intended) in our view of relationships between polities, be they Romano British or 'Saxon' etc. Up until around the middle of the 7th Century, there are shifting allegiances and alliances based not upon race per se but upon opportunity. Professor Koch, amongst others, is a great proponent of declassifying old held beliefs of (Romano) British versus Saxons especially in the time period we are interested in.   

[Patrick Waterson]

The thing with roads is that they soon disappear if not used. Lengths may stay, but landslips  and overgrowing  soon cover them There was a greenway near us that was cut off and in two years it was unwalkable. I would conjecture that a road that has been cut by a dyke has lost its purpose of getting stuff from A to B as A and B are no longer in a conversation.  Of course, if there is a third or higher power than A and B that needs the road and can compel maintenance  that is a different matter, but is mostly what we do not have in the Vth century. The thing that keeps the local network going  is trade into market towns, one wonders whether British and Saxon markets overlapped or were distinct?

Good observation: in Gaul of a couple of generations previously, we know from the letters of Sidonius Apollonius that roads were falling into disrepair because in one letter he states that a local potentate had ordered a road repaired so he could undertake a procession along it.  Britannia was probably in a very similar condition, with any remaining relics of Imperial administration after AD 410 or so spending what they had on troops rather than roads (since the Constantine era civil and military spending seem to have been mutually exclusive, and road maintenance appears to have counted as civil).  Tribal chieftains presumably had a more traditional approach to roads: if they had wanted a road somewhere, I am guessing they would have cut a path through a forest and laid the cut-down and trimmed trees as a 'corduroy road' - very traditionally Celtic.

One thing that does get carried forward as a duty is bridge work.

And here, given the traditional strength and sturdiness of Roman bridges built with good stone and Roman cement, the local population is onto a winner.

one thing we need to be mindful of, and has been touched only in passing so far, is that we must not be linear (no pun intended) in our view of relationships between polities, be they Romano British or 'Saxon' etc. Up until around the middle of the 7th Century, there are shifting allegiances and alliances based not upon race per se but upon opportunity.

Indeed: in the Arthur cycle, Vortigern begins the trend of inviting in the foreigner, and one suspects that many a desperate kinglet would have made the same devil's pact to avoid annihilation at the hands of a more powerful opponent, culminating in 'Mordred' as a classic illustration or archetype.  Arthur himself fought as many domestic as foreign foes, although as his successes multiplied the affiliations became more polarised, distinct and definite, with Britons increasingly following his banner and Saxons and their allies (e.g. 'King Lot') opposing.

[aligern]

I keep trying to see it like that Holly and for Mercia coexistence looks a good model. However, my reading of things in Bernicia is that the Angles arrive, set up at Bamburgh, are attacked by the North Britons in concert, that assault fails and then the Northumbrians take the Britons out one by one. this is despite the Angles falling out amongst themselves, coalescing , breaking up, fighting down South. In the longue duree the movement is to the North Britons being penned back and incorporated into an Anglian kingdom. In other areas of the country, the same applies, there is a period when the Germans  are  restricted ,then equal poayers , then it mainly goes all their way. The wonder is that the Britons do not seem able to destroy the small initial settlements. Perhaps the problem is in calling them 'the Britons' because they do not have the unity of interest or control that implies.
Plausible cases have been made that the two societies delivered different potential with the Britons only having comitatus based forces whereas the Germans can summon every free man . The laws iof Wessex could support this, with the Welsh being at a lower wergild because their initial status when under British rule had only been 'half free''?     Of course it might just be a matter of the systematic oppression if the conquered which forced them to accommodate   and Anglicise.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

It may have been that the drift from Briton to Saxon happened lower down the pecking order. Looked at from the point of view of the subsistence peasant being a Saxon was a better bet than being a Briton. Yes you got called up occasionally, but you weren't stuck in the front of the shieldwall, and there was always the hope of loot. Stay as a Briton and the tax collectors would be round soon to extort supplies etc from you to support the Comitatus.
This process happened later in Asia Minor, when there are accounts of communities along the frontier drifting from being 'Byzantine' to being 'Turkish' because the tax burden was far lower and you were less likely to get raided.

So for a peasant to become 'Saxon' he doubtless merely had to give his nominal fealty to a different lord and use more Saxon loan words in his local dialect than Latin ones

[Imperial Dave]

Even in the north, there are potentially shifting alliances and not on purely racial lines. Again, Koch is in favour of treating Catraeth not as a battle between Saxons and Britons but between competing established polities (based on familial lines) who used Saxons and Britons and other racial groupings in the aforementioned battle

[Patrick Waterson]

Although overall, as Roy observes, there is a discernible trend of Saxon expansion.  An analogy might be Norman marcher lords, often at odds with their king and each other, but whose primary focus was making headway against an often disunited collection of Welsh princes.

I would not overdo the 'mixing' bit: the Britons were (mainly) Christian, the Saxons pagan.  Both sides had slaves or thralls, which would be the default status of anyone changing cultures, usually involuntarily.  Languages were mutually incomprehensible unless the Saxons picked up Latin (which some of their chiefs could have been expected to do), and although one can reasonably surmise trade at the market level whenever peace and trust existed (but not otherwise), any mixing of cultures would essentially be only chieftain-deep.  The Saxons had come to conquer and settle, and conquer and settle they did until seemingly halted for a while by 'Arthur'.  Cross-cultural intrigues, yes, but I have difficulty seeing any real blending of cultures or any virtue in Koch's interpretation of Cattraeth.

[Imperial Dave]

yes, the North does see Anglian expansion from the mid to late 6th onwards and inexorably leads to the juggernaut of Northumbria in the 7th. I am merely proposing that the one dimensional view of 'us versus them' is an anachronism for that particular period. After all, 'non-native' people had been part of the Roman Empire in Britain for 400 years. The swirling multi-cultural, multi-faith and multi linguistic backdrop would not have disappeared overnight. I just think we need to look at the period without our modern filters and be open to things that may seem at odds with what we think we know

[aligern]

Is polytheism a multi faith background?

Patrick is right that the Saxons appear to be pagans worshipping the Germanic pantheon ( certainly at the top end) . The Mercians look to be the most resistant to Christianity and maybe that is an identity think lime the Vandals staying Arian as a distinguishing characteristic.   Perhaps in the more confused and patchwork  Mercian context it was more necessary for the Angles to self identify?
The religious divide is important, is it also matched by a separation of identifying gear such as brooches? do we have a Saxon world that trades with the near Continent and a British world that trades with the East Roman Empire and itself ?  I take Holly's point about alliances ( such as British contingents in Penda's army) but the longue duree theme s that Saxon advances are mostly permanent changes to a different culture.
Roy

[Imperial Dave]

I was thinking of paganism in general as there would have been many different forms of non-Christian religions in the period pre and post Roman control. However, that is but one part of the jigsaw of the period. Getting back to the dykes.....apart from Hadrian's Wall and possibly the Antonine Wall, do we have evidence of lots of similar structures in the North I wonder?

[Anton]

Koch does indeed give us examples of equitable co-existence in the Gododdin and in his treatment of the career of Penda.  In both those cases we are not in circumstances of Anglian dominance.

When the Angles or Saxons are securely dominant, we see the lack of equality located by Alex Woolf in his essay Apartheid and Economics.
Woolf shows the long- term effect of Ine's Law and similar statutes was to reduce the status of the native population to an unfree population supporting a Germanic over class. This was accomplished by differing levels of wergild. 

Therefore, it was not possible for a British peasant to learn a bit of German and declare himself a Saxon or an Angle because to do so would deprive the actual Saxons or Angles of material benefit.  Doing so would break both the letter and spirit of the laws and would not be permitted by the kings who promulgated them.  Equally a subject British nobleman could not expect his family to maintain its status nor could he proclaim himself an Angle or whatever to preserve it.