Rheged in Galloway

[Anton]

I think its worthwhile to look at the land question. 

Post 410 AD there is suddenly an awful lot of land available, most of it valuable land that used to belong to the military or the imperial state.  In the early part of our period this means additional people and innovations can be accommodated without anyone being displaced.

Before 410 AD but seminal to this discussion, Rance in his Irish Federates discusses such accommodation, as Koch likely does in his Marwanad Cunedda and Koch's description (from Bede) of the scale Bangor is a good exemplar of the innovation possible.

Once this land has been redistributed that safety valve is gone and good land invariably belongs to someone else.   

[Imperial Dave]

land is a very good point....post imperial ownership, its up for grabs or redistribution. Ergo early in the post imperial period, there is room for newcomers to settle in exchange for foederate services etc. After that, as you say, its eviction time normally at the end of a sword. Could we attempt to 'map' imperial possessions with possible Angles/Saxons population distributions in the late 4th/early 5th?

[Anton]

It would be great if we could map it but as far as I know no one is sure where the imperial estates were.  I'd love to see someone attempt it though.  Each fort had territory allocated to it and we have a good idea about that.

If we recall Cunedda he supports a court and is wealthy enough to endow his poet with a farm and slaves to run it.  He does not seem to be a Bryneichian tribesman as far as I can see. He fights alongside the men of Bryneich rather than as a man of Bryneich.  I'd guess because he performs a military function that he has been allocated former military land.

I also find myself thinking about the relative strength of the civates, strong ones must have been better placed than weaker ones. I also wonder about the Colonia are we to assume that because the military has been locally recruited British for sometime that the ordo of the Colonia were too?

More questions than answers but I feel some progress is being made in understanding what happened.

[Imperial Dave]

agreed and in my head I can see a pattern emerging with civitas/tribal areas 'regaining' control of land that is used for allotment to favoured individuals, groups or 'mercenaries' in return for service. This then solidifies the 'identity' or polity of the post roman areas. Some areas have largish populations of 'foreign' (fresh imported or 1st/2nd/3rd generation naturalised British) people which gradually achieve primacy through martial exploits (in the heroic age, the strongest leaders will win out politically). This then transmutes into 'settled' population areas with a tribal/ethnic identity and we progress through the 7th and into the 8th C. As this solidification occurs, stronger leaders being overkings of others and thus 'kingdoms' come into focus more

[Anton]

That does seem to be a viable view of the process from what we know.  It would be nice to try and follow it as it developed but I'm not sure we have enough yet.

[Imperial Dave]

absolutely. What I am trying to frame in my head is the 'Arthur' question and how the 'Saxon' wars fit into this picture. I am not convinced of an overlord in the 6th C trying to hold back the tide of heathens from the dying light of a post roman imperial bastion....

Using Gildas can be misleading but he does concentrate on the Western/Highland areas in general. Do we have a N/S E/W split of affairs and polities emerging? The Eastern/Southern areas/polities being the most beligerent as land runs out for expansion and allotment to followers prompting conflict. 'Saxons' push towards the west (be they Angles/Saxons/converted British/conglomerate areas) and are met by piecemeal civitas polities. Does this lead to an attempt at an overlord or leader to combat (finally) a perceived encroachment on all areas?

[Jim Webster]

It would be great if we could map it but as far as I know no one is sure where the imperial estates were.  I'd love to see someone attempt it though. 

you're probably right, http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/06n2a1.pdf mentions some

Jim

[Anton]

That's an interesting essay Jim, lots of historians suspect they have identified imperial estates but we seem to have no full picture.

I think if we were we to take Britannia Prima, Britannia Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis and Flavia Caesariensis separately, and in turn, we might find ourselves somewhere useful when we looked at the totality of the information we had assembled.

It would be a big undertaking though best done in bite sized chunks as it were..

I've omitted Valentia because there is no consensus as to where it was.

[Imperial Dave]

nice find Jim and I agree re looking at the province approach Stephen. Valentia is a thorny issue and I agree is best left out of the equation. Re the provinces, back to lowland/highland viewpoints i think

[aligern]

Y,ou should play in three other things as well;
1) the effect of plagues as we know they were severe and very likely did result in depopulation.
2) Depopulation due to the ragging effect of raids by Picts and Scots in particular. The loss of the Roman defensive system may well have resulted in the withdrawal of settlement to more defensible positions and thus the abandonment of fields too far to walk to. This looks like what happened in Italy and Spain.
3) The effect of imperial withdrawal on taxes and the money economy. If you are a large landowner your operation produces enough food to ; feed you and your peasant farmers, sell to pay taxes and sell to the army to feed it. If towns decline and buy less grain and meat and if the army disappears then the need to plant land above subsistence declines...probably quite dramatically, because some of the above impacts are sudden. The spare land is only useful for settling people on who will use the product to feed themselves. With all these causes for the abandonment of land working I would not believe that after the utilisation of imperial lands all land belonged to someone. In theory it might be owned, but much would have no economic use if it had been abandoned due to pkague, raids or being uneconomic.

[Imperial Dave]

I think the land element is definitely worth drilling down on. If there is less requirement for useful/farmed land and/or revenues for local landowners falls, there is more panic about defensibility and therefore we have a situation whereby mercenaries are recruited in small groups on an ad hoc basis initially. More people coming in means more revenue for local magnates and also greater security ..... until the wolf turns

[Jim Webster]

I think the land element is definitely worth drilling down on. If there is less requirement for useful/farmed land and/or revenues for local landowners falls, there is more panic about defensibility and therefore we have a situation whereby mercenaries are recruited in small groups on an ad hoc basis initially. More people coming in means more revenue for local magnates and also greater security ..... until the wolf turns

looking at yields, the article talks about 15-20 bushels per acre, which is crudely 550 to 720 litres per acre
This is 390kg to 511kg per acre

Columella gives a yield of 4:1. So if we assume 400kg of grain per acre, 100 would have to be kept back for seed.
This is actually quite good and when the empire finally fell yields like this weren't achieved again until 1250. Once you hit yields at this level you release labour from the land to start industries which concentrate in towns. Here they doubtless pen smug letters decrying the ignorance of the peasantry.
Columella's figures are considered a bit low, but he is merely budging reasonable so that your landowner doesn't starve one year in four, and also he's dealing with the south of Europe where yields were higher at the time.

By 1000AD yields in the north of Europe struggled to hit 2:1 (that's two pounds of grain harvested for every pound sown)

[Imperial Dave]

I think the land element is definitely worth drilling down on. If there is less requirement for useful/farmed land and/or revenues for local landowners falls, there is more panic about defensibility and therefore we have a situation whereby mercenaries are recruited in small groups on an ad hoc basis initially. More people coming in means more revenue for local magnates and also greater security ..... until the wolf turns

looking at yields, the article talks about 15-20 bushels per acre, which is crudely 550 to 720 litres per acre
This is 390kg to 511kg per acre

Columella gives a yield of 4:1. So if we assume 400kg of grain per acre, 100 would have to be kept back for seed.
This is actually quite good and when the empire finally fell yields like this weren't achieved again until 1250. Once you hit yields at this level you release labour from the land to start industries which concentrate in towns. Here they doubtless pen smug letters decrying the ignorance of the peasantry.
Columella's figures are considered a bit low, but he is merely budging reasonable so that your landowner doesn't starve one year in four, and also he's dealing with the south of Europe where yields were higher at the time.

By 1000AD yields in the north of Europe struggled to hit 2:1 (that's two pounds of grain harvested for every pound sown)

here's an interesting notion then....

- empire falls
- management of imperial lands and large holdings drops away for several reasons
- population falls (disease, war, emigration, less food yield = starvation etc)
- large areas left fallow but available for newcomers
- less protection = increased raiding (for slaves, food, transportable booty)
- solution = locally arranged extra protection via small groups of mercenaries/tribal warriors plus families
- population grows
- yields not as high as under imperial times/control
- population pressures = raiding on neighbours and/or political instability (change of management)
- political and ethnic shifts based on the strongest elements within an area
- lowland Britain more used to producing better yields therefore suffers more from drop in yields (highland areas = less yield even under imperial control)
- lowland areas more susceptible to the above = more rapid change to A/S polities

its a bit simplistic but just having a stab based on people's thoughts and comments   

[Anton]

All good stuff.  The size and complexity of Villas should be a pointer to were big estates were.  We still wont know who owned them but its there that real economies of scale kick in and maximum surplus is achieved.

One thing comes to mind is do we actually know were the provincial boundaries were?

[Imperial Dave]

good question and one beyond me for the moment....! An alternative way of looking at it is how were the divisions of provinces decided upon:

- lowland/upland
- militarised/demilitarised
- revenue/output
- tribal boundaries
- and/or geographical/physical boundaries
- landed gentry