Memories of migration? The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ burial costume of the fifth century AD

James M Harland

doi:10.15184/aqy.2019.60

Abstract

Highlights

Ethnic identity is a situational construct that fashions communities through real and fictive stories and memories
Subsequent research has significantly changed our understanding of the mechanisms whereby people came across the North Sea from Germania Magna and Scandinavia in the fourth to sixth centuries AD to settle in Britain, bringing with them new forms of material culture. These studies reject the notion that the new material culture associated with these migrations passively reflects the importation of static, distinct and fixed ethnic groups. They instead propose that this new material culture was used by the communities of early medieval Britain to construct new ethnicities, using real and imagined memories of migration and allusions to ‘Germanic’ cultural myths—as later recorded by the eighth-century historian Bede under the names ‘Angle’, ‘Saxon’ and ‘Jute’ (Colgrave & Mynors 1969; Hakenbeck 2011; Gerrard 2013; Hills 2015; Martin 2015)
Ethnic identity cannot be demonstrated through purely archaeological means (Brather 2004; Halsall 2011)

Summary

Introduction

Ethnic identity is a situational construct that fashions communities through real and fictive stories and memories. Such early doubts depended largely upon the absence of evidence for ‘Germanic’ material culture, rather than a questioning of the ethnic categories proposed. They instead propose that this new material culture was used by the communities of early medieval Britain (and the former Western Roman Empire) to construct new ethnicities, using real and imagined memories of migration and allusions to ‘Germanic’ cultural myths—as later recorded by the eighth-century historian Bede under the names ‘Angle’, ‘Saxon’ and ‘Jute’ (Colgrave & Mynors 1969; Hakenbeck 2011; Gerrard 2013; Hills 2015; Martin 2015).

Results

Conclusion