The Material Fall of Roman Britain, 300-525 CE

by Robin Fleming

Although lowland Britain in 300 CE had been as Roman as any province in the empire, in the generations on either side of 400, urban life, the money economy, and the functioning state collapsed. Many of the most quotidian and fundamental elements of Roman-style material culture ceased to be manufactured. Skills related to iron and copper smelting, wooden board and plank making, stone quarrying, commercial butchery, horticulture, and tanning largely disappeared, as did the knowledge standing behind the production of wheel-thrown, kiln-fired pottery and building in stone. No other period in Britain's prehistory or history witnessed the loss of so many classes of once-common skills and objects. While the reasons for this breakdown remain unclear, it is indisputable the collapse was foundational in the making of a new world we characterize as early medieval.

The standard explanation for the emergence of the new-style material culture found in lowland Britain by the last quarter of the fifth century is that foreign objects were brought in by "Anglo-Saxon" settlers. Marshalling a wealth of archaeological evidence, Robin Fleming argues instead that not only Continental immigrants, but also the people whose ancestors had long lived in Britain built this new material world together from the ashes of the old, forging an identity that their descendants would eventually come to think of as English. As with most identities, she cautions, this was one rooted in neither birth nor blood, but historically constructed, and advanced and maintained over the generations by the shared material culture and practices that developed during and after Rome's withdrawal from Britain.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval

320 pages, Hardcover

Published June 11, 2021

About the author

Robin Fleming is a medieval historian, professor of history at Boston College, and a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. She is an accomplished writer of numerous books that focus on the daily lives and lifestyles of the people of England around the time of the Roman Empire and early medieval times. By working hand-in-hand with archaeologists she has been able to piece together details of their lives that may otherwise be overlooked.

When asked if she becomes emotionally invested in her research, she replied:

"Absolutely. I feel it’s my job to let people speak who have been forgotten and ignored. . . . It’s really hard in my period to get beyond kings and bishops and really . . . important people. But there were all these other people who had lives that were just as important. I want to speak for them."


Fleming received her B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1977 and 1984.[2] She has been the recipient of several awards honoring her groundbreaking research, from the following institutions: The Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of advanced studies at Harvard University, the Bunting Institute for advanced study (1993–94), the Harvard Society of Fellows, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Reviews

[Peter Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Material Fall of Roman Britain 300-525, Robin Fleming, 2021, 191 pages – 303 with endnotes,


This is an excellent book and one that I'd recommend anyone interested in Early Anglo-Saxon England or questions of ethnic identity to read. In trying to make sense of the early Anglo-Saxon period, it is essential to have some knowledge of what came beforehand and the conditions under which communities lived and were formed and Fleming delivers this handsomely.


This is an extremely well researched book. It takes into account new discoveries linked to metal detecting and recent genetic research, which is a discipline that seems to now becoming of age (something which Fleming discusses in brief within these pages). The end result, to paraphrase an indifferent film of an ace book is: 'Usul, we have end-notes the likes of which god has never seen.' Over a third of this book is end notes, which is pleasingly thorough.


It's also a very pleasant book to read and I'd have had it finished sooner if there hadn't been a Bond film on telly the other night. However, the numbers of examples cited does mean that it gets a bit repetitive in places. In fairness, though, the sheer weight of evidence cited does assist Fleming in making her points.


Fleming examines material aspects of the economy and shows how the Roman system was like a finely made watch, which once one part breaks down, the rest soon goes out of action. To give but one example, handmade pottery used to be habitually described as Anglo-Saxon, however once the professional potters disappeared following the collapse of the Roman system, the Britons made pottery this way, too. She makes a very strong argument that for the 5th and much of the early 6th centuries, questions of ethnicity in England were irrelevant – these were a later invention that were backdated – as for both Britons and incomers a new material culture was being formed.


This is dealt with very well within chapter 8 (Who was buried in Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries?). This is a fantastic chapter and it makes some extremely valuable points about accoutrements that have been taken as either diagnostic of ethnicity or at the least suggestive. The headline news is that they aren't. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been keeping up with scholarship. Fleming begins with 20 or so continental examples of bodies with elongated skulls that were screaming Hunnish, but which DNA demonstrated were girls local to that area. She then moves on to cemeteries within Anglo-Saxon England and what the genetic evidence tells us about the graves containing no goods with a skeleton buried in a British manner and those with Anglo-Saxon grave goods buried in a Germanic manner. The evidence shows that neither of these were what would have been expected and she raises interesting points about the conclusions of previous digs whose methodology was predicated upon these assumptions.


The genetics suggests that there was a pattern of small scale immigration from many different areas over a long period and not a grand slam arrival of Anglo-Saxons en-mass. In the case of Mucking there were high status Britons and Saxons living and working together during its earliest period.


This book is one that I'm extremely glad that I read.

[Philip Chaston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent synopsis of the post-apocalyptic world of 5th century Britain. A return to subsistence farming and strong evidence of new links across the North Sea that fed into a culture, later coalescing into "Anglo-Saxon" that maps almost exactly onto the area of Roman influence. And an excellent survey of pots!

[Keith Schnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like probably most people, my main knowledge of this period in British history came from a Social Studies textbook that briefly noted that the Roman Empire had withdrawn from Britain in precisely 410 and then showed a map of the island with a series of broad arrows stretching West across the North Sea, depicting the arrival of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, with little further explanation. Robin Fleming, an historian dealing with a period known mainly by archaeology and by historical documents composed hundreds of years later by nascent English or proto-English societies, has produced an extremely well-cited summary of the period, which covers a lot of details about what exactly it looked like to the ordinary Briton when the Roman Empire gradually withdrew from their island, while also convincingly making the case for the more modern and nuanced view of what happened as new people and cultures entered post-Roman Britain from the Continent. This is that, rather than a singular invasion by well-defined barbarian nations composed of fierce warriors who imposed their "Anglo-Saxon" culture and way of life, the withdrawal of Roman forces caused a restructuring of trade and migration patterns, both across the North Sea and within Britain, that combined with the inevitable material adaptation to the loss of connection with the Roman economy to produce a different and more unique society than had existed before, equally different from those existing on the Continent. This is not a new thesis and is widely accepted, but it is well expressed here and will do a good job of updating and filling out understandings of the period that were previously colored by the 19th-Century view of a dominant "Anglo-Saxon" people colonizing England and forming the basis for the then-contemporary English nationalist worldview.

[M. Apple · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and detailed explanation of the material culture of the British landscape of the late Roman and early post Roman period. In agreeing with with recent archaeological evidence this book supports the case for rewriting the “Anglo-Saxon invasion” as a nation-building myth rather than actual fact.

The only issue I have with this book is that the text ends on page 190 and is then followed by another 100 pages of notes. If a book like this could be written for the average mass market reading public, along with lots more pictures, maybe we could finally convince the YouTubers to stop uploading cheesy cartoon videos of the “Anglo-Saxon-Jute invaders” that continue to perpetuate the myth.

[Caomhghain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was, for me, a new and very enlightening approach to Late Roman/Early Medieval England (it is almost entirely England). Ignoring the texts (of which there is a paucity) it concentrates on what the archaeology of everyday objects can tell us about the economic, cultural and 'ethnic' events of the period. Fascinating. For the first time I was given an appreciation of why the period became aceramic, stopped building in stone and changed dress styles. Quite brilliant.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would totally recommend this for a non-specialist who’s into the idea of post-roman Britain as slightly post-apocalyptic (which I am). It’s a zippy read packed with detail, and also makes me want to apologise for every time I’ve slagged off pottery assemblages as excruciatingly boring (and can someone give me some trial transcripts please). I’m sorry, pots! You’re actually very cool!

[Imogen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't been this obsessed with a book for ages. I don't usually put my work reading on Goodreads, but this didn't feel like work reading at all.

[Kate]

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