From Roman Civitas To Anglosaxon Shire Unknown by Unknown 9781785709852, 1785709852 instant download after payment.

This book is the culmination of the author's lifelong interest in the Roman to medieval transition in England and in the analysis of the historic landscape of Wessex. It begins with a focused, referenced, and critical exploration of the thorny, but crucial, issues of post-Roman personal and group identity, employing linguistic, historical, archaeological, and toponymical evidence. A series of integrated studies seeks to elucidate changes in the territorial organization of the Wessex landscape, from Somerset to Hampshire, from the Roman period to the emergence of the historic counties. It is shown that the defined limits of the self-governed Roman civitates had a significant impact upon subsequent historical developments, not least on the early English settlements. In eastern Wessex - Berkshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire the Roman boundaries broke down piecemeal, but continued to influence political developments and patterns of settlement into the seventh century. It is argued that those three counties acquired their medieval and later form only at the time of the Viking wars. In western Wessex, Dorset and Somerset, by contrast, the core of the territories of both the southern and northern Durotriges in the Roman period has persisted until the present day. The book also includes a re-examination of the formation and extent of the kingdom of the Jutes in southern Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. The chronology, history and archaeology of the fifth century, set alongside the many changes of the later fourth century, and vital to our understanding of the momentous events of that time as Saxon control took hold in the east, are here the subject of a separate, detailed study. Place-names across Wessex with a bearing on the presence of the Britons, and the changing nature and distribution of archaeological sites in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, are discussed in their historical context.
About the Author: Bruce Eagles was on the staff of the Salisbury field office of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments from 1964 to 1988, and subsequently served in their National Monuments Record. He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Bournemouth University. His publications include his Doctoral study, The Anglo-Saxon Settlement of Humberside (1979) and, with the late F. K. Annable, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Blacknall Field, Pewsey, Wiltshire (2010), as well as numerous papers, many with particular reference to the Early Anglo-Saxon period, in books and academic journals.