The End Of Roman Britain

[poliphilo]

Something I've never really understood is the collapse of Roman Britain. We had 400 years of towns and roads and baths and then the troops were withdrawn and everything went to pot. I was reading an article last night about the archaeology of the Roman fort at Binchester in County Durham. It wasn't abandoned when the soldiers left. Instead the local tradesmen moved in and dug pits all over the place and spread offal around. When the fabric started to crumble they patched it up with wood. Had they forgotten how to build in stone or did they prefer not to?

I find it hard to imagine what that transition must have been like. Were people traumatised by the sudden collapse of their world or did they relapse into tribal ways the way one might slip into a stinky old dressing-gown at the end of the day? Did anyone struggle to maintain standards of governance and civilisation? The evidence suggests not.

I've read fiction about the last days of Empire and fiction about the so-called Dark Ages, but I've never read fiction that deals with the generation of the collapse- the people who lived in towns one year and in ruins the next. Does anyone know of any?

Comments

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that depend on the proportion of Roman citizens to the rest of the population? And how meaningful was citizenship after the Empire withdrew?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Well, it all also depends on how one defines 'Roman'. Someone born in Rome? Someone legally possessed of Roman citizenship (as all free people in the empire were after AD 212)? Someone who chose to align themselves with Roman culture? (And, in the latter case, how static or universally-agreed-upon was 'Roman' culture anyway?) All of the same questions can be asked of 'British' identity, and that's before even starting to think about what happens when the two are brought together for an extended period.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that removing troops which had been paid by the Roman state from Britain certainly didn't mean that all signs of Roman influence in Britain suddenly vanished. But it isn't possible to identify the remaining influence in terms of readily distinguishable 'occupation' or 'settlers'. Everyone in Britain was Roman on at least some level by the time the troops left.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Depends how you define Britain - resistance was very strong in what is now called Wales - otherwise, I still think that it makes a huge difference whether people were officially Roman citizens or simply governed by Roman occupation

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I still think that it makes a huge difference whether people were officially Roman citizens or simply governed by Roman occupation

Well, that goes back to my original point, which is that I don't think this distinction was at all clear any more in Roman Britain by AD 410. There certainly wasn't a technical difference, given the ruling of AD 212 which I referred to above, and which made all free people Roman citizens. Other social and cultural gulfs, such as that between the wealthy elite and ordinary subsistence farmers, were far more significant.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree with that - and that might partly explain the question of repairs in wood - the traders who were using the place wouldn't be skilled in stonemasonry?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Indeed - and also obviously couldn't commission anyone else who was to make the repairs. As shewhomust puts it below, the whole system which developed and sustained skills of that sort had clearly collapsed.