The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 192 • Catherine Hills
Figure 10.8 Saxon London. A Middle Saxon road in the foreground with an alley leading away from the
road, with the remnants of timber buildings on either side of the alley, found during excavations at the
Royal Opera House.
Source: Museum of London Archaeology Service
THE WIDER SETTING
After the end of Roman rule, Britain is sometimes seen as having been set adrift, cut off from
Europe. This is a mistake. It would be better to see it instead as belonging to interrelated maritime
zones, centred on the North and Irish Seas, each with many lines of contact to the rest of Europe
and beyond. In the east, around the North Sea, contact with north Germany and Scandinavia was
continuous and intense. Germanic settlement in the fifth and sixth centuries and Viking raids and
settlement in the ninth and tenth were followed by a brief period when England was part of a
Danish empire. Contact with western Europe and the Mediterranean world never entirely ceased,
and was dramatically renewed in the seventh century with the Christian mission. At the end of
the period, England became, as it was to remain throughout the Middle Ages, closely connected
to the politics of western Europe, especially to the area that was to become France.
The western parts of Britain always retained some level of communication with western
France and the Mediterranean, manifested partly by the distribution of imported pottery and
maintained through the Church. The far north was, like England, subject to Viking raids and
settlement that left parts of Scotland under Norse control for several centuries.
The medieval kingdoms of Britain, England, Scotland and Wales were already clearly defined
by the time of the Norman Conquest. England by then was a centralized state with a complex
system of government and administration. This was taken over and strengthened by the Normans.
Just as the imposition of castles destroyed houses and changed parts of the plans of Anglo-Saxon