The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain AD 450-650
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The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain AD 450-650

Beneath the Tribal Hidage

Sue Harrington, Martin Welch, Martin Welch

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The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain AD 450-650

Beneath the Tribal Hidage

Sue Harrington, Martin Welch, Martin Welch

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The Tribal Hidage, attributed to the 7th century, records the named groups and polities of early Anglo-Saxon England and the taxation tribute due from their lands and surpluses. Whilst providing some indication of relative wealth and its distribution, rather little can be deduced from the Hidage concerning the underlying economic and social realities of the communities documented. Sue Harrington and the late Martin Welch have adopted a new approach to these issues, based on archaeological information from 12, 000 burials and 28, 000 objects of the period AD 450–650. The nature, distribution and spatial relationships of settlement and burial evidence are examined over time against a background of the productive capabilities of the environment in which they are set, the availability of raw materials, evidence for metalworking and other industrial/craft activities, and communication and trade routes. This has enabled the identification of central areas of wealth that influenced places around them. Key within this period was the influence of the Franks who may have driven economic exploitation by building on the pre-existing Roman infrastructure of the south-east. Frankish material culture was as widespread as that of the Kentish people, whose wealth is evident in many well-furnished graves, but more nuanced approaches to wealth distribution are apparent further to the West, perhaps due to ongoing interaction with communities who maintained an essentially 'Romano-British' way of life.

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Publisher
Oxbow Books
Year
2014
ISBN
9781782976134
1. The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain: Evidence and Questions
Introduction
That there were Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in southern and eastern Britain by the end of the sixth century is taken generally as a given, but one that is, in the main, derived from readings of documentary sources. Named kings or regional overlords such as Ælle of the South Saxons, Æthelbert of Kent and Ine of Wessex, variously dated to the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, hint at a hierarchical social structure, wherein the payment of tax or tribute to support a dynastic elite was long embedded. How kingdoms came into being, and what was their starting point before the advent of contemporary historic records, is within the province of archaeology to elucidate, given the frequency and wealth of the funerary material of the period. But, should, and can, archaeology embrace documentary sources to determine its research agenda for this period? As the Tribal Hidage document seems to offer, by the seventh century at least there were named groupings of peoples – the Limenwara, Cantwarena, Supsexena, Meonware and so on – who owed taxation to the, by then dominant, kingdom of Mercia. Thus each, one must suppose, was situated within a landscape with varying degrees of wealth-making potential that supported the payment of the tax. But what underlies this documentary inscription? Does the archaeological record chart in reality an organic growth of migrating Germanic peoples and Romano-British rural populations into fully-fledged kingdoms of bounded territories by the seventh century?
The narrative of bottom up settlement of a deserted landscape by Germanic migrants, making rational choices about optimal locations and subsequent expansion into more marginal lands, has had its followers in the past. The more vigorous, and romantic, top down replacement of local Roman elites by war bands of adventurers and mercenaries, inhabiting an ongoing and productive landscape structure, with communities re-using prehistoric monuments to legitimise their presence, too has many adherents. If we accept Gildas’ narrative (Chapter 23) on the settlement of Saxons on the east side of the island of Britain and the hiring of Saxon mercenaries by British rulers to combat threat of Pictish raiders, then military sites should be the earliest visible. Intersperse these narratives with an acculturated Romano-British population continuing a subsistence lifestyle in rural locations, and the permutations become yet more intricate. Many other observations and sub-narratives have been woven into this framework, according, it might be said, to the prevailing contingent research agendas and need not be re-iterated in detail here.
Such is the history of much landscape archaeology in Britain that until recently it has not been the norm to extend researches beyond those of traditional county boundaries, each one producing its own narrative according to the material found within its borders. However, a region-wide analysis, such as that presented in this volume acknowledges the strong possibility of intra-regional dissimilarity in the rationales for and manifestations of the Germanic presence in southern Britain (see Figures 1 and 2 for an overview of the study region). This observation forces us to accept that local variations do not of necessity lend themselves to melding into an overarching and clearly definable regional framework of settlement and socio-economic patterning over time. At best we can search for common themes, if not the clear strategies knowingly derived from a particular cultural impetus, that any research programme might hope to elucidate. To this end, the focus in this volume is predominantly on the workings of the initial evidence for the Germanic presence in the fifth century and on to the end of the sixth century, with some venturings into the mid-seventh, thereafter transitional themes come to the fore. The Mid Saxon Shuffle – the shift in settlement patterning towards different topographical features noted elsewhere for the seventh century and later – may, from this basis, eventually become more explicable but is not dealt with here.
There are dangers, inherent in the research process, of falling into a pre-determined archaeological template for economic evolution and the seemingly inevitable trajectory towards hierarchical polities and kingship. In most general terms this narrative has been expressed as sequential phases, commencing with the Migration Period, noting the earliest presences of Germanic material, blending into the Frankish Phase, wherein material provenances from Francia is found in burial contexts, with the Final Phase of furnished burial denoting the waning of non-Christian burial customs and the transfer to more identifiable forms of Christian burial – with fuzzy chronological and spatial boundaries between each element. We must reflect on how we characterise and conceptualise the wealth of the Anglo-Saxon peoples and what we understand the archaeological record to represent (and ultimately electing not to refer explicitly to that sequential phasing as overtly meaningful). The methodological challenge, then, was one of paring down that record to its component parts and reconstituting it to allow us to interrogate it in a cross-comparable manner, in order to transcend the history of its generation through antiquarian to modern field unit excavations. It is fundamental that we should not engage with the archaeological record without making explicit the grounding principles on which the theory and research methods were based. Central was the assertion that state formation need not of necessity have come about through the top-down activities of elites imposing themselves onto a passive populace. Rather, it was proposed to explore the view that the processes evident by the late sixth century were ones resultant from the bottom-up activities of a populace forming itself into a series of hierarchical units, dependent on the economic attributes and potential of their settled landscapes. The findings of the Leverhulme Trust funded Beyond the Tribal Hidage project (2006–9), on which this text is based, support conclusions along a middle road between these two approaches.
Figure 1. The study region with modern counties
The kingdoms in the written sources (text by Martin Welch, edited by Barbara Yorke)
The three kingdoms selected for a detailed examination of their archaeological record appear to have contrasting characteristics when they emerge into the full historical record in the seventh century AD, yet they are within the same geographical region and are contiguous (see Figure 2). The kingdom of the South Saxons (Sussex) represents a standard, medium-sized political unit, which subsequently became a sub-unit (a shire or county) of a much larger kingdom during the eighth century. This was also the fate of Kent in the eighth century. Here, we begin with a small kingdom of similar size to Sussex centred on the east half of the present county of Kent, which had expanded to the west before the 590s. Finally, the kingdom of the West Saxons (Wessex) emerges as a large political entity by the 680s, as a result of the amalgamation and conquest of several smaller political units, such as the kingdom of the Jutes in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. After 825, the West Saxon kingdom incorporated Sussex, Surrey and Kent into a still further enlarged kingdom. Also covered in the survey is the county of Surrey – a ‘province’ that falls between the West Saxon and Kentish spheres of influence in the seventh century, although coming under Mercian control for part of the seventh and most of the eighth century as well. It appears not to have achieved any independent status. Whilst the Tribal Hidage document provided some parameters and key questions for the research project, it is crucial to also take a critical appraisal of what the range of documentary sources have to offer on the issues that are explored primarily through the archaeological data.
Figure 2. The study region in the major Anglo-Saxon areas and the British West
The written sources provide key information about the political situation in southern Britain from the seventh century onwards, but leave many questions unanswered, particularly concerning how that system came into existence and how its elites were supported. Written records were, of course, one consequence of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon provinces that largely occurred in the seventh century. Records that purport to record earlier ‘events’ such as the fifth- and sixth-century annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are later constructs and rarely constitute reliable evidence. The Chronicle annals attempt to historicize West Saxon foundation legends, and the apparent arrival of their founders in the Solent in the fifth century contradicts the more reliable evidence in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica that their royal house originated in the Gewissan province of the upper Thames valley (Sims-Williams 1983; Yorke 1989). Nevertheless some of the documents have implications that reach back into the sixth century and may help with the understanding of developments in that period.
The Historica Ecclesiastica of Bede, completed in 731, and the enigmatic Tribal Hidage (that may have had its origins in seventh-century tribute list of a Northumbrian or Mercian overlord) indicate that the major political units of the south-east by c.600 were Kent (15,000 hides), the East Saxons (7000 hides), the South Saxons (7000 hides), the West Saxons and (Isle of) Wight (600 hides), all of which are recorded by Bede or in early charters as being controlled by kings (Campbell 1986, 85–98; Dumville 1989). The earliest explicit reference to kingship in the region is from The Ten Books of History of Gregory of Tours (IX, 26) in the context of the marriage of Bertha, daughter of the Frankish king Charibert, ‘to the son of a certain king in Kent’. We know from Bede that her husband was Æthelbert, son of Irminric, and can estimate that the marriage took place c.580 and that Æthelbert’s accession had occurred by 593 at the latest (Brooks 1989). Bede (HE II, 5) also knew a tradition that Æthelbert was the third great overlord in southern England, his two predecessors being Ælle, king of the South Saxons and Ceawlin, king of the West Saxons (known until the late seventh century as the Gewisse). In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Ælle’s activities are placed between 477 and 491, but these dates are not reliable, and likely to be ninth-century calculations. In reality Ælle is likely to have reigned closer to the time of Ceawlin whose reign is probably to be dated, on the evidence of West Saxon regnal lists, to either 571–88 or 581–88 (Dumville 1985; Yorke 2009). Kingdom formation in south-eastern England therefore appears to be a feature of the second half of the sixth century, but the written sources do not explain the circumstances in which it occurred.
They do, however, reveal that territorial organisation was in fact more complex and that any boundaries were subject to frequent revision. All the kingdoms can be shown to have had subdivisions within them, often referred to in Latin as regiones, and these have often been interpreted as being older than the kingdoms themselves and essential building-blocks in kingdom formation (Campbell 1986, 85–98; Bassett 1989). Particularly visible in the sources are such territories on the peripheries of kingdoms, which were liable to be transferred from one province to another in power struggles. For example, control of Surrey (suðre ge ‘southern province’) was contested between Kent, Mercia and Wessex for much of the seventh century (Blair 1989; Hines 2004). King Wulfhere of Mercia (658–675) placed the Isle of Wight and the district of the Meonware in Hampshire under the control of his ally Æthelwalh of the South Saxons (IV, 13), but they were subsequently incorporated into the expanding West Saxon kingdom by Caedwalla (685–88) (HE IV, 15–16). Kings, it would appear, were likely to have had core areas that were the centres of their power, and fluctuating overlordships of more peripheral areas that might in time become fully integrated parts of the kingdom. Sometimes it is possible to peer back from the seventh-century records to see comparable developments in the sixth century that may take us closer to the origins of kingdoms. A well-recorded subdivision into west and east Kent, with the latter the seat of a senior king and the former that of a junior partner, may well have had its origin in the annexation of a former separate territory in west Kent in the later sixth century (Yorke 1983; Brooks 1989).
How such core and peripheral areas appear in the archaeological record is obviously of great potential interest. As is well known, the division of southern England into Saxon and Jutish areas is recorded in Bede’s history (HE I, 15) and seems to have had a corresponding archaeological signature in the late fifth and much of the sixth centuries (Hines 1994). On this basis, west Kent would appear to have been originally a Saxon cultural area and this gives valuable context to its incorporation into Kent that Bede describes as having a separate Jutish identity (Brookes and Harrington 2010). Also described as Jutish are the Isle of Wight and part of the area of mainland Hampshire immediately opposite (HE I, 15; IV, 16; Yorke 1989). Both these areas are given their own origin legends in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The latter included the Meonware; the suffix -ware ‘inhabitants’ is found used for comparable subdivisions in Kent (Brooks 1989). Comparison of archaeological evidence from Kent and the Isle of Wight/Hampshire mainland may therefore tell us much about the reality behind a shared Jutish identity, and whether it was the result of movement of population or, as one might suspect, an alliance that had its in origin in the shadowy politics of the sixth century. Even less well understood is the implication of a Saxon confederation that might be presumed to lie behind the Saxon identity claimed in other areas of southern England, and whose reality appears to be supported by the early development of a distinctive Saxon dialect that implies frequent association (Hines 1994).
The written sources for the seventh century do highlight one factor to explain change in the sixth and seventh centuries, namely links with Francia. As Bede was primarily concerned with recording processes of conversion and church foundation that is the aspect of the Frankish connection to which he gives most attention. The first bishop he recorded working among the southern Anglo-Saxons was the Frank Liudhard who accompanied Bertha to the Kentish court (HE I, 25). Other Frankish clerics were active in southern England, including Agilbert and his nephew Leuthere who were both bishops of the West Saxons, whilst Wine, another West Saxon bishop but of Anglo-Saxon origin, had trained in Francia (Campbell 1986, 49–67; Blair 2005, 39–43). The many journeys between southern England and Francia recorded for church members can be taken as representative of a much broader and well-established traffic. In the same way emulation of Frankish family monasteries, and particularly the tendency for these to be run by princesses and other high status women, may be an indication of a wider and longer-rooted Frankish influence on elite life. The marriage of Æthelbert and Bertha not only helps to take such influences back into the sixth century, but suggests their political nature as well. Ian Wood has argued from a variety of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon sources for Frankish overlordship in parts of southern England in the sixth century, possibly stimulated by the desire to control land both sides of the English Channel and reduce the threat of piratical attacks (Wood 1990; 1992). It is possible that the first southern overlords in Bede’s II, 5 list were Frankish agents – or, alternatively, rulers who led resistance to Frankish attempts at dominance (Yorke 2009). Another possible interpretation would be to see them as leaders of the Saxon confederation over which Æthelbert of Kent subsequently established control.
Unfortunately Bede is much less informative about Anglo-Saxon relations with another significant national group, namely the British. The impression he gives is that all inhabitants of the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had a common identity by the seventh century. However, a goodly percentage, presumably a majority, must ultimately have been descended from the inhabitants of Roman Britain (Higham 2007). The earliest Kentish laws also assume a common identity, and so perhaps that was the reality by 600 in the southeast. However, further west, in the former province of Britannia Prima, lay areas still under British control in 600, but that by 700 had largely become part of a greatly expanded Wessex (White 2007). Written sources enable us to see something of how this was done, but do not explain everything. Narrative sources concentrate on military victories, while ecclesiastical sources imply large-scale appropriation of British assets, including land and churches, and redistribution to Anglo-Saxon elites. Of particular interest are clauses in the laws of King Ine of Wessex (688–725) recognising the rights of different British social classes, but in ways that made them inferior to their Anglo-Saxon equivalents (Attenborough 1922, 36–61). Such social apartheid may have provided a stimulus for the British to find ways of becoming Anglo-Saxons, or the means of further undermining their independence and separate identities (Woolf 2007).
One major question is whether the fate of the British in the south-west in the seventh century can provide a guide to what happened to their countrymen further east in the fifth and sixth centuries, or if the circumstances differed. Behind such concerns are also questions of the legacy from late Roman and British provinces to their Anglo-Saxon successors. The West Saxons may have carried out significant modifications, but these often seem to have taken place within a structure of estates and other territories they took over from British control in the seventh century (Hall 2000; Costen 2011). How much did the Anglo-Saxon polities of the fifth and sixth centuries inherit from the late Roman ...

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