Perhaps the most striking feature in the recent scholarship of fifth century Britain is that it relies so heavily on archaeological evidence, to the almost total exclusion of written sources. Indeed, most of the current studies on this period could almost be described as ‘archaeological histories’, where even the work of Gildas is rarely invoked.

Most of these works also draw very general conclusions—perfectly understandable when we consider the limitations of the discipline. While archaeology can delineate broad trends in everyday life, it is much less adept at giving us anything that resembles history. Archaeologists can gives us valuable insights into how a particular settlement developed over centuries, but are much less well-equipped to tell whether a particular battle occurred or whether a particular leader actually lived.

SOURCES AT WAR

It is thus a little unsettling when archaeology is said to somehow ‘disprove’ written sources. The archaeological record for this period is notoriously austere—hardly surprising when the written sources indicate that Britain was under barbarian attack for all but two of the first seven decades of the century. Very often the artifacts are so few (and gathered in such a serendipitous manner) that no statistician would concede that they constitute a statistically significant data set, or even that they had been gathered in a genuinely random fashion. Indeed, for those areas in which there is the most interest there is often no evidence at all.

For example, we have little if any evidence of the many battles reported for this time. One could argue from this that these battles simply did not occur—except that archaeological evidence for the battles fought by such well-attested continental warlords as Aetius and Aegidius is just as scarce. The simple truth is that the exact location of most ancient battlefields is conjectural at best.
 

PEACEFUL ASTRONOMER PRIEST KINGS

More to the point is the fact that even the most generalized conclusions based solely on archaeology have often turned out to be wrong. No one seriously considered that the Late Minoans were Greeks—until Ventris’ decipherment of the Linear B tablets. For decades nearly all Mayanists were convinced that the Maya had been ruled by peaceful astrologer priest-kings. It was only the full decipherment of their ancient script that revealed a peculiarly violent society, where wars between city-states were endemic.

But this is in no way an argument that written sources are somehow ‘better’ than any other means of investigating the past. Quite the contrary, the real lesson is that no particular category of evidence should be assumed a priori to be better or worse than any other. Each problem set is unique, and every possible means of investigation needs to be carefully and dispassionately evaluated as to its worth.

ALL-SOURCE

In the author’s view it is therefore a great mistake to set disciplines at war with one another. Archaeology can give us the unique insight that Gildas is wrong in his belief that the first Saxons in Britain were mercenaries hired sometime in the mid-fifth century. But in so doing this also helps us understand that he is getting his information about the Saxons from Saxon sources, most likely the same source that eventually would appear in two of the manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This in turn sheds new light on the reliability of that document. When an ‘all-source’ approach is used, as the author has attempted to do in Arthur and the Fall of Roman Britain, we can use the strengths of each discipline to the utmost, and so gain a far better understanding of this era.

And avoid peopling fifth century Britain with ‘peaceful astronomer priest-kings’.