Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain

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The settlement of Great Britain by diverse Germanic peoples led to the development of a new Anglo-Saxon cultural identity and shared Germanic language, Old English, which was most closely related to Old Frisian on the other side of the North Sea. The first Germanic-speakers to settle permanently are likely to have been soldiers recruited by the Roman administration, possibly already in the fourth century or earlier. Significant, material cultural changes which show parallels with northern Germany, as well as a breakdown of the Roman economy, become apparent in the archaeological record in the early fifth century, after the end of Roman rule in Britain.

According to the account of Gildas, written some generations later, in the fifth century one particular pagan "Saxon" group which caused major conflict was invited by the Romano-British leadership to help defend against raids from the Picts and Scots, at some point after the withdrawal of the regular Roman military. After a long war, he reported that the Romano-British recovered control of most of Britain, and peace was restored. Gildas, writing in the 6th century, noted that the tyrants who ruled Britain, accustomed to peace, fought each other now instead of foreigners. He does not mention any ongoing warfare between Saxon and Briton polities, but major cultural and economic changes were nevertheless occurring, involving a large part of the population. No other written records survive until much later. By the time of Bede, more than a century after Gildas, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which had now converted Christianity, had come dominate most of what is now modern England. Although Bede and other Anglo-Saxon authors believed that there had been a conquest of one nation over the other, at least some of these kingdoms may have originally involved Romano-British dynasts, and the relationships between later English dynasts and Saxon forces of the type described by Gildas is unclear.

Many questions remain about the scale, timing and nature of the settlements, and also about what happened to the previous residents of what is now England. The available evidence includes archaeological and genetic information, and the scant medieval written record. The few literary sources such as Gildas and Bede tell of a period of hostility between incomers and natives. They describe violence, destruction, massacre, and the flight of both Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon populations. The Old English language seems to have become dominant rather quickly in many areas because British Celtic languages had very little impact on Old English vocabulary. This suggests that a large number of Germanic-speakers appeared relatively suddenly. On the basis of such evidence it has even been argued that large parts of what is now England were cleared of prior inhabitants. However, a view that gained support in the late 20th century suggests that the migration involved relatively few individuals, possibly centred on a warrior elite, who popularized a non-Roman identity after the downfall of Roman institutions. Such settlers may even have already been prominent before the end of Roman rule. This hypothesis suggests a largescale acculturation of natives to the incoming language and material culture. In support of this, archaeologists have found that, despite evidence of violent disruption, settlement patterns and land use show many continuities with the Romano-British past, despite profound changes in material culture.^[1]

A major genetic study in 2022 which used DNA samples from different periods and regions estimated that the Anglo-Saxons contributed about 40% of the ancestry of modern English ancestry. The authors argue that this is "strong evidence of large-scale early medieval migration across the North Sea zone", involving both men and women, which began in the Roman era, increased rapidly after the end of that era, and continued until the 8th century. There was also strong evidence of rapid acculturation, with early medieval individuals of both local or migrant ancestry being buried near in each other in the same new ways.^[2]