Brit-Am Research Sources (19 September 2017, 28 Elul, 5777)
Contents:
1. Dr Caitlin R. Green. Were there Huns in Anglo-Saxon England? Some thoughts on Bede, Priscus & Attila
2. Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: Place-Names, Archaeology and Pre-Roman Trading Settlements in Eastern Kent?
3. Were there Africans Among the Early Anglo-Saxons?
4. List of British innovations and discoveries
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1. Dr Caitlin R. Green. Were there Huns in Anglo-Saxon England? Some thoughts on Bede, Priscus & Attila
http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/07/were-there-huns-in-anglo-saxon-england.html
Extracts:
Book I, chapter 15, of his Historia Ecclesiastica of 731, Bede famously wrote of the mid-fifth century that:
At that time the race of the Angles or Saxons, invited by Vortigern, came to Britain... They came from three very powerful Germanic tribes, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes.(1)
Whilst John Hines has rightly observed that 'the core of the Germanic culture that appears in East Anglia', forming the basis of the Anglo-Saxon material culture there, points towards 'the Anglian homelands... primarily in what is now Schleswig-Holstein', he also argues that the archaeology of this region exhibits additional strong cultural links with western Scandinavia right up to Sogn og Fjordan, Norway, which are most credibly explained via a degree of immigration from that area too in the post-Roman period.(3) Equally, Vera Evison once made the case for a significant Frankish element in the archaeology of post-Roman Britain south of the Thames, and whilst this is no longer accepted in its entirety, there does seem to be sufficient material to suggest at least some Frankish immigration to this region in the 'early Anglo-Saxon' period. Less certainly, other archaeological material has also been cited as possible evidence for the presence of small numbers of Thuringians and even potentially Visigoths in post-Roman southern Britain.(4)
..... For example, not only has it been suggested that the East Anglian royal Wuffingas were potentially either of Swedish/Geatish origin or claimed to be so, but Barbara Yorke has also observed that the Kentish ruling dynasty, the Oiscingas, appears to have claimed Gothic descent for themselves. So, the name of their dynastic progenitor, Oisc, would seem to be cognate with that of the Ostrogothic demigods, the Ansis; the father of King AEthelberht of Kent, Irminric/Eormenric, bore the name of one of the most renowned early Gothic heroes; and Asser in the ninth-century seems to be aware that the Jutes claimed a Gothic identity when identifying King Alfred's maternal grandfather, who was apparently of the Jutish royal line of the Isle of Wight, as 'a Goth by race'.(5) Likewise, the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius reported that Britain was inhabited by Britons, Angles and Frisians, rather than Saxons or Jutes, when he wrote in the 550s, a statement that continues to be the source of some controversy.(6)
Finally, there are a variety of early English place-names that are thought to make reference to the presence of continental tribal-groups and identities in pre-Viking Britain other than those Bede lists. So, the Swaffhams in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire appear to be early names that mean 'the estate of the Suebi or Swabians' (an ethnonym that is incidentally also found in Suebdaeg, a personal name that occurs in the royal genealogy of the Anglian kings of Deira). Similarly, Elm in Cambridgeshire might potentially reflect a settlement of the continental Elvecones and Tealby in Lincolnshire is now generally agreed to have originally indicated a settlement of a group of Taifali, a continental tribal-grouping that has been variously identified as East Germanic, linked to the Goths, or even Asiatic in origin. Moreover, yet other place-names have been thought to be indicative of the presence of Burgundians, Danes and Thuringians in England during the early Anglo-Saxon period.(7)
...... from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, in this case Book V, chapter 9. In this chapter, Bede returns to the question of the tribal origins of the Anglo-Saxons during a discussion of the missionary activity of Egbert, offering what reads like a rather more nuanced and complex version of his earlier statements on the topic:
He knew that there were very many peoples in Germany from whom the Angles and the Saxons, who now live in Britain, derive their origin... Now these people are the Frisians, Rugians, Danes, Huns, Old Saxons, and Boruhtware (Bructeri); there are also many other nations in the same land who are still practising heathen rites to whom the soldier of Christ proposed to go... (8)
....Thus James Campbell has argued forcibly that Bede was not saying that the list in HE V.9 was made up of peoples who lived in Germany that Egbert wished to convert; rather, he states that 'the sense of the Latin is that these were the peoples from whom the Anglo-Saxons living in Britain were derived.' It may be surprising or even inconvenient, 'but it is what he [Bede] says; and he does not generally write carelessly.' In other words, Campbell considers that Bede, a notoriously careful writer and historian, clearly believed that the Anglo-Saxons of his day derived somehow from the peoples that he listed, and that these peoples included the Huns.(10)
Priscus:AD 448/9.
# When we expressed amazement at the unreasonableness of the barbarian, Romulus, an ambassador of long experience, replied that his very great good fortune and the power which it had given him had made him so arrogant that he would not entertain just proposals unless he thought that they were to his advantage. No previous ruler of Scythia or of any other land had ever achieved so much in so short a time. He ruled the islands of the Ocean and, in addition to the whole of Scythia, forced the Romans to pay tribute. He was aiming at more than his present achievements and, in order to increase his empire further, he now wanted to attack the Persians.(14) #
First, Orosius, St Augustine, and other writers of Late Antiquity are clear that the British Isles were considered among the 'islands of the Ocean', and Britain was moreover by far the best known and most significant of these islands to the Roman world, having been a Roman province for several hundred years through until the early fifth century. Indeed, the probably fourth-century Tabula Peutingeriana, an important Late Roman itinerary map, shows little interest in or knowledge of lands lying beyond the northern Roman borders in Europe, whilst the Ocean is depicted as encircling the known world, there are no islands shown to the north of Europe at all, only to the west, where the British Isles and probably originally Thule were depicted.(16) In light of all of this, it might well be expected that the Western Roman ambassador, Romulus, would have offered a clarification of his reference to 'islands of the Ocean' if Britain and its associated islands were not meant, and the fact that he does not is something that is at the very least worth noting. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it is clear that Romulus was making a forceful point in his remarks to the Eastern Roman delegation about how exceptional Attila's achievements had been, no previous ruler of Scythia (Central Eurasia) had ever achieved so much as Attila, who had managed to both establish dominion over 'the islands of the Ocean' and force the Romans to pay him tribute! ....
It is clear from the archaeological evidence that 'Anglo-Saxon' groups were established in parts of eastern Britain within the first half of the fifth century, probably by the 430s, and it is furthermore often thought that at least parts of southern Britain were under the direct control of 'Saxon' immigrants from c. 441 on the basis of the Gallic Chronicle of 452.(17) As such, any concerns over a possible conflict between the date by which Attila is said to have possessed rule over the 'islands of the Ocean' in Priscus, by c. 448, and the date of the Adventus Saxonum can be easily disposed of.
Second, Lotte Hedeager has recently argued at length that a variety of archaeological and literary evidence indicates that the main 'Anglo-Saxon' homelands of northern Germany and southern Scandinavia were actually conquered and made a part of the Hunnic Empire during the first half of the fifth century, with a Hunnic presence maintained in this region for a period.
On the archaeological front, for example, it can be observed that the small number of gold open-ended earrings that Hedeager identifies as Hunnic in origin and indicative of the presence of Huns in Denmark are not confined to this part of north-western Europe alone. At least one gold earring of a very similar design and size is known from Britain too, and if Hedeager's identification of such items as Hunnic is upheld for the Danish examples, then there seems no obvious a priori reason why it should not be applied to any British examples too.(19) Likewise, a Dyerkan-type cicada brooch that was found in Suffolk and now housed in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, may be of some potential interest in the present context, given that this type of dress-accessory is believed to have its origins in the early to mid-fifth century and is found primarily in the Middle Danube, the Black Sea area and the Northern Caucasus.(20)
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2. Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: Place-Names, Archaeology and Pre-Roman Trading Settlements in Eastern Kent?
http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/thanet-tanit-and-the-phoenicians.html
there does in fact appear to be a reasonable outline case to be made for Thanet having been the site of a pre-Roman coastal trading settlement that was used by Phoenician traders from Cadiz and Carthage and named by them after their home island at Cadiz, 'Y TNT, the 'Isle (of) Tanit', as Vennemann suggests. The linguistic case for a derivation of the place-name Thanet from 'Y TNT appears to be credible; there is a linguistic context for the derivation in terms of a small number of other difficult and inexplicable coastal names from around Britain that similarly might be appropriately explained via Proto-Semitic/Punic roots; there are hints in the literary sources of Phoenician/Carthaginian contact with pre-Roman Britain, involving trade and exploration; and there is now a substantial corpus of Carthaginian coins known from Britain that seem to be largely focussed around key coastal and riverine sites, with by far the greatest concentration of this material being found in the vicinity of Thanet itself.
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3. Were there Africans Among the Early Anglo-Saxons?
What did the Anglo-Saxons look like?
https://www.quora.com/unanswered/What-did-the-Anglo-Saxons-look-like-Eric-butler
Erika Butler
Well, at least one study noted the Anglo-Saxons had some unusual features that you don't normally see in Europeans, like mild alveolar prognathism (where the lower part of the face is further front than the upper part) as well as edge-to-edge bite (where the tips of the upper and lower teeth all meet when you chomp down):
ALVEOLAR AND FACIAL PROGNATHISM By F. G. PARSONS
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1249194/pdf/janat00554-0167.pdf
Compared to Austrlian Aborigines and African Negroes.
Based on this point alone could indicate some African input.
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4. List of British innovations and discoveries
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_innovations_and_discoveries