Evidence for regional trade in fifth- and sixth-century Britain has been hard won. Perishable commodities often defy detection by the archaeologist

The native British goddess Sulis, equated by Romans with their Minerva, was a popular cult figure whose steamy, healing hot springs prompted them for both offerings – coins and small gifts in great profusion – and supplications, like that of the outraged glove theft victim of Uley whose surviving plaque heads this chapter. No fewer than 130

Given the evidence for widespread violence between warbands in the dynastic inter-tribal wars of the late sixth and seventh centuries, when weapon burials were declining or absent, the direct association of weapons with professional careers as warriors begins to look a little shaky. Härke also points out that the sets of weapons found in most

His daughter Eanflæd was brought up, also in exile, as a Christian in the courts of Kent and then of Dagobert I in Paris.35 Her experience of sophisticated Frankish politics was to play a key role in the development of the Northumbrian state.

Excavations at West Hill, near Uley, in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, have revealed the history of a major shrine complex that thrived and evolved right through the prehistoric and Romano-British periods and beyond.30 First identified as a special place in the third millennium BCE, the wooded hill top here, once cleared of trees, became a focus

Rights to obtain and trade in the salt were jealously acquired and defended. Forty Domesday estates would later lay claim to a share of the profits accruing from its production or trade

Bede is quite clear that, even in his day, when the narrative of solid, virtuous Anglo-Saxon Christianity had become dominant, many contemporary settlements still bore more than one name in more than one language – often English and Brythonic; sometimes Irish or Latin.4 And then, any newcomer moving to an unfamiliar part of contemporary Britain or

Who, then, was in charge; and of what? Had Britannia seceded from the empire or been abandoned by it? Were the emerging lords of the fifth century descendants of ancient tribal families, now styled as magistrates or provincial officials? Were they arriviste entrepreneurs and industrialists; retired army officers, perhaps? Some, possibly, were

Whatever the complexities of Britannia’s terminal political history, the fragmentary remains that survive from these few manuscripts, remote in time and distance from events on the ground, are unsatisfactory grounds for telling the whole story. In themselves they paint a crude picture of conflict, insecurity, imperial impotence and internal