Unless forcibly coerced, people adopt new cultural values and material expressions of identity because they see them as socially advantageous. Warriors, pirates, refugees, economic migrants and family followings all have their place in any picture of the emerging native societies of Early Medieval Britain. A seemingly inescapable concentration on,

Wherever we come from, wherever we are, we are almost all uprooted now. The power of the 'global economy' demolishes borders and boundaries, traditions and cultures, languages and ways of seeing wherever it goes. Record numbers of people are on the move as a result, and as the population increases and climate change bites, those numbers will rise

Most of human history is irreparably lost to us. Our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for at least 200,000 years, but for most of that time we have next to no idea what was happening.