Sublime

Barry Cunliffe

In 2007, the Celtic linguist John Koch met up with Barry Cunliffe, and told him that some scholars were describing some inscriptions on ancient stone stelae from southwestern Portugal as ‘Celtic’.

From around 4000 BC, thousands of small communities slowly evolved towards the strong tribal kingdoms that were eventually to confront the invading Roman army.

It seems, then, that the elusive ‘big men’ of the fifth century might be found in a number of characteristic places: at Roman forts with evidence for continued life; in some, perhaps many of the smaller towns with coherent hinterlands; on some villa estates; in the hillfort country of the west and north and along Continent-facing navigable rivers.

The thought that identities were under threat from real or perceived conflict is echoed in the apparent re-occupation of Iron Age hillforts – reminiscent of Gildas’s image of citizens fleeing into the mountains – particularly in the south-western counties of England and in Wales. Inside the massive Iron Age ramparts of South Cadbury in Somerset, th

At Congresbury, close to the opposite shore in Somerset, archaeology has revealed a re-occupation of the Iron Age hillfort by people who were able, like their counterparts at Dinas Powys, to import fine luxury goods from the eastern Mediterranean at a time when Britannia had fallen off Rome’s own radar.

Projecting the aisled halls and villas of the late Roman province, which tell of thriving rural lordship, into the century after, say, 450 is a tough ask. Archaeology has little to say of individuals like Vortigern, Hengest, Arthur or Ambrosius, although one might ascribe to them, as a governing class, the planning and execution of the linear earth