Introduction This paper offers a personal perspective on the key research themes relating to the Northern Britons, who are the most obscure inhabitants of Dark Age Scotland. It includes an overview of the fragmented historical legacy of the Britons, which is essential for appreciating their cultural contribution to the making of Scotland and for identifying research priorities. A detailed review of archaeological investigations in the study area is beyond the scope of this paper, so emphasis is focused on recent work which relates to three broad areas identified for future research: secular settlement, church archaeology and political development. Who were the Northern Britons? The Britons of Strathclyde were descended from the native Iron Age peoples known as the Damnoni (Watson 1926, 15) and occupied the northern end of a continuum of British-speaking peoples which stretched throughout western Britain and as far as Brittany. To the north were their Celtic-speaking cousins the Picts and Gaels. Alone among all the Northern British kingdoms, the kingdom on the Clyde withstood the assault of the incoming Anglo-Saxons and it was the only one to retain its independence until the end of the Early Historic era (c. AD 1100). However, because the Britons do not figure prominently in the mainstream historical narrative of Scotland and because of the challenges of working with their historical legacy, their contribution has been marginalized. Despite this neglect, the Northern Britons played an important role in the shaping of the west of Scotland and contributed significantly to the social and political developments from post-Roman times to the twelfth century (Driscoll 2002a) (fig.1). Although it has become conventional to refer to the centuries between the Romans and the Anglo-Normans as the Early Historic era, it is really proto-historic in that the evidence is not sufficient to construct a narrative history. The contemporary historical notices of the Northern Britons are meagre, consisting of terse references to battles and sieges – preserved in external sources only when these events impinged upon their neighbours. We also have incomplete genealogies of kings and obscure literary references which survive in later medieval texts with complex histories of transmission. Consequently it is not possible construct a coherent narrative until the twelfth century, when new institutions, principally Glasgow Cathedral, began to generate more documents. The challenge of generating such a narrative for the Northern Britons can be appreciated in Tim Clarkson’s The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland (2010), which provides a comprehensive survey of the historical evidence. In Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, Norman Davies provides a more conventional account, based on a more optimistic approach to the evidence (2011). At present there is also insufficient raw material to construct an archaeological narrative, not because of a lack of potential evidence, but because there has been limited excavation and many sites of this period have a low visibility in urbanized west central Scotland. A few major secular sites can be identified, but of these only Dumbarton has been excavated. Lesser sites have been discovered through developer-funded excavations in recent years, but they provide limited insights into the wider social scene. Church archaeology is in a similar situation. A few major ecclesiastical sites can be identified, such as Govan and Paisley, but they have received limited archaeological attention, while the host of minor church sites that can be identified have seen even less archaeological activity. Here we should expect that future discoveries will enhance this picture. The early medieval sculpture of the British is one bright spot: it is readily accessible and has a proven interpretative value. However, its potential has been scarcely touched upon and it is arguably the most underdeveloped historical resource of the Britons. With few exceptions, such as the Govan sarcophagus, these monuments have not been recorded to modern standards and none have received the sort of detailed attention that has revolutionized Pictish studies (Driscoll et al. 2011). Such work that has been done confirms that these early Christian monuments provide a unique record of artistic development and religious devotion. They embody information about the growth of Christianity, the organization of the ecclesiastical landscape, local political relationships and longdistance connections. Place names, which can be critical for the identification of individual archaeological sites, represent another undeveloped historical resource. Not only can they act as signposts to specific ancient sites, but through systematic analysis they can reveal the settlement history of the district. The sequence of language change, from British to Gaelic to Scots, embedded in place names contains a record of social and political transformation that is otherwise inaccessible. Coupled with archaeological investigations, such place-name studies represent the main route to constructing a historical narrative for west central Scotland in the Early Historic era (Márkus 2012a and b). glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/about-glasgow-museums/publications/online-publications/Documents/06_NorthBritons.pdf
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 20:40:06 +0000
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