Romanization

The city was fully designed and structured around the central forum, which includes baths, basilicas, shops, etc.

This time the population was undeniably Roman veterans, ensuring a local, loyal, Romanized base.

Archaeologists have even discovered a sacred fountain with a ritual well that was used to sanctify the new city with They tossed in, apparently, early harvests and fine pottery.

Love for you to break that down for me a little bit, Jackie, because that's certainly not something I could talk about beyond regurgitating what I just read.

In the year 407, the Emperor Constantine III led the last few Roman troops from these islands.

The empire that had constructed this remarkable wall had crumbled in Britain.

Now, history books tell us that when the Romans pulled out, they took with them all vestiges of civilization.

and effectively turned out the light.

The country then plunged into centuries of cultural and economic chaos, known as the Dark Ages.

Now, all of this would be fine were it not complete rubbish.

As an archaeologist, I've spent my career exploring Britain's ancient past, and I now believe we've misunderstood the earliest centuries of this country's history.

Instead of a nation crushed and then created by invaders, I've found a strong society with a unique and lasting culture.

By imperial times, military service was a full-time career.

The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.

Through his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion.

The army had about three hundred thousand soldiers in the first century and under four hundred thousand in the second, significantly smaller than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories.

was the ruler of Northwest Wales, the Kingdom of Gwynedd, who was defeated by the King of England, the medieval King of England, in 1282.

Nobody's claiming that the degree of residual Romanization, if you will, that we see in the 5th century and into the 6th century survives beyond the 7th century.

But the political identity of of Western Britons survives much longer than that.

And the memory of their connection to Roman Britain survives as well.

The Saxons contrasted their past condition, their rude huts on the far-off shore, their precarious mode of life, with the elegancies and the perfection in the arts and sciences which they observed in the homes which they had won.

They learned to adopt the habits and the manners of the Romanized Britons, and to repair the desolations which they had wrought.

Kingdoms were established, and though war occasionally prevailed among the chieftains, there were many who appreciated the blessings and the security of peace.

Next came the Danes, men of stern countenances and ruddy hair.

But by one twenty-seven AD, Hadrian had completed his wall from the Solway to the Tyne, and the Romans settled behind it.

In Scotland, Romanization can have affected the countryside very little.

Professor Piggot adds that, quote, "It is when the pressure of Romanization is relaxed by the breakup of the Dark Ages that we see again the Celtic metalsmiths handling the material with the same consummate skill as they had before the Roman conquest, and with traditional styles that had not even then forgotten their Mannian and Belgic heritage." End quote.

In fact, many centuries go by in Britain as well as in the rest of Europe before the archaeologist's task is complete and the historian on his own is able to describe the ways of men in the past.

Britain as a sample of the general course of prehistory in Europe.