Archaeological evidence

Villas

The other sign of Romanisation was the emergence of villas (the Latin word villa means "a farm"), so villas were some kind of rural agricultural dwelling built in a Roman style. They were the country estates of the Romanised British elite. Most large villas were built quite close to major urban centres, generally within ten miles, so the villas owners were never very far from the centre of trade and social life. Villas were more than fancy country houses; they were centres of rural industry and agriculture. Some villas may have been the centres of large farming estate, others included industry manufacturing pottery and metalware. Individual houses were as different then as they are now, but the villas followed some general patterns. They were half-timber houses on stone foundations, one story in height, capped with tiled roofs and underfloor heating systems. Tile floors were common, and larger villas contained at least one room with a mosaic floor. Walls may have been decorated with mosaics or painted scenes. Furniture was made of wood, in patterns similar to Roman style throughout the Empire. Many villas had separate bath houses.

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The Romans introduced a number of species to Britain, including the now rare Roman nettle (крапива Urtica pilulifera), which is known to have been used by soldiers to warm their arms and legs, and the edible snail (Helix pomatia). There is also some evidence that they may have introduced rabbits of the smaller southern mediterranean type. (The European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus prevalent in modern Britain is assumed to have been introduced from the continent after the Norman invasion of 1066.)

As a result of the conquest Roman civilization spread over Britain rather quickly.

The great number of Iron Age coins, an important political and economic medium, excavated in Great Britain are of great archaeological value. Some of them were imported from mainland Europe, others are clearly influenced by Roman originals. The British tribal kings also adopted the continental habit of putting their names on the coins they had minted, with such inscriptions as Tasciovanus from Verulamium (modern-day Saint Albans) and Cunobelinos from Camelodunum (modern-day Colchester) identifying regional kings’ differentiation. A large collection of coins known as the Hallaton Treasure was found at a Late Iron Age shrine near Hallaton, Leicestershire in 2000. It consisted of 5294 coins, mostly attributed to the Corieltavi tribe, the coins being buried in 14 separate hoards over several decades in the early 1st century A. D.

However the benefits of the Roman civilization were not rendered to the British people as a whole. Despite the growth of towns and bureaucracy and all the other essentials of civilization that came with the Roman conquest, the lot of the common people who constituted the overwhelming majority of the British people remained unchanged. Britain still was an agricultural province, dependent on small farms. The lives of the farmers changed very little: they still built round Celtic huts and ploughed the same fields with the same Iron Age tools. Their life standard changed very little, if at all. With all the advantages of Roman civilization Britain was still largely a Celtic, or even a Neolithic society. The wealth and prestige of the Romans affected only the local British elite. aristocracy. Some representatives of British local aristocracy, such as Canti, the client king of the Cantii tribe, whose name is preserved in the English county of Kent – by 43 A.D. when Claudius launched an assault on the island – had already become the Romans’ puppets. The Roman local government of these regions closely kept pre-Roman tribal boundaries, which is confirmed by archaeological finds.

The Romans brought to barbarian Britain their administration, the way of life and their language. The native Celtic tribes were influenced by the high Roman civilization. The Romans founded (основать) military settlements or camps < Latin castra. This word survived in some place names such as Man chester, Lan caster, Winchester. They built their famous Romans roads, set up towns for retired soldiers, which were called colonies. The word colony survived as part of place names such as Col chester, Lin coln. Among the trading centers of Roman Britain London, which was called at that time Londinium, is worth mentioning. It was the first and the largest trading center. From the small settlement of Julius Caesar’s times it has become an extensive town. Wealthy Roman landowners (помещики) lived in comfortable country-houses called villas. Under Roman occupation the Celts in Britain were romanized. The use of Latin steadily grew. However, the result of Romanization wasn’t long-lasting. When in the 5th century, in the year 449, Britain was overrun by West Germanic tribes, most traces of the Roman rule, economic, as well as linguistic were destroyed.

The Roman occupation of Britain lasted until the early 5th century (407 A.D.) In 410 A.D. the Roman legions were withdrawn (отозвать) from Britain probably so as to help to defend Rome from the barbarians. The temporary withdrawal turned out to be final. The Roman Empire was breaking up.

Thus, the Romans had left the British Isles some time before the Germanic tribes began to arrive. Consequently, there has never been any direct contact between the Romans and the Germanic tribes in Britain. The ancient Germans learned elements of the Roman culture or Roman speech on the British soil (почва). They couldn’t have acquired them from the Romans directly, but got them at second hand from the Romanized Celts. It should be mentioned that the ancestors (предки) of the Germanic invaders had already made contacts with the Romans, while they lived on the continent before the migration to Britain. Their connections with Rome and the Latin language were strengthened in later ages, so that there were many reasons accounted for the influence of Latin on Old English. Germanic tribes were led by two brothers – Hengest and Horsa. Thus, on coming to Britain the Germanic invaders could make two kinds of linguistic contact:

1 With the spoken dialects of the Celtic group;

2 Indirectly with the Latin language.

Though for the most part Britain was colonized by the Germanic tribes before the end of the 5th century the German invasions lasted well (вплоть) into the 6th century. Reliable evidence of this period is given by the historian of that time, monastic scholar (673-730) Bede the Venerable who wrote the first history of Britain. The invaders came from the Western subdivision of the Germanic tribes. Quoting Bede: “The newcomers were of the three strongest races: the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. Some Frisian tribes also took part, but they soon got blended with those tribes”.

The Jutes were the first to arrive and settled on the land to the south-east from Jutland. They inhabited Kent and the Isle of Wight. They founded the Kingdom of Kent.

Groups of Saxon tribes came from Lowland Germany soon after to settle on both banks of the river Thames. (They formed 3 kingdoms: Wessex, Essex and Sussex, Wessex being the largest and the most powerful kingdom with its capital Winchester).

The Angles were the last to come from the banks of Elba. They occupied the districts between the Wash and the Humber rivers (the kingdoms of Mercia, Anglia and Northumbria). Gildas, a Celtic historian of the day, alluded to the invasion as the “ruin of Britain” and described the horrible devastation of the country. Some parts of the island were so thinly populated that the invaders simply occupied the country without coming into contact with the aborigines. In most districts however, they met with the stubborn resistance of the natives; so they pulled down their villages, ruined the Roman and Celtic towns and destroyed the civilization that had grown under the Romans. The Germanic invaders drove the Celts westwards and southwards or enslaved and exterminated them.

The bulk of the population in England sprang from the newcomers. Later, under feudalism, social differentiation proceeded irrespective of descent. Gradually the conquerors and the surviving Celts blended into one people.

After the settlement, the Germanic dialects came to be spoken all over Britain with the exception of Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, where the native Celtic tribes had remained intact (не затронуты) high in the mountains and refuges from other parts of Britain found shelter.

In some of these areas Celtic languages have survived to the present days: the Welsh dialect as well as Irish descends from Celtic dialects. A Celtic dialect, Scotch (Gaelic) is still spoken in the highlands of Scotland.

It is of the greatest consequence to further history that as a result of the settlement the West Germanic tribes were completely separated from the Germanic tribes on the continent.

As is known geographical separation of people and their unification are major factors in linguistic differentiation and formation of languages. When the settlers were cut off the German tribes they gradually developed into a single people (народ) and their dialects eventually formed a separate language of the Germanic group, English, that is why the Germanic settlement of Britain is regarded as a starting point of the history of English. It is sometimes called the English settlement, though the name English was not really used until a later date. In Old English Britain was called Engle-land (the land of the Angles) > England.