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Rocks?
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Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Re: Rocks?
Jul 22, 2006, 17:01
Just finished reading Thomas' (et al) paper Evidence for an apartheid-like structure in early Anglo-Saxon England* and am left with a fascinating picture of 'English' society from about the fifth to the ninth centuries. During that period there's a minority ruling class of Germanic people with a larger indigenous 'underclass' (the Welisc) serving them. The Welisc may have been an underclass but they were not without rights as they were eligible to Wergild (blood money) though at a much lower level than for a freeman. The indigenous people were not wiped out, nor displaced en masse, but lived alongside the English, intermarrying with, and influencing them both linguistically (re: the flexible word order of modern English) and almost certainly culturally as well for several centuries.

At this point my imagination gets the better of me and I can't help wondering what this society, some fifteen hundred years ago, of English and Welisc peoples would have been like at places like Avebury and Alton Priors/Alton Barnes. Did the two peoples respect each other's religion? Did the Welisc continue to worship at the stone circles and sacred wells while the English did the same to the Germanic gods at their (wooden?) shrines? Was there any fusion of these two (even multiple) religions before it all came under the dominance of Christianity?

As you so rightly said, "So much history, so little time!"

* http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_b/papers/RSPB20063627.pdf
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