Northern Britain and the

Fall of the Roman Empire

Guy Halsall

T his paper studies the effects of the end of the Roman Empire on northern
Britain, placing them in a broader western European context.1 In that sense
it lies firmly within a St Andrews tradition of putting ‘Dark Age’ Scotland within
a broader geographical perspective.2 Although the work of an outsider, it is
nevertheless that of a respectful outsider; my aim is not to suggest how the study
of other areas improves or corrects the conclusions drawn from Scottish material
in any straightforward fashion. Current work on the archaeology of Scotland is
immensely impressive in its subtlety, working with very unpromising material,
and much of what will be said below will build upon the work of specialists on
this region. If there will also be some critique, this is because every region of
Europe has its own historiographical peculiarities that need reassessing from
time to time, when considered in a comparative fashion.
Of course, that northern Britain had some general things in common with
barbaricum east of the Rhine, but many other things that were very different,

1 
The original version of this paper was given as the Biennial Anderson Lecture at the
University of St Andrews in February 2011. I am grateful to Dr Alex Woolf for inviting me to
present the lecture, and to the Leverhulme Trust, whose award of a Major Research Fellowship
for the years 2009–12 allowed me to research, write, and revise the paper for publication.
2 
See, for example, Scotland in Dark Age Europe, ed. by Crawford; Scotland in Dark Age
Britain, ed. by Crawford.

Guy Halsall (guy.halsall@york.ac.uk) is Professor of History at the University of York.

Abstract: This article examines Roman-barbarian relations in the north of Britain in the context
of cultural interactions on the other imperial frontiers. On the basis of the less confrontational
model of Romano-barbarian interaction that this suggests, a rethinking of northern British
politics is put forward. The withdrawal of effective Roman presence from the northern frontier
(suggested in the later fourth century) caused political crises in the region between the walls and
a break-up of the earlier Pictish confederacy. Change around 600 led, in turn, to the submerging
of the British polities that had dominated the region since 400 by new powers, the English
and the Scots, whose kingdoms’ foundation might belong to this period. Internal Pictish strife
might explain why the Picts do not seem to be a very active player in the early seventh-century
politics that are visible to us.
Keywords: archaeology, Picts, Scots, Britons, Bernicia, frontiers, cultural interaction, barbarian

The Mediæval Journal 2:2 (2012), 1–25 BREPOLS    PUBLISHERS 10.1484/J.TMJ.1.103232

2 Guy Halsall

would hardly require stating. What I hope will be more interesting is to try to
explain these comparisons and contrasts. In particular, I want to present a tenta-
tive response to the question of why, of all the barbarian peoples surrounding the
Empire, the Picts alone made not the slightest inroad into, and had not the least
effect upon, the formerly imperial provinces.

Just Something that Happened to Other People?

Some years ago I wrote a piece which began by adapting a quotation from an
episode of The Black Adder, saying that:
From most discussions of the period, one could be forgiven for thinking that, to
the people who lived beyond the northern frontiers of the Roman Empire, Late
Antiquity was just something that happened to other people.3

I concluded, that:
If it is generally the case that the fifth century was more characterized by continuity
than by change, then the attitude described at the start of this chapter is perfectly
justified. For the northern barbarians, Late Antiquity was just something that
happened to other people. None of that made the period between the fourth and
seventh centuries any less important or dramatic.4

I argued that the end of the Roman Empire made more difference to the people
south of the Forth than to the north, suggesting that north of the Forth the
trajectory of social and political development continued along the same lines,
without the Empire’s demise having any notable effect. This was in line with a
commonly held view about the steady growth of Pictish power, culminating in a
so-called Pictish ‘state’.5 This paper ponders the validity of this conclusion.
This problem has a Scottish historiographical dimension. James Fraser has
taken issue very convincingly with the idea that, in what became Scotland, the
Roman period was merely an ‘interlude’, after which everyone got back down to

3 
Halsall, ‘Beyond the Northern Frontiers’, p. 409.
4 
Halsall, ‘Beyond the Northern Frontiers’, p. 425: The laconic ‘if ’ in the second quotation
is crucial; late antiquity, in my view, was not characterized more by continuity than change.
5 
See, for example, Crawford, Picts, Gaels and Scots, pp. 105–10; Driscoll, ‘Power and
Auth­ority in Early Historic Scotland’; Driscoll, ‘The Relationship between History and
Archaeology’; Driscoll, ‘Political Discourse and the Growth of Christian Ceremonialism in
Pictland’.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 3

the serious business of being ‘Celtic’ again.6 This argument will be supported.
Fraser Hunter has argued that the Roman Empire played a crucial role in building
up and knocking down leaders and groups beyond its most northerly frontier.7
This must be correct; it fits with everything we know about other Roman frontiers
and I will argue that it had its Nachleben in the precise history of northern Britain
in the late Roman period and after. In other words, when the Empire ceased to be
effective in Britain, the Picts did not simply breathe a sigh of relief and go back
to age-old folkways; the Empire’s demise affected them very directly and shaped
what they did next.
This ‘interlude’ thesis may simply be a regional variant of the idea found in
Romano-British archaeology that the Empire was just a foreign implant that
never took root.8 This sees the Britons as simple colonized peoples who never
really took to Roman ways and were just waiting to throw off the oppressive yoke.
It has reared its head in some writing about the end of the empire, too.9 But it is
difficult to explain the chaos of the end of Roman Britain without appreciating
just how closely Britain was bound into the Empire and how profoundly impe-
rial structures reached into lives and politics throughout the diocese. Indeed, the
‘interlude’ thesis misunderstands the details of the political events that led ulti-
mately to Rome’s loss of control over the island.10 What I hope to demonstrate is
that, beyond the frontiers, it might be that the dependence upon the Empire for
socio-political stability was in fact greater than it was in some heartland provinces
such as Spain or southern Gaul.11

The Interrelationship of Empire and ‘Barbaricum’

One of the many problems of the traditional ‘invasion narrative’ is its vision of the
Roman Empire and barbaricum existing as antagonistically-confronted polarities,
a vision it shares with many other simplistic historical grand narratives beloved

6 
Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 116–17.
7 
Hunter, Beyond the Edge of Empire, pp. 50–53.
8 
Seminally, Reece, ‘Town and Country’; more recently, Mattingly, An Imperial Possession.
9 
Jones, The End of Roman Britain; Laycock, Britannia: The Failed State.
10 
Zosimus’s account of the rebellion of the Britons and Aremoricans against the officials of
Constantine ‘III’ and of Honorius’s letter to the cities of Brittia (whether Britain or Bruttium
remains unresolved) is most certainly not evidence of a separatist rebellion. It is crystal-clear
testimony to the fact that Britons wished to be reincorporated into the legitimist fold, to be
ruled again by Honorius. Zosime, Histoire nouvelle, ed. and trans. by Paschoud, 6.5.3, 6.10.2.
11 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 383–86.
4 Guy Halsall

of the political Right, such as East versus West. The Romans were, for sure, not
above portraying themselves as surrounded by howling nations of barbarians,12
but it is more instructive that they saw the whole world as the orbis Romanus;
it was just that the areas beyond the limites had not yet been organized.13 This
ideology weighed so heavily on imperial shoulders that Valentinian I died of
apoplexy when ambassadors from the trans-Danubian Quadi dared to suggest
that he had no right building a fort north of the Danube in their territory.14
Society and politics beyond the frontier depended heavily upon a set of rela-
tionships with the Empire, but not all in exactly the same way. I have previously
adopted a loose, three-band scheme for the peoples beyond the Rhine–Danube
limes, borrowing it from a similar model suggested for early imperial contacts
with Rome.15 In the band closest to the frontier, Roman imports saturated soci-
ety. An economic relationship with the limes spurred a steady development in
social organization and complexity and a growing hierarchy. Larger settlements,
planned settlements, delineated properties, distinct high-status farmsteads, some-
times detached from the rest of the settlement: all of these are visible.16 Power
may have been bolstered by regular treaties and diplomatic gifts from the Empire
itself but the impression is gained that bases for power were being established
which were becoming gradually (though as yet far from entirely) independent
of formal links with the Empire.17 The third band of territories is that farthest
from the frontier, around the Baltic and the Danish and Norwegian North Sea
shores. Here, trade with the Roman Empire was important, controlled through
particular ports of trade, such as at Dankirke and Lundeborg in Denmark and
its islands.18 The distribution of imports suggests control by the élites who estab-
lished the ports of trade — at this date little more than prestigious farmsteads,
when compared with other sites. Links with the Empire were important but
Rome was too distant to be able to interfere directly with the region’s polities. As
a result, here too it is possible to trace a steady social development towards more
complex political organization. Again this is visible in the forms and organization

12 
De rebus bellicis, ed. by Thompson.
13 
Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, pp. 10–30.
14 
Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, trans. by Rolfe, 30.6.2–6.
15 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 411–13; Halsall, ‘Beyond the Northern Frontiers’;
Hedeager, ‘Empire, Frontier and the Barbarian Hinterland’.
16 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 125–31, and references.
17 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 123–25, 152, and references.
18 
For Gudme/Lundeborg see The Archaeology of Gudme and Lundeborg, ed. by Nielsen,
Randsborg, and Thrane. For Dankirke see Hansen, ‘Dankirke’.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 5

of settlements, fortifications and so on, but also in the great bog deposits: Nydam,
Illerup, Thorsbjerg, amongst others. These have been interpreted as revealing an
ability to call upon and organize significant resources of manpower.19 They might
additionally show a consolidation of power in the hands of rulers.20
It is the second, intermediate band which interests me most, as that is where
relationships with Rome seem to be most crucial. It is here that one finds the
most lavish ritual deposits of Roman-supplied wealth in periods of crisis; in, for
example, the Haßleben-Leuna or the Sakrau Groups of lavishly furnished buri-
als.21 In this band, I hypothesize, formal diplomatic relationships with Rome
were most vital to the stability of political formations. The other possible sources
of power were the great river routes supplying amber to the Empire, such as those
focusing on the Elbe and those centred on the Vistula and the rivers flowing into
the Black Sea. It is unsurprising that these river routes show the most significant
cultural and political changes and movements during the imperial period.22 Their
control was a means of expanding power and of acquiring Roman goods. The
Romans also paid large sums to allies in this band as a means of keeping kings in
the ‘frontier band’ in check.23 But all of these methods of securing power were
fragile, based, in a way that neither the polities around the Baltic and the North
Sea nor those along the frontier itself were, upon a very changeable set of relation-
ships with the Empire.
A further area is difficult to classify, as it shares some of the features of the
frontier band and some of those of the intermediate (‘hinterland’) band: that
is the North Sea coast between the Scheldt and the Elbe estuaries — roughly
the area of the Saxon confederacy. This area shows traces of the socio-political
developments which are visible in the frontier band and in the most distant
(‘Baltic’) band. Indeed, it sits on a frontier, albeit a very broad one. The ‘Saxon
homelands’ had close links with the Roman Empire, visible in the display of
Roman artefacts in the region’s cremation burials (above all symbols of rank and
status such as elements of military uniform), as well as written accounts of the
period. Yet, those relationships were rather more tenuous and fragile because
of the Saxons’ rather greater distance from the Empire itself. It is important to

19 
The Spoils of Victory, ed. by Jørgensen, Storgaard, and Thomsen.
20 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 129–30.
21 
For Haßleben-Leuna see Todd, The Northern Barbarians, pp. 49–52. For Sakrau see
Todd, The Northern Barbarians, pp. 46–47, 57, 71.
22 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 131, 133–34, 392–99.
23 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 149–50.
6 Guy Halsall

remember how crucial the late imperial system was for the stability and prosperity
of its north-western provinces;24 some areas of barbaricum, like the Saxon region,
were just as dependent upon the maintenance of links with the Empire for social
and political stability.
Rather than simply seeing the North Sea as a frontier, we must envisage a
North Sea ‘cultural province’, incorporating northern Gaul, Britain, the Saxon
home­lands, and maybe, as we shall see, other areas too. We are used to thinking
about Irish Sea and Atlantic coast cultural provinces,25 and indeed a North Sea
province in later eras of the early Middle Ages, but the idea of a North Sea (or a
‘Channel’) cultural province in late antiquity lies curiously outside our usual ways
of thinking. Obviously, however, such a North Sea province was crucial in late
antiquity. The Roman badges of office in Saxon cremations have been mentioned.
These can only be understood as the result of those historically-attested Saxons
who joined the Roman army and who, clearly, returned home afterwards. In the
Saxon homelands their status as former servants of the mighty Empire was of
such importance in defining their identity and standing that they were cremated
wearing (or else their ashes were buried next to elements of ) their old uniform.
The obvious implication of this — obvious but studiously ignored by adherents
of the migrationist school of Anglo-Saxon archaeology — is of important two-
way movement across or around the North Sea. Many other instances of Roman
influence on Saxon society and culture underline how heavy this influence was,
and how the direction of influence was overwhelmingly from the Empire to
barbaricum. Indeed, even though it has become something approaching dogma
that the frontier zone was deepening into the Empire’s territories in the late
imperial period26 (an idea almost entirely lacking in prima facie archaeological
support),27 empirically, the opposite is true. The cultural influence of Rome was
actually spreading ever deeper into barbaricum.

The Fall of the Empire in ‘Barbaricum’

The value of the three-band model of trans-Rhenan barbaricum and of the
concept of a North Sea cultural province is shown in looking at the fallout from

24 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 79–86, 195–200, 217–19, 346–70.
25 
For the Irish Sea see The Iron Age in the Irish Sea Province, ed. by Thomas; Waddell, ‘The
Irish Sea in Prehistory’. For the Atlantic coast see Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean.
26 
Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire; Miller, ‘Frontier Societies’; Fehr, ‘Germanische
Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung?’.
27 
Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul, pp. 93–167.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 7

the crisis of the Roman Empire around ad 400. That crisis came about after the
death of Theodosius I in 395, when the Empire descended into minority politics
in East and West simultaneously for the first time since the early third century.
Put briefly and bluntly, this turned Roman politics decisively inwards, focusing
on control of the court, itself definitively removed to Italy from northern Gaul
just before Theodosius’s death.28 This resulted in those who controlled the court
taking their eyes off the steady regulation of patronage which had become
especially important to the north-west of the Empire. This was aggravated by
moving the court, whose supply had been so vital to those regions’ economies,
and, during serial civil wars (to which I shall shortly return), many of the troops
from there as well. It also, critically, meant taking their eye off the management
and regulation of what we might call ‘frontier policy’.29
The results can be seen in the socio-economic crisis so clearly visible in the
archaeology of Britain and Gaul, with the collapse of the villa system and the
contraction and abandonment of towns and the appearance of other symptoms
of social instability, such as furnished burial.30 What has so often been neglected
because of the demands of the usual ‘invasion narrative’ is the similarity of the
crisis visible in the Saxon homelands to that in northern Gaul and Britain, and
indeed in other parts of the north-western Empire and its borderlands. In Saxony
settlements and cemeteries are also abandoned. Traces of organization break
down; the high-status sites fall out of use, and furnished inhumation appears.31
The current limitations of the models employed to study the Anglo-Saxon
migrations mean that no attempt is made to account for this change other than as
‘proof ’ of the migration to Britain, even within the so-called ‘Migration Theory’
occasionally invoked as an underpinning.32 This is a shame because Migration

28 
Gratian took the court to Milan in 381 but his killer, Magnus Maximus, held court at
Trier until 388. After Maximus’s suppression, Valentinian II reigned at Vienne, although his
Magister Militum Arbogast seems to have been active on the Rhine frontier. After the rebellion
and execution of Arbogast and Eugenius (392–94), there is some evidence for governmental
(albeit an illegitimate government) presence in Trier under the usurper Constantine ‘III’ but he
and the Gallic usurper Jovinus (411–13) both seem to have spent more time in the south. After
their defeats and execution, there is no good evidence that any continuous, organized, official
imperial presence was returned to the north of Gaul.
29 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 186–219.
30 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 346–70.
31 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 383–92.
32 
For example, Hamerow, ‘Migration Theory and the Migration Period’; Hamerow,
‘Migration Theory and the Anglo-Saxon “Identity Crisis”’; Hamerow, ‘Wanderungstheorien’.
8 Guy Halsall

Theory actually provides a basis for understanding the processes at work and for
explaining the archaeological evidence we have, albeit not if you want to assume
a straightforward link between change in the material cultural record and a pri-
mordialist version of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity.33 It is extremely difficult at best to
wrestle the forms of change that can be observed in fifth-century Britain into this
sort of straitjacket (indeed it is impossible in the case of furnished inhumation),
even if a northern German component is equally impossible to explain away. If,
however, we make use of the concept of a fourth-century North Sea ‘cultural
province’ and of Migration Theory’s insight that the movement involved in the
processes of migration is rarely one-way, a subtler alternative becomes possible.
This allows us to see shared responses to similar crises around the North Sea,
with the same ultimate cause and involving cultural input from either shore. This
provides a better means of understanding and explaining migration and its con-
sequences.
That, however, is not part of this paper. What is important for current purposes
is that the Saxons fit into a pattern wherein it was the peoples in the intermediate
(‘hinterland’) band of barbaricum who were most affected by the imperial
crisis. The peoples of this band were those who moved the furthest during the
migrations. They included those who crossed the Rhine frontier on 31 December
405 or 406: the Sueves, the Vandals, the Burgundians (shortly afterwards), and
ultimately the Lombards (who also had Saxons with them).34 The peoples in the
furthest (‘Baltic’) band of barbaricum, perhaps not surprisingly, seem to have
coped reasonably well with the crisis of the Empire and indeed to have adopted
interesting responses to it.35 More important for this article’s argument is the fact
that the frontier band seems not to have been unduly affected by the imperial
crisis either, until about half a century later, when it apparently underwent
its own critical phase, part of which involved migration into the peripheral
provinces of the former Empire, but not beyond.36 Can this banded scheme help
us to understand events in the north of Britain in the fifth century and later? To
some extent at least, it can.

33 
Halsall, ‘Archaeology and Migration’.
34 
Halsall, ‘Beyond the Northern Frontiers’, p. 417.
35 
For example, at Gudme, the manufacture of gold plates with religious motifs seems to
attest to the adoption of a more religious role on the part of the local rulers, responding to the
end of the ability to control access to high-status Roman imports. See above, n. 18; Halsall
Barbarian Migrations, pp. 380–81.
36 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 399–403.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 9

Northern British Political Geography

Considering how this might be involves rethinking political geography north of
Hadrian’s Wall. Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that there were two confederacies
of the Picti: the Dicalydones and the Verturiones.37 If the Dicalydones were, as is
usually and not unreasonably assumed, a continuation of the Caledonii attested
earlier, then elements of their name might survive in Perthshire.38 The Verturiones
by contrast give their name to Fortriu, and Alex Woolf ’s thesis that Fortriu is to
be found further north as far as Inverness, rather than along Strathearn as used
to be thought, seems generally accepted.39 Whatever the case, the two confed-
eracies would seem securely located north of the Forth, apparently tying in with
early historic political geography, which equally locates the Picts north of the
Forth, with Anglian and British polities to the south and the Scots to the West.
The appearance, in the region between the Hadrianic and Antonine Walls, of
ethnic names which continue tribal names attested by the earlier Roman geog-
raphers — the Votadini/Gododdin being the obvious example40 — adds further
support to the usual view back-projecting seventh-century political geography
into late antiquity.
Under close inspection, however, this conclusion looks much less satisfac-
tory. Barbarian political history and geography elsewhere suggest that caution
is required in assuming too straightforward a continuity between Caledonii and
Dicalydones. Late Roman sources about the picti, which need not at this date have
been any more than a simple descriptive name — the Painted Men — are clear in
seeing them as any and all people north of the Wall. They make no reference to
any other people in the region. It makes little or no sense to envisage a broad band
of peaceful territory that had to be crossed, either by the periodic Roman expedi-
tions against picti or by Pictish raiders attacking Roman Britain, before hostilities
could open.41 It is also worth remembering that the ‘frontier band’ of barbaricum
was where all the other great late Roman barbarian confederacies appeared.

37 
Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, trans. by Rolfe, 27.8.5.
38 
Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 15–17.
39 
Woolf, ‘Dún Nechtain, Fortriu and the Picts’.
40 
As well as the Votadini referred to most famously in Y Gododdin and in references to Manau
Gododdin (Nennius, The ‘Historia Brittonum’, ed. by Dumville, p. 62), the Maetae reappear as
Miathi in the Vita Columbae, 1.8–9. See Aneirin, The Gododdin, ed. by Koch; Nennius, British
History and the Welsh Annals, ed. by Morris; Adomnán of Iona, Life of St Columba, trans. by Sharpe.
41 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 114–15; Halsall, ‘Beyond the Northern Frontiers’,
pp. 419–20.
10 Guy Halsall

We must consider what these barbarian confederacies might have been like.
Similarly to the other great barbarian confederacies, the Franks, the Alamans,
the Saxons, and the Goths, the Picts appear in the third century. Like the other
confederacies, one assumes that they incorporated the smaller tribes mentioned by
the earlier geographers. But this did not mean that those tribes or their identities
disappeared. Ethnicity is multi-layered. The ‘tribal’ level of ethnic identity became
submerged, at least as far as the Romans knew or cared, by a higher ‘confederate’
level of identity.42 The Frisians, the Jutes, and the Angles are, unlike the Saxons, all
mentioned in early Roman geographies and historical sources.43 When the Saxons
emerge, the Frisians, Jutes, and Angles disappear from the record. When the Saxon
confederacy entered its period of crisis in the fifth century, they reappeared.44
We will return to the ‘Saxon model’; it is instructive. For the Roman period, we
should assume that ‘Pictish’ territory started at the Wall. The usual assumption
that the ‘Picts’ were divided into ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ confederacies (the
Dicalydones being the southernmost in this scheme), is unverifiable but, in the
absence of plausible alternatives, it will be retained in what follows.

Magnus Maximus and his Reforms

My reconstruction of events in Britain around the end of the Empire, like every­
one else’s, starts with a Spaniard: Magnus Maximus. Maximus matters for several
reasons. Partly because he is the last emperor to be recorded as waging wars against
Picts and Scots, apparently shortly after his usurpation,45 but mainly because I
think he was behind a major reorganization of Britain’s defences, which, I will
argue, had crucial effects on northern Britain, and on the Picts in particular.
I have argued that it was Maximus who was the superbus tyrannus mentioned
by Gildas in his De Excidio.46 Gildas’s unrelenting hostility to Maximus also

42 
This is a crucial distinction from the argument of Peter Heather, in Heather, ‘Disappearing
and Reappearing Tribes’. Here and elsewhere, Heather adopts a more politically-laden terminol-
ogy about incomplete assimilation.
43 
Frisians (Frisii): for example, Tacitus, Germania, 35. Angles (Angli) and Jutes (Eudoses):
Tacitus, Germania, 40.2. Tacitus, Germania, trans by Rives.
44 
Angles and Frisians: Procopius, Wars, 8.20.7. Jutes (Eucii): Epistulae Austrasiacae, ed. by
Gundlach. The last mention of the Frisians in the earlier period is to their capture alongside
Chamavi (later included among the Franks) in 296, in other words slightly later than mention of
the Saxon confederacy begins to emerge in the records: Panegyrici latini, ed. and trans. by Nixon
and Rodgers, 8.9.3.
45 
Gallic Chronicle of 452, ed. and trans. by Murray, pp. 76–85.
46 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 519–26.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 11

stands out like a sore thumb when viewed with the usurper’s treatment by other
western writers and with his importance in the legitimizing of later British
dynasties. Gildas apparently had a very specific, and indeed a specifically British,
reason to dislike Maximus and that, I suggest, was that it was this tyrannus who
had invited in the hated Saxons.47 If I am right about this, then some at least of
the Pictish attacks mentioned by Gildas, not least those mentioned in Chapter
23 of the De Excidio, must refer to Maximus’s Pictish campaigns recorded by the
Gallic Chronicle of 452.48
Maximus’s importance in early medieval British politics comes, I believe,
from a real set of actions associated with his employment of Saxon foederati. If
the aim of deploying Saxon troops to Britain was, like Theodosius’s enrolment of
Gothic and other barbarian troops, designed partly to free conventional Roman
regulars for operations elsewhere in the Empire or, as Gildas implies, to bolster
frontier defences during such operations, a similar measure may have been the
employment of Irish federates in the west.49 The evidence is problematic to say
the least but the conclusion is suggestive.
The element of the ‘Maximian’ reorganization most important to this paper is a
withdrawal from the old military frontier. I have proposed this withdrawal before,
but the suggestion requires some modification.50 The problems with the initial
formulation are twofold, one empirical, the other conceptual. The former was
my reliance upon a distribution map of late fourth-century metalwork published
in 1986.51 Since the creation of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, our knowledge
of late Roman metalwork and its distribution has changed significantly. The
conceptual problem was that I envisaged a withdrawal of the formal frontier line,
perhaps to somewhere parallel to the Fosse Way line. Nonetheless, a modified
version of the ‘withdrawal thesis’ can be maintained.52
The distribution of fourth-century official Roman metalwork, with probable
military associations, is concentrated on the ‘villa zone’. To some extent this can
be explained by the simple fact that this is — essentially — the arable zone, where

47 
This argument is presented at much greater length in Halsall, Worlds of Arthur.
48 
Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, ed. by Winterbottom, pp. 14–22; Gildas, The Ruin of
Britain, ed. by Winterbottom; Gallic Chronicle of 452, ed. and trans. by Murray, as above, n. 45.
49 
Rance, ‘Attacotti, Déisi and Magnus Maximus’.
50 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 196–97.
51 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, p. 196, map 13, drawn from Böhme, ‘Das Ende der Römer­
herrschaft’.
52 
I am grateful to Rob Collins, Jon Coulston, Fraser Hunter, and David Petts for help with
this section — although I have not always followed their advice!
12 Guy Halsall

chance finds of metalwork tend to be made. However, the area in which metal-
work finds are very much rarer includes the line of Hadrian’s Wall and its many
frequently and well-excavated forts, some of which, moreover, have revealed
traces of post-imperial occupation.53 Now, one does find Roman military metal-
work in areas where the army was not stationed — like Saxony — but it is rather
odd to find it largely absent in areas where the army was. Since 1986, more finds
have been located on the Wall line and in its hinterland, though they are still few
compared with those in the villa zone. It is possible that patterns of loss were
significantly different at fort sites, although why this might have been so is diffi-
cult to explain. Even the revised distributions, however, show significant distinc-
tions.54 Official belt-sets are rarely found north of East Yorkshire, whereas there
are twenty or so cruciform brooches known from this area (though their precise
dates within the general ‘fourth- and fifth-century’ late Roman period could use-
fully be unravelled).
The general absence of the belt-sets is important. If one assumes a continued
presence for the Roman military in the north and west — in the old military zone
— one would have to assume that the troops in this area were, in material cultural
terms, quite distinct from the rest of the army in Britain. This seems unlikely
when one looks at frontier troops in Gaul or at those who manned the forts of the
Saxon Shore frontier. On the other hand, the types of brooch located in the Wall
area, some made locally, are commonly used as signs of official authority, inside
and outside Roman territory. In fact, Alamannic chieftains manufactured their
own copies of such items to distribute to their followers.55
Initially I proposed that the army was withdrawn to a line roughly parallel
with the first-century Fosse Way frontier, along which there are apparently some
indications of late Roman fortification.56 Such a precise interpretation about a
new ‘frontier line’ is unnecessary. We need only imagine that most of the regular
elements of the army were pulled back, either to compose Maximus’s army
during his campaigns in Gaul and elsewhere, or to guard the more productive
and politically sensitive villa zone. A formal withdrawal of the frontier is unlikely,

53 
See, most famously, the fort at Birdoswald: Wilmott, Birdoswald Roman Fort.
54 
See Laycock, Britannia: The Failed State, p. 104, fig. 45, and p. 115, fig. 48, for more
recent distribution maps. I have also consulted the Portable Antiquities Scheme at <http://
finds.org.uk/> [1 October 2012] and found that the general points made here still seem valid.
55 
Hoeper, ‘Die Höhensiedlungen der Alamannen’; Hoeper and Steuer, ‘Eine völker­wande­
rungs­zeitliche Höhenstation’.
56 
Johnson, Later Roman Britain; Laycock, Britannia: The Failed State, pp. 100–02 and
fig. 43, though caution is required about Laycock’s interpretation.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 13

but the removal of troops for internal conflicts is well attested. Jarring though it
seems to the usual confrontational narrative of ‘barbarian invasion’, the Romans
rarely prioritized the so-called ‘barbarian threat’ in practice. The Rhine frontier
itself was largely stripped of troops and left to defence by allied barbarians during
the civil wars of 382–413.
In the absence of regular units, the uplands might have been left to local lead-
ers to police and protect, such leaders being those who employed the cruciform
brooches as badges of office. Some might have been officers of the limitanei; oth-
ers might have been aristocrats of the area. These people would be responsible
for the conversion of some Hadrian’s Wall forts into high-status sites, Birdoswald
probably being the best known. Current excavations at Binchester are bringing
important evidence to light as well, suggesting that this feature was more common
across the highland regions and not limited to the line of the Wall.57 Ken Dark
assembled reasonably suggestive evidence for this sort of high-status use, although
his argument about a ‘sub-Roman’ refortification of Hadrian’s Wall is less convinc-
ing.58 Ellen Swift has also argued convincingly for a gradual retreat of the regular
military to the south-west.59 All this is unlikely to have been intended as a perma-
nent arrangement but, as things turned out, neither Maximus nor his troops ever
returned. Most of the soldiers taken from Britain, one assumes, ended up in Italy
and many presumably died on the Frigidus in September 394.60 In this reconstruc-
tion, this would be the context for the creation of some of what eventually became
British royal dynasties, and the reason why Maximus became so important as a
legitimizing founder figure when such dynasties started producing genealogies.61

Consequences in the North

If this reconstruction is on broadly the right lines, the withdrawal of official
Roman presence towards the south-east had important consequences for the
polities of hitherto barbarian northern Britain. In the late Roman period, the
intramural area broadly resembles the ‘frontier band’ on the Rhine, even if the
quantities of material moving from the Empire northwards are smaller than

57 
See Vinovia: Durham-Stanford Research Project.
58 
Dark, ‘A Sub-Roman Re-Defence of Hadrian’s Wall?’.
59 
Swift, Regionality in Dress Accessories.
60 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 195–200.
61 
I discuss the traditions about Maximus and Vortigern in my forthcoming Halsall, Worlds
of Arthur.
14 Guy Halsall

those crossing the Rhine eastwards.62 Maximus’s retrenchment in the south of

Britannia and the creation of federate warlords, or other military leaders with
sanctioned local control, in the highlands and along Hadrian’s Wall would
project the southern confederate Pictish territories into something like the
critical intermediate ‘hinterland band’ of Germania. In previous writings I argued
that this change in relative proximity to the Empire would produce immediate
crisis in the areas just north of Hadrian’s Wall.63 However, when their links with
Rome were interrupted in the fifth century the barbarian societies on the Rhenish
frontier did not suffer immediate crisis. A half-century or so passed before similar
problems can be postulated for the Franks or the Alamans.
Nevertheless, this actually makes the model more appropriate. Maximus’s
putative withdrawal would roughly coincide with the late fourth-century refor-
tification of Traprain Law, which could easily be explained within that schema.64
It has long been mooted that the Traprain Hoard might be part of a diplomatic
payment. It could have been associated with treaties signed with barbarians in
order to secure the imperial frontiers during Roman civil war.65 Along the Rhine,
the military upheavals of the last decade of the fourth century and the first decade
of the fifth were associated with treaties with the frontier kings.66 The Traprain
payment would have to have been paid by someone later than Maximus, whether
Constantine ‘III’ or representatives of the legitimist government after Maximus’s
or even Constantine’s suppression, but it makes sense within the scenario I am
outlining.
Nevertheless, unsurprisingly, crisis came, as it did elsewhere. Traprain was
abandoned some decades after the refortification, around the middle of the fifth
century.67 It is in this context that I envisage a break-up of the old Pictish con-
federacy in the region. Here the Saxon parallel is instructive. In these political
circumstances the tribal identities became more important and rose back to the
surface, so that old names like those of the Votadini/Gododdin and the Maeatae/

62 
Hunter, Beyond the Edge of Empire. For a trans-Rhenish comparison one need only look
at the site of Oespeler Bach, see Brink-Kloke and Meurers-Balke, ‘Siedlungen und Gräber am
Oespeler Bach’.
63 
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 375–77; Halsall, ‘Beyond the Northern Frontiers’, p. 421.
64 
Feachem, ‘The Fortifications of Traprain Law’.
65 
On the Traprain Hoard, see Kenneth Painter’s excellent account of the hoard and the
individual artefacts: Painter, ‘End of Empire’.
66 
See, for example, the Fourth Consulate of Honorius in Claudian, Claudian, ed. by
Platnauer, i, 286–335, ll. 439–58.
67 
Feachem, ‘The Fortifications of Traprain Law’.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 15

Miathi reappeared in the written sources,68 just as Jutes, Frisians and Angles resur-
faced in the crisis of the Saxon confederacy.
Some signs of change may be visible archaeologically in the inhumation cem-
eteries now found throughout the intramural region and north of the Forth. The
most important feature of this change in practice seems to be a shift towards
burial in communal cemeteries — or at least more communal than hitherto.69
The cemeteries’ appearance took place against a background of exiguous settle-
ment archaeology, described by Fraser Hunter as a late third- to fifth-century
‘gap’.70 It is possible that the new cemeteries were used by several different settle-
ments, providing a shared ritual focus.71 I have suggested something similar for
sixth-century northern Gaulish cemeteries, which also appear against a backdrop
of scattered, ephemeral settlement evidence.72 One might develop this hypoth-
esis to suggest that burial became a more public, communal occasion than had
hitherto been the case and that a wider audience participated in the funeral pro-
cess, now apparently including some sort of procession from the household to
the cemetery. The cemeteries’ seemingly frequent organization into rough rows
suggests (as with the famous Merovingian Reihengräberfelder) that a grave’s loca-
tion and arrangement were to some extent governed by factors other than a desire
to place members of the same family in close proximity. This might in turn mean
that through their rituals funerals ‘spoke’ to each other in quite direct and dis-
tinctive ways.73 These features might make the funeral the occasion for statements
about the deceased, his or her family, inheritance, and so on.
A provisional analysis of burials north of the Forth, especially in Fife and
Angus but to some extent also to the south in Midlothian, suggests that it was
younger and female subjects that tended to be brought to these sites for burial.74

68 
See above, n. 40.
69 
On the development of burial practice in Scotland in this period, see: Ashmore, ‘Low
Cairns, Long Cists and Symbol Stones’; Crawford, Picts, Gaels and Scots, pp. 71–77; Burt, ‘Long
cist cemeteries in Fife; Carver, Surviving in Symbols, pp. 21–24; Lowe, Angels, Fools and Tyrants,
pp. 37–47; Cowley, ‘Early Christian Cemeteries in South-West Scotland’. This will be added
to significantly by the recently-completed doctoral research of Adrian Maldonado at Glasgow
University.
70 
Hunter, Beyond the Edge of Empire, p. 49 (see also pp. 42–44).
71 
I base this on the fact that the dead chosen for burial in these cemeteries were clearly
selected. See below, n. 74.
72 
Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul, pp. 203–31.
73 
Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul, pp. 203–31.
74 
For interim discussion, see the text of a lecture given to the First Millennia Studies Group,
16 Guy Halsall

This pattern can be seen in the light of local, inter-familial alliances and the stress
within them that a death could bring, and so I have read this cemetery evidence
as suggesting, as in Gaul in the sixth century, a level of local competition for
authority, even if expressed rather differently, and perhaps more muted than in
contemporary Gaul or lowland Britain. This evidence also suggests that the impact
of the fifth century changes was felt further north than I thought hitherto.75
In the intramural zone are found stone inscriptions, which can be incorporated
into this schema of local competition as claims for local standing.76 Such claims
tend to be associated with a more established local elite than does competition
evinced in temporary ritual displays such as grave goods77 but their appearance
at this point is nevertheless surely instructive, as is the fact that this, essentially,
is a Roman means of commemoration. It is interesting that it is in the highlands
of Britannia, the old military zone, that the epigraphic habit survived the end of
the Empire. Even during the Roman period it was here that most inscriptions are
to be found. One wonders whether this might be linked to the military nature of
the transition to post-imperial power in these areas, and to the probably Roman
military origins of the local rulers.
So, we have a picture of political competition which might very well have
been played out using different ethnic/political identities, either based on the old
Pictish confederacies, or the lower-level tribes, or perhaps ones which claimed
links with the departing or departed Empire. Such competition, doubtless often
violent, surely encompassed whatever military leaders were now controlling the
Wall and the lands of what James Fraser nicely calls ‘Outer Brigantia’.78 With all
this in mind it becomes, I suggest, rather easier to understand why it was that
the Picts made so little difference to post-imperial Britain south of the Wall.
The Franks and Alamans were drawn into neighbouring imperial provinces by
social stress and competition. There was also a Roman field army on the Loire
that was increasingly composed of Franks and which acted as a crucial factor in
their politics.79 The southern ‘Picts’, by contrast, were barred from the stress in the
former villa zone by evidently quite effective war-leaders in the former military

in Edinburgh in October 2010: <http://600transformer.blogspot.com/2010/10/woad-less-

travelled-archaeology-of.html> [accessed 18 October 2011].
75 
Cf. Halsall ‘Beyond the Northern Frontiers’, pp. 422–23.
76 
For the stones in question, see <http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/> [ac­cessed
22 August 2012]. Rutherford and Ritchie, ‘The Catstane’; Cowie, ‘Excavations at the Catstane’.
77 
As argued in Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul, pp. 215–60.
78 
Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 22–24.
79 
Summary in Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 303–06, 399–403.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 17

zone. If there was a barbarized army — or armies — in the former provinces

of Britannia, I suspect it was dominated by these Britons and by Saxons. The
southern Picts were also crucially weakened by their own internal turmoil. What
actually happened, very interestingly in the comparative history of the fate of
the Roman Empire’s frontier regions, may have been not the ‘drawing south’ of
barbarian polities but a ‘drawing north’ of ‘British’ powers and British identities.

The Anglian Take-Over

This leads to something that cannot be overlooked in considering post-imperial
northern Britain: the so-called Anglian take-over. This is too rarely theorized,
simply being viewed as a violent process of conquest and domination by an exoge-
nous group. It would be rash to remove those elements from the equation80 but it
is timely to think more closely about what Anglian take-over might actually have
meant, and doing so very briefly will provide a link between my discussion of the
regional consequences of the Roman Empire’s disintegration and my conclusions
about key changes around 600.
Two or three features of the so-called Anglian take-over feature most promi-
nently in the literature on this area in this period: the appearance of supposedly
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries (furnished inhumations); that of the supposedly equally
diagnostic Grubenhaus; and changes in the organization and planning of some
high-status hill-top sites that emerge in the course of the period. Yeavering is the
most obvious example of the last, but others have been added in recent decades:
Doon Hill and Sprouston, for example.81
All of these elements need critical re-evaluation. If one starts with the custom
of furnished inhumation, the first thing that must be said, and it cannot be
stressed too strongly, is that there is nothing at all inherently Germanic about
this rite.82 It is rather different from the usual burials in north-east England and
south-east Scotland, and the symbolism of the material deposited in this public
ritual is probably linked somehow to particular political identities which we
would think of as Anglian. However, by the time these burials began to appear,
such symbolism would make a link with polities further south in Britain, not
with territories across the North Sea, except perhaps in myth. One ought to think
of the appearance of these graves as indicative, again, of local competition and

80 
For example, Lowe, Angels, Fools and Tyrants, pp. 10–16.
81 
Hope-Taylor, Yeavering; Smith, ‘Sprouston, Roxburghshire’; Lowe, Angels, Fools and
Tyrants, pp. 30–36; Yeavering, ed. by Frodsham and O’Brien.
82 
Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul, pp. 93–167.
18 Guy Halsall

stress, and the political use of ethnic identities. To see them as simply demarcating
the inexorable march of the English across the landscape would be too unsubtle
an interpretation. Moreover, such graves as exist are usually few in number and
not especially lavishly furnished, a point that is important in how one reads the
precise political circumstances and degree of related stress. 83 Comparison with
furnished burial across the rest of western Europe would suggest that that stress
was quite limited. This would fit with the more or less contemporary development
of high-status settlements in the region.
The ‘sunken-featured buildings’ are crying out for more refined interpreta-
tion.84 These are now quite common around the western provinces of the Roman
Empire, some appearing as early as the third century, earlier, indeed, than they
appear in settlements in Saxony.85 Furthermore, they are now known from sites
right up the east coast of Scotland where it would be rash indeed to see them as
passive indices of English settlement.86 They are more plausibly a feature of our
North Sea ‘cultural province’, with its movement of ideas and cultural influences
in all directions. This explanation, of course, includes within its matrix of factors
the Saxon movement across the North Sea to Britain, but it takes the debate for-
ward from the crude linkage of architectural features to ethnic identities.
Finally, in this section we have the issue of the abandonment and reuse of
the high-status settlements. The debate over what this means has again been too
crude, just looking for architectural parallels and then deciding which of these
two peoples — Britons or Saxons — the site belongs to, that ownership being
expressed, implicitly at least, in terms of biological or genetic ethnic groups.87
Again, more subtle readings of political change and its relationship to ethnic
identity should be possible. These ought perhaps to be understood in the context
of the changes taking place across Western Europe in the decades either side of
600, a crucial period for northern British political history.

83 
Halsall, ‘Gräberfelduntersuchungen und das Ende des römischen Reichs’.
84 
Tipper, The Grubenhaus in Anglo-Saxon England; Hamerow, Early Medieval Settlements.
85 
The semi-excavated hut seems increasingly to have been part of a standard architectural
repertoire in the post-imperial period, although the precise forms varied. A critical discussion
of the ‘Germanic’ origin of Gallic Grubenhäuser can be found in Schweitzer, L’Habitat rural en
Alsace, pp. 77–78. Sunken huts of different types are known from Iberia: see The Archaeology of
Early Medieval Villages, ed. by Quiros Castillo. Another form of this general type of architecture
has been located on the last phases of some Roman rural sites in Northumberland: David Petts,
[pers. comm].
86 
Lowe, Angels, Fools and Tyrants, pp. 18–21.
87 
For example, Scull, ‘Post-Roman Phase I at Yeavering’.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 19

Conclusion: Change around 600

When northern Britain becomes visible in written sources around 600 it is still a
zone of intense political competition, wherein kings — English, British, Scottish
(of Argyll), Irish, and Pictish — try to project their power across very long dis-
tances.88 The politics of the area clearly remain very fluid and based on competing
identities.
But this was a period of crucial change. Economic shifts, from ‘Mediterranean’
to ‘Continental’ trading patterns, might have shifted the balance of power
towards the south and east for the first time since the fourth century, but they
also incorporated Ireland and the west coast of Scotland more fully in long-
distance networks.89 These changes might have been decisive for the intra-mural
zone. James Fraser argues convincingly that the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia
may be a creation of this period.90 An Anglian political identity could thus have
been very attractive in local politics, meaning that the kingdom was drawn north
as well as actively pushing northwards. For all we know, the Scottish kingdom
in Argyll might also owe its origins to these decades.91 The new long-distance
trading patterns would give its rulers, and those of Dumbarton (like the kings of
Bernicia), a crucial advantage.
For these reasons it may be no surprise that the first things we hear about in
this region’s recorded early medieval history are the Bernician expansion under
Æthelfrith, to which one might add the catastrophic defeat of the Gododdin at
Catraeth, and a mighty confrontation between East and West, Northumbrians
and Scots, at Degsastane.92 If one trusts the old Welsh poetry of the Canu Taliesin,
the struggle of Rheged against Bernicia and other British defeats only add to

88 
Fraser, Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 121–54.
89 
For example, Campbell, Saints and Sea-Kings, pp. 43–48; Crawford, Picts, Gaels and
Scots, pp. 67–70.
90 
Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 149–54.
91 
Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 121–24, 133–49. The date and even reality of the
Scottish migration from Ulster to Argyll has become a matter of debate. For a negative view,
see Campbell, Saints and Sea-Kings, pp. 11–15. Movement across the North Channel must
have always been frequent in both directions, rather than taking place at one discrete moment.
However the coalescence of a new political unit around a ruling, military group originally based
in Ireland — in other words an analogous process to that which might have happened on the
east coast, with the Bernicians — does not seem unlikely.
92 
Catraeth: See Aneirin, The Gododdin, ed. by Koch. Bede, Ecclesiastical History, trans. by
Colgrave and Mynors, 1.34.
20 Guy Halsall

the picture of a dramatic change in fortunes, with the intra-mural and ‘Outer
Brigantian’ British swamped to some extent from both sides.93
But what of the other element in the equation, the Picts? The period around
600 seems to be important, north of the Forth, with the earliest phases of occu-
pation of many hill-forts belonging to that time.94 Contemporary with this, at
least in Fife and Angus, are changes in the cemeteries, with the appearance of
above-ground monuments — barrows and symbol stones — and other develop-
ments suggesting, as in many other areas of the West at this time, a growth in
local aristocratic power.95 I have recently suggested that this might suggest a frag-
mentation of earlier extensive but weak overlordships into smaller, more local,
but perhaps more cohesive, territories.96
The appearance of the new kingdoms could be part and parcel of this change.
It might also explain why the Picts seem curiously absent from written accounts
of the politics of this earliest phase of the historic period. Indeed, the kingdom of
the Picts as we know it might be yet another seventh-century development out of
this situation.
This vital period, illustrating, in my view, the ultimate demise of what we
might call the post-imperial world — the end, if you like, of the Roman world-
view — seems like a useful place to end this survey. It underlines that, north and
south of the Forth, experiencing the dramas and traumas of the end of the Roman
Empire was certainly not ‘just something that happened to other people’.

93 
Taliesin, The Poems of Taliesin, ed. by Williams; Taliesin, Poems, trans. by Pennar; Nennius,
The ‘Historia Brittonum’, ed. by Dumville, p. 63.
94 
For example, Close-Brooks, ‘Excavations at Clatchard Craig, Fife’; Alcock and Alcock,
‘Reconnaissance Excavations on Early Historic Fortifications’, p. 201; Crawford, Picts, Gaels and
Scots, p. 45.
95 
See above, n. 69.
96 
See above, n. 74.
Northern Britain and the Fall of the Roman Empire 21

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