Dig Into History – April 2019

3

Since the Early Middle Ages, people have

thought that the Angles — along with other

Germanic tribes called the Saxons and the Jutes

— conquered Britain when the Western Roman

Empire collapsed in the 400s. C.E. Such thinking

has led present-day scholars to refer to England

between 400 and 1100 C.E. as Anglo-Saxon

England. The people who lived there during this

time have come to be called the Anglo-Saxons,

even though that term was one that the so-called

Anglo-Saxons rarely used for themselves.

But — What If?

Recently, scholars have been asking new

questions about this time period. If the peoples of

Anglo-Saxon England did not call themselves

Anglo-Saxons, then what did they call

themselves? Where did they come from? How did

they live their lives? Where did they go? In this

issue, we will explore how historians have

traditionally answered these questions by looking

primarily at texts that survive from the period.

But, as we will see, early medieval authors wrote

for their own purposes — not for ours. Rarely do

these texts answer the questions that people

today want to ask.

Today, scholars are becoming more and more

interested in exploring surviving texts to see what

they tell us about their authors and their early

readers. At the same time, researchers are

beginning to rely increasingly on archaeology

and material culture to ask and answer new sets

of questions.

Early Middle Ages refers to the period of time that followed the collapse of Roman civilization in the fifth
centuryƋƍ to approximately 1000 Ƌƍ

by Matthew C. Delvaux

GRIP WEAKENS

e often look back to

the Anglo-Saxons

as a way to help

explain the world today. Why?

The Anglo-Saxons spoke the

earliest forms of English. Their

kingdoms were the foundation

of present-day England. Even

the word “English” derives

from an Anglo-Saxon root —

Englisc, which referred to the

Angles tribe and the language

that the Angles spoke.

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