≡ PDF Britain AD A Quest for Arthur England and the AngloSaxons Francis Pryor 9780007181872 Books

Britain AD A Quest for Arthur England and the AngloSaxons Francis Pryor 9780007181872 Books

Download As PDF : Britain AD A Quest for Arthur England and the AngloSaxons Francis Pryor 9780007181872 Books

Britain AD A Quest for Arthur England and the AngloSaxons Francis Pryor 9780007181872 Books

I love all of Professor Pryor's books. And sometimes, some days, only a good archeology book will do. This is part of a Trio of books that starts with SEAHENGE.


Tags : Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons [Francis Pryor] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Leading archaeologist Francis Pryor retells the story of King Arthur, legendary king of the Britons,Francis Pryor,Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons,Harper Perennial,0007181876,Archaeology by period region,Arthur,Arthur,,Britannia,British & Irish history,Britons,Britons - Kings and rulers - Legends,Britons;Kings and rulers;Legends.,Europe - Great Britain - General,Europe - Ireland,Europe British Isles,European history,GENERAL,General Adult,Great Britain,Great Britain - History - To 1066,Great Britain - Kings and rulers,Great BritainBritish Isles,Great Britain;History;To 1066.,Great Britain;Kings and rulers.,HISTORY Europe Great Britain,HISTORY Europe Great Britain General,HISTORY Europe Ireland,History,History - General History,HistoryWorld,History: World,Humanities Archaeology Archaeology by period region,Humanities History Regional and national history European history British and Irish history,Ireland,King,Kings and rulers,Legends,Non-Fiction,Prehistory,United Kingdom, Great Britain,World history,c 500 CE to c 1000 CE,c. 500 CE to c. 1000 CE,Europe - Great Britain - General,HISTORY Europe Great Britain,HISTORY Europe Great Britain General,HISTORY Europe Ireland,Arthur,,Britons,Great Britain,King,Kings and rulers,Legends,Prehistory,United Kingdom, Great Britain,c 500 CE to c 1000 CE,c. 500 CE to c. 1000 CE,Archaeology by period region,European history,Europe - Ireland,Europe British Isles,Ireland,Arthur,Britons - Kings and rulers - Legends,Britons;Kings and rulers;Legends.,Great Britain - History - To 1066,Great Britain - Kings and rulers,Great Britain;History;To 1066.,Great Britain;Kings and rulers.,History - General History,History,History: World,British & Irish history,Humanities Archaeology Archaeology by period region,Humanities History Regional and national history European history British and Irish history,World history

Britain AD A Quest for Arthur England and the AngloSaxons Francis Pryor 9780007181872 Books Reviews

Dry, poorly edited and overall hard to read. Despite being a voracious reader and researcher on this topic, I was ready to put it down by chapter five.
Francis Pryor has written a series of excellent books about prehistory of Britain. They are easy to read and very informative. However, if you are not an archeology fan like I am, you will not like them. If you find Stonehenge and its like genuinely fascinating, don't miss these books. PKG
I won't rehearse points made by other reviewers except to say that I agree that he is selective in his use of evidence and totally discounts the written accounts which have survived from this period. While I suspect that the Anglo-Saxon "invasions" were not quite the wholesale population replacement once pictured, I do think there were actual invaders and that they became the dominant group in the eastern, central and southern sections of the island. The evidence is just too strong that there were movements of large groups of peoples during the late Roman period (although probably not the mass "folk movements" of earlier histories)and I don't think the British Isles would have been any exception. His rejection of the Saxon Shore forts as defensive efforts by the late empire is unconvincing and he simply skips over why the language of a marginal group of coastal tribes, now represented by a tiny group of surviving people (the Frisians) would have become "fashionable" in the last days of the Romano-British period. I actually find it rather surprising that an English archaeologist would dismiss the motif of an invasive upper class given "1066 and all of that", as the saying goes. At any rate, this book really only rates about 2 1/2 stars. It's readable and there are some good passages, but his primary theme is, to put it mildly, unproven and while I totally agree that there was a lot of continuity in the British countryside, I think he undermines this part of his thesis by insisting that there was no Anglo-Saxon invasion. Invasion as we think of it, yes, there was probably nothing quite like that, but I think it is almost absurdly evident that there was a major population shift which brought about a seismic change in language and customs. Those don't happen because of "fashion". They happen when it becomes advantageous to adopt the culture of the dominant group. There's a reason why English is the lingua franca of India.
This book is very disappointing.

First of all, I read it to get history of Arthurian Britain, and there
is actually not a whole lot about Arthur. He does discuss the
archeology of Tintagel, one of several sites that seem historically
likely to be associated with Arthur. It is possible he wrote before the
latest findings that have been disseminated through documentaries on
this subject.

Second, Myers is so focused on knocking down the notion that mass
migration has ever occurred at any time in British history, that it's
hard to know what to make of the little he tells us did happen. He
wrote at the end of a time when it was intelligentsically popular to
deny that history ever happened, let alone that mass migrations
happened. Recently autosomal and more sophisticated mitochondrial and Y
DNA evidence has conclusively proven that for instance the Neolithic and
Bell Beaker/ Indo European migrations happened, en masse. It is also
well accepted that an Anglo-Saxon mass migration happened. There is
ample evidence of iron age Celtic migration from the continent.

So Pryor tells us adnauseum nothing changed, nothing changed, nothing
changed, no evidence of disorder, chaos, upset, or war, but he also
insists there's no evidence of migration. He never discusses the fact
that during the time of Anglo-Saxon settlement they WERENT'T trading
with Rome, though that is rather implicit in his map of finds from
Mediterranean trade. He insists that Celts continued to live alongside
Saxons, when we know for one thing that they did not live in the same
settlements, intermarry, have much to do with each other. He never
argues that "Early Christian Britain" didn't NEED any warlords who
held off Saxons or expanded his kingdom, like King Arthur, yet he tells
us there were no battles and there was no war.

Mentioned just once, in passing, is references to the Justinian plague, and possibly an environmental disaster as well, that are mentioned in most Arthur stories and some medieval Welsh histories. We know now, and knew by 2000, that Krakatoa's historical mightiest effort occurred in the 530s AD, blowing a gap in the island of Sumatra that created the Sunda strait, and causing years of environmental upset and famine worldwide. One effect was letting the plague loose in East Africa, where it soon spread by trade to the Mediterranean. Archeology plainly shows it struck and decimated the population in southwestern England, and Wales, but not the rest of England to any degree nor as early. Arhceology clearly shows that southwestern England and Wales were trading with the Mediterranean, so were vulnerable to shipborne plague, even Pryor manages to mention that, while them Saxons who Pryor tells us didn't exist to the east had nothing to do with Britons and traded with Germany and Scandinavia. A large belt of forest separated the two groups. After the plague eliminated the population of southwestern and western England, the Saxons whose progress had been halted, quickly moved in, so much for migration that never happened. It is so unlikely that stories about the plague would have come down in most stories from this time from southwestern England and Wales, that the specific king who ruled at that time probably existed as well, and moreover he specifically existed in southwestern England. Plague and its stories didn't happen anywhere else. I don't know what Pryor cares about, but it isn't reality.
You know, it's the nature of this field that anything you write is likely one day to be wrong. It's terribly difficult to interpret from durable physical remains. And it's doubly difficult in Britain where the early "histories" were written to suit the powerful sponsors to justify various social themes, And one of the most difficult issues to pin down is the Anglo-Saxon "invasion." It certainly wasn't the violent take-over depicted by the monks who wrote the early works to invent heroic warrior ancestors for their sponsors.

But you should still read this book. Pryor does indeed expend a lot of words on how and why many of his predecessors were wrong. And anyone new to reading the popular literature of the field does need to understand that this is no different from other scientific endeavors. The academics are just as childish and pig-headed and blind to anything that doesn't suit the thesis that made their reputations as any other field. And you need to understand this when you read any of them.

I suspect he is more strident here than in his Britain BC book because prehistory is his specialty, and in this one, the historians will be outraged that he is trespassing. But when it comes to what people left behind in Britain, there are as good authorities but none better.
I love all of Professor Pryor's books. And sometimes, some days, only a good archeology book will do. This is part of a Trio of books that starts with SEAHENGE.