Peter Heather

As we said, it looks like these Roman landowners survive exiting the system for a generation or two in the 5th century.

But by the end of the 5th, middle of the 6th century, they have completely gone.

No, they're not.

The villas disappear.

The towns disappear.

Yeah, absolutely.

Latin disappears.

All the marks of Roman culture disappear.

And actually the latest DNA evidence, although it's only one site, it had been argued that they stopped being Roman, but they kind of make themselves into Anglo-Saxons.

I never really bought that.

You've got one very interesting cemetery now from Dover looking at Anglo-Saxon elite from the 5th into the 6th century.

And the vast majority of the families in there, and you can see their related families, they are intrusive continental groupings, as you might expect.

One, very interestingly, one family line is indigenous Romano-Britain.

So...

a minority somehow navigate across that boundary.

But basically, Roman culture and most of the patterns of Roman life disappear in Britain.

The wonderful thing is there's a great archaeologist in Canterbury, Ellen Swift, who's managed to show there is a market for secondhand broken glass in post-Roman Britain, which I think tells you everything you need to know.

Yes.

Give you some broken glass.

Bits of northern gold look like that.