Professor Rob Collins

But the topography itself, the landscape, is channeling movement.

And so the Roman roads are often built in those places which are best for movement.

In that sense, we don't need a bunch of picks coming with battering rams and picks and buckets to take away the wall.

They'll just take Deer Street.

And I think even if your sense of identity has changed, even if you no longer call yourself Roman and you'd rather think of yourself as Pictish or English,

one of those constants is power.

Regardless of who's in charge, someone wants to be in charge.

And so the basis of power, even if there's no longer a Roman Empire, are still largely the same.

It's how many men you can control as soldiers, as warriors.

and how much resource, how much tax, how much tribute.

Exactly.

So that's a constant.

So the way you label it might change, but the underlying activity is much the same.

The only difference is you're not then siphoning off some of that tax, that tribute to go further up the food chain to a distant emperor.

It's staying local or within the region.

And so what we see, I think, in Central Britain, that part, which is the Roman frontiers,

What's really interesting is it becomes the kingdom of Northumbria, and we think of Northumbria as an English kingdom, but actually much of the Anglo-Saxon material culture as we see it is really confined

to the east and very largely to kind of the broader Yorkshire region and certain points in the east along the coasts and maybe going up the river valleys a little bit.

There's not this widespread Englishness in terms of artifacts, brooches and things that we see in the south or in the Midlands.

There's something else happening here identity-wise.