Chapter Seven Communities and Kinship David E. Thornton The purpose of this chapter is to examine the local communities that existed in Britain and Ireland during the sub- and post-Roman periods. What was the nature of these communities? Should they be seen as population groups or territories? What were their internal dynamics and what were the personal networks that determined how their individual members interacted with one another? And how were such interac- tions, especially disputes, regulated by society? It is not an easy task to answer such questions for this particularly “dark” period: our extant historical documents are few and far between, and those that have survived are invariably later in date and not always reliable when dealing with the fifth to eighth centuries. Furthermore, most of these sources are concerned primarily with the important kingdoms and their rulers, and have little to say about the lives of their more ordinary inhabitants. The fifth and sixth centuries represent a period of significant change and transition following the end of centralized Roman administration in the West. Writing probably in the mid-sixth century, the cleric Gildas referred to the Britons as “ciues,” meaning possibly “countrymen” but also “citizens,” and he described the British leader (dux) Ambrosius Aurelianus as being of the Roman people, “gens.” 1 Like others living in post-Roman western Europe, Gildas clearly saw himself and his fellow Britons as continuing Romanitas in some way. However, it is also clear that Roman culture had effectively disappeared in most areas. Gildas himself stated: “the ciuitates of our land are not populated even now as they once were; right to the present day, they are deserted, in ruins and unkempt.” 2 In fact, archaeological investigation has demon- strated that while many Romano-British towns were indeed still occupied by the late fifth and early sixth centuries, the nature of this occupation had changed significantly from what it had been two centuries earlier. These post-Roman communities were effectively squatting on the remains of their Roman predecessors, living “a sub-Iron Age lifestyle,” 3 little different from that of the Anglo-Saxon settlers. Even in Ireland, which was never conquered by the Romans, the fifth and sixth centuries would seem to have witnessed significant socioeconomic and political changes reflected in the spread of new forms of settlement, notably the ringfort and crannog, which also had reflexes in parts of western Britain. 4 This same period in A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland, c.500–c.1100 Edited by Pauline Stafford © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-10628-3