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• Gretzinger, J., Sayer, D., Justeau, P. et al. The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool. Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05247-2

There are some problems with the recent Nature paper that I would like to highlight, interesting though it is, and important as it is in adding further support to a substantial immigration from the North Sea littoral. To quote from Nick Higham "It is fairly clear that most Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are unrepresentative of the whole population ..." Looking at the paper, most of the remains investigated, originating from Britain, appear to be from before 700, and therefore are necessarily from pagan burials - this is emphasised by the many mentions of grave goods. This suggests to me that the investigators were looking at a sub-set of the population at the time, those buried in culturally pagan Germanic burial sites. Basically, if you look in hen coops, you will find lots of hens. The Iron Age in Britain, unlike the Bronze Age, is notoriously poor in burials, the remains only account for a small fraction of the Iron Age population. One estimate suggested that just 6% of bodies were disposed of in a way that would show up in the archaeological record. It could easily be argued that this lack of recognisable burials carried over within the native population into the post-Roman period, and therefore what the recent paper was looking at was a part of the population that included only incomers and those of the native population that had fully integrated into this imported cultural tradition. We are also left hanging concerning the apparent influx of substantial numbers of people with an Iron Age French (Gaulish) genetic profile, which does not seem to have or suggest a historic rationale. Urselius ( talk) 09:14, 23 September 2022 (UTC) reply

Urselius, I have added a link. The paper is dated 21 September, roughly when would you expect to see comments on the paper from other researchers? TSventon ( talk) 15:40, 23 September 2022 (UTC) reply

The usual 'newspaper column' comments are already out. Comments from other researchers take a bit longer, probably in a month or so. Urselius ( talk) 16:26, 24 September 2022 (UTC) reply

Urselius can you give a link to Higham's comments? Dudley Miles ( talk) 17:40, 24 September 2022 (UTC) reply

They are in the body of the text of this Wikipedia article. Urselius ( talk) 18:11, 24 September 2022 (UTC) reply

Sorry, I misread you. I thought that your whole comment was a quote from Higham. Dudley Miles ( talk) 18:26, 24 September 2022 (UTC) reply

The Leslie et al. paper also noted the French-like element to the modern British population, but ascribed it to pre-Roman immigration - the Belgae spring to mind. Interestingly, the Leslie et al. people claimed to have a dating method for analysing when genetic elements entered the British population. If the influx was indeed pre-Roman, the need for a historically unattested post-Roman immigration from France (Gaul) is gone. Urselius ( talk)

It has long been known to mortuary archaeologists that furnished inhumation has nothing to do with paganism. This was first shown by Bailey Young and Halsall offers a summary in Worlds of Arthur, Chapter 10 for the extensive scholarship outlining why there is no inherent reason that it must have anything to do with paganism. There are many issues and there is much to be discussed with regard to this new paper, but let us at least make our objections based on contemporary understandings in contemporary scholarship. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:908:610:B640:98B:DCD0:1E90:F3F9 ( talk) 12:45, 28 September 2022 (UTC) reply

Bede had a lot to say about Anglo-Saxon paganism and the process of conversion. He was a proponent of the Roman Church against the Celtic Church, but I doubt that his assertions about Anglo-Saxon paganism can be dismissed in their entirety, merely on the opinion of certain modern scholars. Urselius ( talk) 11:26, 29 September 2022 (UTC) reply

Unfortunately, on Wikipedia we are more interested in what modern scholarship actually demonstrates (CF the Reliable Sources rule), than what we speculate can or cannot be dismissed in ancient sources with their own problems. 131.220.113.250 ( talk) 11:01, 24 October 2022 (UTC) reply

If a bibliography is necessary for this point:

B.K. Young, "Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity: A Study in the Historical Interpretation of Archaeological Material (diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1975); id., ‘Paganisme, christianisme et rites funéraires mérovingiens,’ Archéolo- gie Médiévale 7 (1977), pp. 5–81

G. Halsall, ‘La Christianisation de la région de Metz à travers les sources archéologiques (5ème–7ème siècle): problèmes et possibilités,’ in M. Polfer ed., L’Évangélisation des régions entre Meuse et Moselle et la Fondation de l’Abbaye d’Echternach (Ve–IXe siècle), (Luxembourg, 2000), pp. 123–46

G. Halsall, “Examining the Christianization of the Region of Metz from Archaeological Sources,” Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 261–284;

G. Halsall, Worlds of Arthur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 228–229.

D.M. Hadley, "Burial, Belief and Identity in Later Anglo-Saxon England," in Reflections: 50 Years of Medieval Archaeology, 1957–2007, ed. Roberta Gilchrist and Andrew Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2009)

Howard Williams, "At the Funeral," in Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited, edited by Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark and Sarah Semple (London: Oxbow Books, 2010)

Note e.g. Williams, who is a particularly regarded expert on the topic of Anglo-Saxon funerary ritual and its cosmological connotations, in the piece cited above. On the first page he states:

"The emergence of furnished cremation and inhumation graves is thus no longer regarded as reflecting a single and coherent ‘Anglo-Saxon paganism’; nor need the decline in accompanied burial relate directly or exclusively to Christian conversion (e.g. Geake 1997). Indeed, the very term ‘pagan Anglo-Saxon burial’ compounds the conceptually naïve assumption that there existed a one-to-one correlation between ethnic affiliation, religious beliefs and ritual practice that archaeologists have been so keen to move beyond (e.g. Carver this vol.). Therefore, on both theoretical and methodological grounds, pagan mortuary ritual is an area of study bedevilled with problems and recent considerations of religion that have sometimes avoided the burial evidence all together."

In the conclusion to the same piece:

"The mortuary rituals were not primarily about representation, nor were they primarily about symbolising religious or social concepts. Instead, they were mnemonic performances, enabling the living to transform the dead and to reconstitute the relationship between them." Also noteworthy: Williams has himself been challenged on the ability to show this commemoration of the dead/ancestors in ritual, by Halsall and Harland, among others.

The point here being, our arguments for inclusion of one piece, and discussion of its merits, should be based upon acquaintance with contemporary literature on these issues and the contemporary debates said literature is involved in, not our cherry-picked preferences and assumptions about what this society looked liked derived from decades-old scholarship. 2A02:908:610:B640:98B:DCD0:1E90:F3F9 ( talk) 13:06, 28 September 2022 (UTC) reply

No one is arguing for the new paper to be ignored. You seem to have missed my main concerns with the paper, and be wholly engaged in a minor part of what I said. The beliefs of those buried in Anglo-Saxon burial grounds is almost an irrelevancy. What is relevant, is that their funerary goods were overwhelmingly of Germanic cultural forms and origins. I think that your ideas, with whatever textual support you can muster, are rather a minority view. Christianity tends to frown on funerary goods in general, barring the occasional devotional article, such as St. Cuthbert's cross. I do not think that this assertion can be seriously doubted. Urselius ( talk) 11:16, 29 September 2022 (UTC) reply

It is interesting to note the very great difference between the Late Romano-British archaeological record, characterised by a shift from large numbers of settlements and few cemeteries, which are unfurnished burials, towards early Anglo-Saxon archaeology showing the opposite character with small numbers of settlements and many cemeteries of furnished burials. Cleary, S.E. (1993) Approaches to the Differences between Late Romano British and Early Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Anglo-Saxon Studies in History and Archaeology 6, pp. 57-63. This suggests to me, that furnished cemeteries may not be representative of the population as a whole. Fewer settlements but more graves seems illogical, unless the number of Romano-British graves are unrepresentative of the population size to some extent, and that the same might be true for the native population in early Anglo-Saxon times. Urselius ( talk) 10:08, 30 September 2022 (UTC) reply

Do you have any citations or evidence for the assertion that 'my ideas', which cover mortuary archaeology across the previous 20 years and offer a summary and historiography of approaches, are a 'minority view'? In Wikipedia we deal with citations, scholarship, and reliable sources, not wishful-thinking and speculative assertion. I refer you again to the Williams quote 'The emergence of furnished cremation and inhumation graves is thus no longer regarded as reflecting a single and coherent ‘Anglo-Saxon paganism’; nor need the decline in accompanied burial relate directly or exclusively to Christian conversion (e.g. Geake 1997).' He's describing a scholarly consensus there, not merely his own putatively 'minority' opinion (and it is far from minority) 131.220.113.250 ( talk) 11:03, 24 October 2022 (UTC) reply

@ Urselius: I finally got to spend some time on this. I think your remark is useful. It means that we should not write as if the samples of early medieval burials are a true early medieval population. We can't really know how representative they were, or whether the types of burials used might favour people with a certain ancestry. Read carefully I think the authours also do this. It is encouraging that the burials from the south sometimes seem be almost entirely non "Anglo Saxon" because it shows not all burial sites used were Anglo Saxon. The only way we estimate total genetic impact on the reproducing population is to switch back to modern data like Leslie, which they do; and maybe we should cite that. Other points:

• The authors do mention the Leslie article which of course did not use ancient DNA, and indicate why this study can go further than Leslie on some questions of timing.
• The iron age "French/Belgian" component is discussed in a lot more detail in the supplementary material. They a lot of work to exclude the idea that this was a pre medieval migration. They also don't think it can be caused by one single wave. The initial early medieval entry is seen as Frankish immigration via Kent. They think there might have been continuous trickle and other pulses over a long period. One obvious one they mention is the Norman conquest.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 11:39, 19 August 2023 (UTC) reply

• I do not think Higham's 2004 paper should be cited against the 2022 paper. There has been enormous progress in research in the last 20 years. At this stage I think we can only report a very interesting reliable source and wait to see what support/criticism from reliable sources follows, not criticise according to our own non-expert views. Dudley Miles ( talk) 15:22, 19 August 2023 (UTC) reply

The 'language and literature' section is short and basically contains a bit about the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and some other material about language transition. I think these could be better redistributed, respectively to the relevant parts of 'Historical evidence' and 'Linguistic evidence'. But just thought I'd post here first in case anyone has strong views about that. Alarichall ( talk) 08:28, 10 October 2023 (UTC) reply

I agree about moving the language part to Linguistic evidence. I would delete all the references to literature as all the works cited are far too late to be relevant to the settlement period. Dudley Miles ( talk) 18:04, 10 October 2023 (UTC) reply

Okay, I'll get on with these changes then :-) Alarichall ( talk) 08:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC) reply

Seems a fairly minor point to bring to the talk page, but anyhow. My edit which tried to indicate that the "small elite migration" theory was recently widely accepted is being contested.

My understanding of the evolution of the scholarly views on this subject is that 1) mass migration theories were favoured in the mid-to-late 20th century, 2) a revisionist view from archaeologists and historians arguing for a much smaller migration became popular and arguably dominant in the early 20th century 21st century [typo; corrected on 2024-02-09], and 3) that the old mass migration narrative has become more accepted after 2020 or so, largely on the back of strong (ancient) DNA evidence.

Perhaps this account is missing some nuance. I observe for instance that on this very talk page there has been some disagreement on how exactly to integrate the ancient DNA evidence, so perhaps it has not been fully accepted as swaying the debate. But regarding the dominance of the "small elite migration" theory, some version of that point existed for a long time in the article with various wordings and supporting sources:

February 2015: "The view that the Anglo-Saxons arose from insular changes and developments, rather than as a result of mass migration and displacement, is now widely accepted." Supporting source: Härke, Heinrich. "Anglo-Saxon Immigration and Ethnogenesis." Medieval Archaeology 55.1 (2011): 1-28.

February 2019: "However, another view, probably the most widely held today, is that the migrants were fewer, possibly centred on a warrior elite." No specific supporting source.

March 2023: "However, another view, the most favoured among 21st-century scholars, is that the migrants were fewer, possibly centred on a warrior elite." Supporting source: Higham & Ryan 2013:104–105.

This last citation now lives at the end of the paragraph which I edited, which is why I did not add one.

It seems illustrative that 1) the "small elite migration" theory was formerly described in the article as "most favoured" but is now instead merely "another view", and 2) the current introduction ends on a fairly conclusive tone in favour of mass migration. To me this does imply that the breadth of acceptance of the "small elite migration" theory really is waning. And I think it would be useful and interesting to note this somehow; it's an interesting bit of historiography on a page which is framed as describing an ongoing debate. Perhaps my attempt at an edit was seen as inelegant or misleading, and someone else can better effect the gist of it. Massivefranklin ( talk) 14:07, 8 February 2024 (UTC) ; edited to correct typo 11:11, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

• The key issue is not editors' views on the academic consensus, which is personal opinion, but what the source says. Neither version reflects Higham & Ryan 104-105 (and nor does the March 2023 edit). You say limited immigration is widely accepted in the 21st century. The source says the theory dates to the late 1980s and very tentatively endorses it, but does not say how widely it is accepted it is. The rest of the paragraph goes well beyond the source, refering to a warrior elite, intermarriage, settlement patterns and land use, none of which are in the source cited. Dudley Miles ( talk) 15:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC) reply

• I agree that the key issue is not editors' views, but what the source says, so I asked for sources when I reverted the edit.

My understanding of the evolution of the scholarly views on this subject is that 1) population replacement theories were favoured in the early 20th century, 2) an argument for a smaller migration became popular in the later 20th century, and 3) that a larger migration narrative has become more accepted in the 21st century on the back of DNA evidence. Highham and Ryan is published by Yale University Press so it is a good source as of 2013, I don't know if an overview has been published more recently.

There are references to a warrior elite, intermarriage, settlement patterns and land use in the body of the article, although I haven't checked how well referenced they are. TSventon ( talk) 03:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

That is my point. I have checked the source and warrior elite etc are not in the source so the references in the article are wrong. Dudley Miles ( talk) 09:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

FWIW I think the DNA evidence is starting to settle down and be more respectable now, and this will start to be spread into different fields. Concerning the history of debate, I think some of the early genetic studies pushed for extreme replacement scenarios but those quickly became controversial. The consensus is once again somewhere in between the extreme scenarios. As already cited in our text the geneticists are now confident there was a major immigration into eastern England in post Roman times, contributing to about 40% of the modern English genetic make-up.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 09:55, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

I wonder if Marc Morris's The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England pp 34-35 might be an acceptable source for "state of the field" claims. The book is more of a pop history but he is fairly well credentialled.

Beginning in the 1960s, this view was subjected to a thoroughgoing re-evaluation. ... Instead of a mass migration, scholars developed the idea that Britain was invaded by only a few Saxons who were disproportionately powerful. ... Latterly the pendulum has swung back in the other direction, and the scale of migration is now once again generally reckoned to have been very sizeable. This revisionism has little to do with DNA.

(I am not sure that the genetic studies had such a small role in the debate - he seems strangely dismissive of the idea that genetics could ever have anything to say about history, and his only engagement with the genetics literature in the book is to breezily call it problematic - but if that's what the source says, I guess that I shouldn't contradict it. Perhaps notable that the book came out a year before the Gretzinger paper. But this is rather tangential, as my edit didn't explicitly ascribe changing views to genetic evidence anyhow.) Massivefranklin ( talk) 11:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Unfortunate typo (which I will correct) in my OP - I meant "dominant in the early 21st century", not "20th century". Massivefranklin ( talk) 11:07, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Massivefranklin your edit said a revisionist view that gained wide academic support in the early 21st century claims. I could support a view that gained support in the late 20th century suggests. " revisionist" and "claims" are loaded terms, "early 21st century" was an error and "wide academic support" was unsourced. Also the sentence about "Genetic studies in the late 2010s and early 2020s" added by Dudley Miles here is more important than the apartheid theory and could be moved to the start of the fourth paragraph. TSventon ( talk) 13:22, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

I don't feel that "revisionist" is an especially loaded term these days, although I know of course that it has been used pejoratively. For instance, the source I suggested above uses the term as a neutral descriptor, and the Wikipedia article which you raise portrays it as often being legitimate. I also assumed that the fact that the wording survived for 8 years meant that the sources did support it, but I suppose that ideally I would have checked this myself. I'm happy to concede that the timepoint at which the elite migration theory tipped over to dominance was probably a little earlier than I thought, although I'm still not clear on which decade or two this happened. At any rate, I don't feel especially confident anymore that I'd be able to provide a phrasing of this point that the other participants in this discussion would be happy with. Massivefranklin ( talk) 14:42, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Massivefranklin, I have self reverted, then adjusted your text. Wikipedia tries to use neutral language, see MOS:EDITORIAL and MOS:CLAIM. Of course historians don't have to follow Wikipedia's Manual of Style. TSventon ( talk) 17:39, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

It is increasingly clear that the anglicisation of lowland Britain was far from uniform in nature. In its earliest phases it was not a folk movement such as happened in continental Europe, where entire peoples, such as the Vandals, Visigoths, Burgundians etc. moved and settled as units, with more or less centralised authority figures in charge. Instead it was very piecemeal, with small folk groups arriving and settling in Britain, with kingship and kingdoms developing later. As such, the settlement pattern probably differed greatly from one district to the next. This does not even include the obvious differences between areas anglicised at an early date and those anglicised later due to conquest by Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, where whole British polities were absorbed in a single event. In the latter case, if not in some former cases, elite dominance almost certainly played an important part. The laws of Ine and their allowance for Wylisc (British) subjects of the West Saxon king, make this crystal clear. Urselius ( talk) 21:04, 9 February 2024 (UTC) reply

I agree it probably wasn't uniform, but I would emphasize that one of the most important evolutions in academic thinking is also that we don't really know the details. There are no contemporary records which can really help, and so many older academic works which sound very certain about their position did not really have much evidence to work with. In such a situation it is no wonder that academics have historically swung between extreme ideas. By the way I'm also not convinced that we really have a clear idea about Vandals, Visigoths and Burgundians being "entire peoples", although I think what you mean in these cases is that there were definitely records of large organized groups moving at one moment. That of course does not mean that these groups represented entire peoples (with none left behind in other regions so to speak), nor even ethnically homogeneous groups. Alaric's Visigoths are for example generally seen as a very mixed group of military families ruled by Alaric, who can also be seen as a Roman military leader. The Burgundians who were moved into Burgundy came from a region on the Rhine frontier and were clearly connected to the Roman military. They were very far from the classical Burgundian homeland. Also in England it seems likely that Roman approaches to military recruitment in Northern Europe were quite likely to be involved in whatever happened. The way in which military populations could apparently be identified as peoples by the later Romans is something which is now difficult to work with or reconstruct.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 08:36, 10 February 2024 (UTC) reply

The Goths, on linguistic grounds at least, left behind populations in Scandinavia and the Crimea. That the major migratory 'Germanic tribes' included other barbarians, including Sarmatians, and disaffected Roman provincials and former Roman soldiers is well attested. However, this does not affect the major difference between continental Germanic settlement of large, organised groups under some form of centralised authority (be it a charismatic king or federated chieftains), and the piecemeal settlement of small independent warbands and folk groups that seems to characterise the earliest phase of Germanic settlement in Britain. Though there is later description of kings in this period they seem to be back projections and rather mythic in character, like two brothers named 'Stallion' and 'Horse'. Urselius ( talk) 09:37, 10 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Dudley Miles, the text currently has a mixture of "the Continent", "the continent", "Continental Europe" and "continental Europe". It is likely that some non-British English speakers are confused by "the Continent". My suggestion is to change the first mention of "the ... Continent" to "continental Europe" and later mentions to "the continent". As you reverted my edit, can you say what you would suggest? TSventon ( talk) 18:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC) reply

That would be incorrect I think. "the continent" should still be "the Continent" if meaning mainland Europe even with a first mention of CE. I agree for non-British English speakers (and probably many British English speakers too) this is confusing and suggest just using "mainland Europe" throughout. DeCausa ( talk) 18:59, 13 February 2024 (UTC) reply

"The Continent" is standard and a widely used term. I do not think that is more confusing than many other usages, but I agree that it is better to use "mainland Europe" or "continental Europe" throughout than to argue about the issue. Dudley Miles ( talk) 19:10, 13 February 2024 (UTC) reply