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Re: A History of Ancient Britain
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The Sea Cat wrote:
tiompan wrote:
tjj wrote:
Gwass wrote:
[quote="CARL"]The BBC magazine I read said the series stops at the Romans.

Hopefully so but the HOAB website says that it runs up to the end of roman britain in the 5th century.

I really hope not and it shouldn't as it contradicts the title of the series! I can imagine a v boring final episode charting roman britain and the contrast between England and Wales and the lucky Scots & Irish who weren't so aflicted. I think tomo night's should be the money as far as I'm concerned but just looked at the locations online Swinside, the orkney WHS's, Stonehenge, Durrington and The Boyne sites.



I'm enjoying the series very much, especially as plenty of ancient sites are featured. I believe Neil Oliver visits Stonehenge in tonight's episode, plus Skara Brae and a '6,000 year old axe factory in the Lake District'. Alison Graham in the RT describes Neil as a 'lucky blighter' as he wanders soulfully around Stonehenge in the 'fabulously dream-like' snow.

As Carl mentioned, it stops at the Iron Age and the Romans ... though I would be interested in a programme that looked at life in Britain under the Roman occupation to see how people lived along side them. We know Scotland remained 'free' but there must of been enclaves of people for whom life carried on as before with little or no influence from the Romans. Can't imagine the Romans having a big impact on rural Cornwall for example.


North Britain /Caledonia/Alba was far from Roman free June , they got at least as far north as Aberdeenshire and leaders from Orkney were subservient . Although there was persistent guerilla warfare not everyone thought it all bad either .


Ireland is an interesting case. It's long been held that the Romans made initial exploratory excursions and decided that the combination of landscape and hostile natives made it not worth expending further military effort on. However, they may well have had some social/cultural influence after all according to this article:

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba14/BA14FEAT.HTML

One thing is for sure, they certainly made up for it when the Roman Empire effectively transformed itself into the Roman Catholic Church, but that's another story....


The later Scandanavian and Norman invasion/settlement also get conveniently ignored in Scotland and Ireland when both , particularly the latter had major impacts .The english seem to have a more adult confident approach and accept their invasions and defeats .


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tiompan
Posted by tiompan
23rd February 2011ce
11:01

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Re: A History of Ancient Britain (The Sea Cat)

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Re: A History of Ancient Britain (The Sea Cat)

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