The Bavarians from the Ground Up

Since written history doesn't spread very much light on the people who lived in sixth century Bavaria, let's literally look to the ground and examine what their cemeteries tell us about them.  Aschheim is the only place where plague aDNA has been found, but as far as I know, it is the only Late Antique...

Who were the Early Medieval Bavarians?

My reading for the last year has been all over the place as I try to catch up on the world of the Plague of Justinian. A sample of my reading for the last few months is here. Believe it or not, they all relate in some what to what was going on during the...

What’s in a name?

After discussing the linguistic changes and yet continuity in Dalriada yesterday, lets look at the names for the Britons and Picts in the Early Historic Period. Fraser points out that the usual explanation that Pict means 'painted people' doesn't really hold up historically or linguistically. What do you call an inhabitant of Britain in the...

The Horsemen

If you look at the map above, there is a tribe named the Epidii in the western isles of Scotland. This tribe as been a bit enigmatic because the name has never appeared on any maps or referred to in any writings after Ptolomy's survey during the Flavian era. The name Epidii has as its...

Bede’s use of gens

So I'm reading along in Fraser's From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795, and I'm reading through the Roman period.  Not really my period of interest, so not much has really caught by attention. Anyway, Fraser points out (p. 47) that Bede uses the term gens Pictorum which has been used for ages to indicate...

Bernicia from the South

What I would like to explore today is the hypothesis that the early Bernicians were viewed as outsiders by the southern English, including in Deira and Lindsey. The Bernician heartland outside of the former Roman province may have also made them seem more barbarian to even the Anglo-Saxons. Was there a long held suspicion that...