Early medieval Celtic Britain: The Early Historic Period

The vacuum created by the collapse of the Roman province of Britannia created a vortex of movement which would shape the centuries to come. Some Roman citizens migrated to Armorica and Gaul, while incomers arrived from across the North Sea and Irish Sea for a variety of reasons, from piracy to mercenary work to enslaved labour. Migration did not only occur across the seas, and people migrated and invaded internally as part of these changes (Fleming 2021). Although the social and political consequences were most conspicuous in southern and eastern Britain, where Roman culture was most entrenched, the changes of the age impacted all these islands’ peoples. New kingdoms based on local territorial lordship formed in the north and west, and even those furthest from the frontier were impacted in surprising ways with the memory of Empire.