Origins of the English (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology)

National origins remain as important as they have ever been to our sense of identity. Accounts of the early history of the peoples of Europe, including the English, are key tools in our construction of that identity. National identity has been studied through a range of different types of evidence--historical, archaeological, linguistic and most recently genetic. This has caused problems of interdisciplinary communication. In "The Origins of the English" Catherine Hills carefully and succinctly unravels these different perceptions and types of evidence to assess how far it is really possible to understand when and how the people living in south and east Britain became English . Table of Contents: Acknowledgements 7 Map 8 1. Introduction 9 2. Attitudes to Anglo-Saxons 21 3. Language 41 4. Bones, genes and people 57 5. Across the North Sea 73 6. Archaeological evidence 85 7. Conclusion 109 Notes 117 Bibliography 119 Index 127