How life in Britain changed after the Romans left (409AD)
In 409AD, more than 350 years after the Roman conquest of 43AD, the island slipped from the control of the Roman Empire. One of the remarkable things about the first decades of the 5th century was the apparent speed with which the things we associate with Roman life disappeared. The use of coins seems to have been an early casualty. Coins were always supplied by Rome to do the things that the Roman government cared about ... This suggests there was no demand for small change or faith in the value of base metal coinage.
Industrial pottery manufacture (widespread in the fourth century) also vanished by about 420AD, while villas, some of which had achieved a peak of grandeur in the 4th century, were abandoned as luxury residences.
Towns had already undergone dramatic changes, with monumental public buildings often abandoned from the 3rd century onwards, but signs of urban life vanish almost entirely after about 420AD. We can be fairly certain that people quickly lost interest in things like coins, mosaics, villas, towns and tableware. During the 5th century once Britain was no longer part of the Roman Empire, new forms of dress, buildings, pottery and burial rapidly appeared, particularly in the east of Britain.
Paradoxically, in western Britain, at places like Tintagel, people who had never shown much interest in Mediterranean life began in the 5th and 6th centuries to behave in ways that were more “Roman”. They used inscriptions on stone and imported wine, tablewares (and presumably perishable goods like silk) from the eastern Mediterranean. For these people, “being Roman” (perhaps associated with Christianity) assumed a new importance, as a way of expressing their difference from those in the east who they associated with “Germanic” incomers.
https://theconversation.com/the-roman-brexit-how-life-in-britain-changed-after-409ad-93886
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Thanks for sharing! 