Product Description

Leading archaeologist Francis Pryor retells the story of King Arthur, legendary king of the Britons, tracing it back to its Bronze Age origins. The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is one of the most enduring in Britain's history, spanning centuries and surviving invasions by Angles, Vikings and Normans. In his latest book Francis Pryor -- one of Britain's most celebrated archaeologists and author of the acclaimed Britain B.C. and Seahenge -- traces the story of Arthur back to its ancient origins. Putting forth the compelling idea that most of the key elements of the Arthurian legends are deeply rooted in Bronze and Iron Ages (the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Sword in the Stone and so on), Pryor argues that the legends' survival mirrors a flourishing, indigenous culture that endured through the Roman occupation of Britain, and the subsequent invasions of the so-called Dark Ages. As in Britain B.C., Pryor roots his story in the very landscape, from Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, to South Cadbury Castle in Somerset and Tintagel in Cornwall. He traces the story back to the 5th-century King Arthur and beyond, all the time testing his ideas with archaeological evidence, and showing how the story was manipulated through the ages for various historical and literary purposes, by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory, among others. Delving into history, literary sources -- ancient, medieval and romantic -- and archaeological research, Francis Pryor creates an original, lively and illuminating account of this most British of legends.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37553 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 268 pages

Review
Praise for Britain B.C.: 'Francis Pryor has given us a remarkable, imaginative and persuasive account of those other Britons ! its enthusiastic and confident approach deserves to be very influential' TLS 'A compulsive narrative intertwining prehistory, the excitement of discovery and personalities. It bounds along, wonderfully enlivened by Pryor's earthy enthusiasm' New Scientist For Seahenge: 'A magnificent book ! a vivid story, superbly told. It gives a wonderfully clear explanation of how archaeology works, written in plain language which all can understand and enjoy' Magnus Magnusson 'Most absorbing ! a disarmingly down-to-earth delving into lost fragments' Sunday Telegraph 'A fascinating personal odyssey through British prehistory' The Times

About the Author
Dr Francis Pryor has spent thirty years studying the prehistory of the Fens. He has excavated sites as diverse as Bronze Age farms, field systems and entire Iron Age villages. From 1980 he turned his attention to pre-Roman religion and has excavated barrows, 'henges', and a large ceremonial centre dating to 3800 bc. In 1982, while working in a drainage dyke at Flag Fen, on the outskirts of Peterborough, he discovered the waterlogged timbers of a Bronze Age religious site. In 1987, with his wife Maisie Taylor, he set up the Fenland Archaeological Trust, which opened Flag Fen to the public.

Customer Reviews

A different twist on English history
After the Romans left Britain, the lights went out until Alfred burnt the cakes. A parody of the popular view of British history post 410AD, but perhaps not too exaggerated. Francis Pryor sets out an alternative picture, in detail and backed up with evidence. The lights didn't go out. Most people carried on doing what they always had. There wasn't a huge Saxon invasion. Things changed slowly. This is a compelling story, well told - and he doesn't ignore the fact that it is controversial or brush aside the evidence against it. So, well worth a read.

There are problems with this book - they were shared by the TV series on which it is based. These are big questions, and the book isn't (could not be) long enough to go into the detail one really wants. For example, I think that much more needs to be said about language: we (the English) speak a basically Germanic language, not one derived from Celtic/ Latin. That takes a lot of getting round and the book says very little about it. (The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language argues though that there was at least a substantial body of English speakers in "England" even before the Roman conquest - which is a shocking idea, to put it mildly). And personally, I didn't see the need to bring King Arthur into it. But still well worth buying and reading.

A good read but an unconvincing argument
You've probably seen Francis Pryor on the telly; he is a regular contributor to Time Team and has fronted two series for Channel 4.This book is the tie-in to the second.

Pryor is an engaging and authoritative commentator, both on screen and in print, and this book is a very good read. Pryor is firmly in the camp of the ancient Britons and in Britain AD he argues against the migration theory of the origins of England. He puts forward some interesting arguments based on recent research, but I have to say that Pryor's pudding has far too many eggs for my liking.

Explaining cultural changes by way of migration theory has long been out of fashion in the archaeological world (remember the Beaker folk; whatever happened to them?) But in Britain AD, Pryor takes a revisionist step too far by effectively erasing the early English from history. Pryor uses inverted commas whenever he mentions the Anglo-Saxons (sorry, 'Anglo-Saxons') to ensure that the reader is left in no doubt of their mythological origins. Even King Alfred gets reduced to the legendary status of Arthur, even though he is a known historical figure.

Pryor's belief is that no more more than a tiny trickle of continental immigrants came to Britain in the Dark Ages and that the English are simply the indigenous population with a new language and new clothes.

The number of Anglo-Saxon immigrants is arguable and there is little doubt that much of the population of early England would have had British roots. But Pryor's theory that such huge changes to society were simply due to the adoption of continental fashions or influences strikes me as highly improbable.

The English language is Pryor's main hurdle and proves to be insurmountable. Only 20 or so words from the Celtic language were recruited into English. The contrast between the failure of the Celtic language in lowland Britain and the continuation and eventual triumph of English after the Norman Conquest (where it is known that there were just a few thousand immigrants who replaced the ruling classes) is striking.

My one other criticism of Britain AD is that I wish Arthur hadn't crept in quite so much. The use of Arthur's name in the sub-title will presumably increase sales but the Arthurian themes seem a bit of an add-on.

A minimalist view of the Dark Ages
Other writers have wished to remove King Arthur from history, but in doing so they always try to retain the traditional picture of post-Roman Britain from which he emerges, and for which Leslie Alcock’s Arthur’s Britain represented a kind of late summary. They want to keep Arthurian Britain with its complete and sudden collapse of romanitas, hordes of lusty Saxons raging from sea to sea and loss of contact with the continent, but find the king himself something of a romantic embarrassment (anyone for Hamlet without the prince?). The resulting inconsistencies and double standards have been well described by Christopher Gidlow in The Reign of Arthur. By contrast, Francis Pryor shows that he is quite willing to dispense with the idea of an historical Arthur for the simple reason that he doesn’t think that Britain was ever really Arthurian.

In the Pryor version of things, post-roman civitas polities evolve into British and Saxon kingdoms and there is no more migration than usual, while the Saxonisation of eastern Britain is explained by cultural influence rather than wholesale immigration. In doing so, he takes a position even more extreme than that of Saxon expert NJ Higham, who explained this change as the influence of a small Saxon warrior elite that rapidly seized power in lowland Britain.

So how well does he prove his case? In archaeological terms, pretty well. Pryor has been excavating around Peterborough for more than thirty years, and if there was any evidence for mass immigration from across the North Sea, it would certainly show up here, in fertile farmland easily reached by Saxon keels rowing up the brackish river Nene. In fact, as he shows, there are none of the sudden changes in building and farming that would be expected, only the partial switch from grain production to stock raising predictable from the loss of Roman era long-range trade. On the way, he comprehensively demolishes the idea that the “Saxon shore” forts were actually built to keep out raiders, showing that they are much more consistent with use as secure supply ports for the Roman army (though he doesn’t mention their obvious usefulness in the event of a rebellion).

The traditional objection to this more mundane view of the Dark Ages is that since English contains very few Celtic words, there must have been wholesale population replacement. Although I knew that Hungarian was a Finnish-related language adopted by a Germanic people, I always found this objection persuasive. The change for me came when I moved to a triple language border in Europe and began to raise children bilingually. By talking to other people in the same position it quickly became clear that people just do not learn languages “mixed-up”. Bilingual children do make mistakes but they’re very quick to correct themselves, and find switching from one language to another as easy and natural as putting on a posh accent to answer the telephone. All that’s needed for complete replacement is several generations in which one language confers a higher attainable status than another and is therefore more worth retaining. That’s why the main threat to Europe’s minority languages is not any risk of merging with other languages but rather the risk of being wiped out completely by their low percieved status.

So with that objection out of the way I was ready to read this book without thinking “Ah yes, but what about language” all the time. This is a more impassioned book than Pryor's Britain BC or Seahenge, and he doesn't justify or reference his claims as systematically as he did in those books, but this also makes it a more exciting read.