Fall of the Roman Empire

Just a few notes based on what I have been picking up from reading and podcasts.  The information isn't new, but it had not fully penetrated my thinking until recently.  There is debate about how much the empire actually fell, as opposed to merely changing, and different times are assigned to different "falls." 476 AD is fine, it just relies on a number of assumptions, and people could and have picked earlier and later times. 

Because I am more interested in what occurred in northern Europe, particularly Romano-Britain, I find it clearest to look at the whole enterprise regionally. While we can legitimately claim that Rome itself kept its institutions and mostly just got a new set of rulers, in Britain there was an unquestionable collapse of empire. On the far frontier such as Hadrian's Wall, there was loss of money, then population in the market towns supporting the wall forts as the pay for the garrison soldiers became more irregular, and then in a very few years around the year 400 the forts themselves were abandoned, and no fresh money comes to the frontier at all. There might be over 1000 living in the fort, all requiring food, drink, clothing, animals and repairs - a solid market for the locals, and in a decade, nothing. One after another the garrisons were abandoned, beginning with the Antonine Wall long before in 150AD, the last expansion to the north and unwise from the start. 

Just a bit further east in the borders with the various Germans the collapse was similar, but much of this was because of the local tribes, which had invariably been described as fractious and undisciplined before this, learned to bad together at least temporarily and throw the Romans out. It highlights the difficulty of separating what is an internal cause and which is external.  The unity of the tribes against them looks like an entirely external force.  Yet they only grew up and grew together because so many of the tribes had members who had worked in the Roman military for part of their lives.  Individuals, clans, or whole tribes would hire themselves out to the Romans, who always needed a steady supply. While it is true that Rome still hoped to send new recruits to other regions to specifically avoid the conflict of interest and temptations of corruption and desertion, this became increasingly impractical. Some might still be sent to Palmyra or Spain, but others were temporary and never left the frontier.  They absorbed Roman discipline and practice and could therefore meld more easily with other tribes with similar experience. 

A second bit recently learned is that the earliest archaeology in England was often less concerned with learning what earlier peoples had been like than with simply exposing the ruins to view as much as possible.  This was a teaching tool so that everyone would have some idea what things looked like, and also something of a mood piece or decoration, an illustration of the past. Locales were proud of having their very own ruin to display. Because sites that were in agricultural settings had often been plowed over numerous times, there wouldn't be much to find, or even identify what had been there.  This gave primacy to more remote places where the agriculture was pastoral, disturbing the ruins less. Such remoteness also discouraged raiding the structures for usable stone over the centuries. The archaeology of Newcastle, just as an example, is under lots of other archaeology of Newcastle. Romantic hilltop views suitable for postcards are thus overrepresented, both in the landscape and in our imaginations.