Would members of this list like to comment on the following: a letter titled 'Reading between the lines' published in Current Archaeology 263 which fell through my door today.
'For too long we [presumably archaeologists] have been beguiled by the English Place-Name Society evoking Saxon leaders and questionable derivations when fairly simple Celtic descriptions of landscape features could provide a much better explanation.
Take Reading: the EPNS claim that because it ends in -ing it must have been prefixed by a chieftain's name, therefore it is the 'settlement of Reada's people'. What rot! The name only appears in literature in 872 and there is no hint of such a chieftain. Something like Rhydau ynglyn (fords joined together) would be much simpler.
I would have thought by now that Francis Pryor's work should have put to an end the notion of huge Anglo-Saxon conquests and migrations in favour of an orderly transition where traders and peaceful settlers from the east intermixed with natives who preferred the Germanic to the Celtic ways of expression for purely practical reasons. For similar reasons English is now the global lingua Franca. Let us hope archaeology conquers fantasy [presumably place-name study], and history can be rewritten...'
Seems like the New Year brings with it the same old challenges!
Richard
|