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THREAD. So. A thought about material culture (the stuff people used) in England c.400AD+ & the shift from Mediterranean to NW European styles incorporating too #RomanoBritish crafts & art forms eg 1/2ndC brooch & 6thC escutcheon britishmuseum.org/research/colle… & britishmuseum.org/research/colle… 
2. Tom Williamson's ingenious map emphasises how European and English coasts and rivers were connected across the North Sea, and how English watercourses facilitated movement into the heart of the country.
3. One way or another, the principal driver of that cultural change is assumed to be immigration from across the North Sea. The distribution of Anglo-Saxon artifacts (eg photo) is often interpreted as evidence for the impact of migration on changes in material culture.
4. Please don't be distracted by this rather old distribution map: this thread is about the assumption that cultural change was directly or indirectly related to migration, rather than about the nuances of how that happened. I chose this map as it was easy to get hold of & copy.
5. Here are the 2018 locations of IKEA stores in England. Imagine that in (say) 2000yrs’ time all 21stC documents had disappeared & only the archaeology survived: concentrated artifacts in the stores & distributions of their goods that diminished w/ distance from the store.
6. Archaeologists wd note IKEA’s considerable stylistic influence on modern British furniture design. The archaeology might be interpreted as Swedish colonization of Britain in the late 20th/early 21stC & the stores as central places designed to state & preserve Swedish identity.
7. We, however, know that the distribution of the stores is evidence of trade rather than colonization, and that the distribution of IKEA's goods reflects the popularity of Swedish design in British homes. There is no link with Swedish ethnicity in Britain.
8. And if Swedish individuals were identified from scientific evidence in the 23rdC it would be false to argue that their presence was linked to the presence of IKEA. Only a tiny % of the 100,000 Swedes living in London in 2018, for instance, are likely to be employed by IKEA.
9. So, in our hypothetic example, the presence of Swedish artifacts and individuals is not evidence of colonization nor of the deliberate statement of a ruling or dominant ethnic identity in twenty-first century Britain.
10. This is not to argue for 400-600AD that all arguments are false that assume that the presence of Germanic or Scandinavian goods in early Anglo-Saxon England is the evidence of migration &/or evidence of the retention by NW European immigrants of an identity based on ethnicity
11. It is to argue that other explanations beyond migration and colonisation are possible. If we really want to know what happened between 400-600 all explanations need to be investigated & evaluated before an narrative based on Anglo-Saxon migration can finally be adopted. END
