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Carbon dating of petrified deep fried Mars bars found on the site gave it away.

here's a great site to explore with your wee ones if you guys end up doing a Scotland tour.

Why do they still call it the Dark Ages despite the wealth of recent evidence that it wasn't all that "dark?" I have to wonder how Stirling circa 600 would compare with - for the sake of argument - Kandahar today.

Cressingham was the treasurer. I assume that that post was akin to being a tax collector, which brings me to the part of the story I like best:

Cressingham’s skin was used to make souvenirs.

I'd like to see that happen to some of our modern tax collectors!

The types of things which turn up on these sites are moulds for making elaborate jewellery and imported wine containers. They made very high quality jewels.'

I wonder where they got the stones and the mountings? Are there deposits (or were there deposits) of precious stones and metals in the British Isles?

The ancient jewelry that I saw in the National Museum in Dublin, Ireland is quite beautiful -- wide gold collars, elaborate "buttons" for cloaks, beautiful bracelets, exquisite hair ornaments, hinges for prayer books -- all in solid gold and dating to shortly after the time of Christ. This stuff turns up in the peat bogs all the time they say.

I wondered if there were gold deposits on the "Green Island" (other than at the end of the rainbows) and if they still exist today. Or did the early Celts engage in trade from other regions in order to secure the precious metal?

So they found Camelot? You all may find that statement a little interesting, but there has been evidence in old documents pointing to that area as King Arthurs seat. His name was something like Arteris or whatever.

They could have just asked Helen Thomas where the site was.

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You can steal our women and you can rape our cattle but, you can’t take away our FREEDOM!!

He is also hopeful the site may unearth a hoard of Dark Age goodies.

Like leftover haggis and a barrel of single malt whisky?

Well, The link to the lost capital of Scotland is lost now. 404.

hmmmm, very interesting, thanks!

There was the fall of the Roman Empire and the deterioration of its hold and influence over England. By 300, Roman towns had begun to collapse and were abandoned. (Roman towns in Britain were planned in chessboard squares for communities under orderly government. Each was complete with its forum, temples, courts of justice, gaols, baths, markets and main drains.) By the beginning of the fifth century, the end of Roman Britain was at hand. Troops were withdrawn. A shadow Roman government may have persisted in the southeastern part of the country until ten years after the sack of Rome in 410. In the void, a local British king made invitation to Anglo Saxon mercenaries to protect them. In the middle of the century, the “Advenus Saxonum” or permanent occupation of southern Britain by Anglo-Saxons took place.

In the 4th century Diocletian and Constantine reformed the coinage, but in attempts to stabilize society they decreed that all workers and their descendants would be frozen in their jobs for life. The aristocratic element moved from the cities into the country to raise what they needed. Small free farmers, ruined by debt, taxes and powerful neighbors placed themselves in the hands of larger landowners. Tenant farmers called “coloni” and slaves worked on vast estates. Legally free, the coloni were bound to the estate and their children after them. An edict of Constantine stated that tenant farmers who flew, could be caught and reduced to servitude. Thus developed the system of manorialism, (Which was later overlaid by feudalism in William the Conqueror's time.)

The people of Roman Briton were mixed, including people of Belgic origin and some Italian. Many were Christian. According to the Venerable Bede's “History of the English Church and People” (written in the early 8th century,) the Saxon nation, or Anglo-Saxons, came from “Germany” - a Teutonic or Nordic people who had dwelt in parts of Scandinavia, Germany and Holland. They were pagan farmers, claiming descent from the god Woden. They were loyal followers of their chief and petty kings. The bulk of the tribe consisted of “freemen,” adult males with the obligation of bearing arms, with the right to participate as equals in the tribal assembly held every month and to hold a share of tribal land. The assembly had the power to appoint and depose all chiefs and officials, decide on war and peace and try important disputes.

The “celtic” people (Britons) were absorbed as slaves by the invading pagan Angles (Danes,) Saxons (Germany) and Jutes (Jutland/Frankish) during the fifth and sixth centuries or moved to establish native kingdoms in the far west in Devon and Cornwall (West Wales) and Wales itself, and in north-west England, such as the kingdom of Strathelyde. Many migrated to Ireland, northern England and southern Scotland; some moved across the channel to Britanny.

The Angles settled mainly near the east coast of England and are remembered by the name East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk and surrounding areas south and west.) The East Saxons settled in Essex, a small kingdom that started as a group of clearings in the Forest, gradually extending westward until it included much of Hertfordshire and London. The South Saxons settled in Sussex and the West Saxons in Wessex. The Saxons also colonized much of central and western England which became the kingdom of Mercia.

The culture that the Anglo Saxons brought to England left few records; but what it did leave shows a strong resemblance to that which is recorded amongst the Vikings of later times. This included the concept of a “freeman”, the traditions of judgment by ordeal and the underpinnings of tort (fines for bad behavior paid to the victim or his family, the status of the injured party rather than the type of injury determining the payment in damages to be made.) Anglo-Saxon law was folk law and unwritten until conversion to Christianity. It was passed down orally in “dooms” or judgments. The law was ancient, God-given and unchangeable (the underpinnings of stare decisis.) The earliest Anglo Saxon settlements were by tribal groups do not clearly show any evidence of genuine centralized authority. As the Anglo Saxon period progressed, power became more centralized.

Around 600 AD there seem to have been perhaps 13 independent states, Wessex (the kingdom of the West Saxons), Sussex (the kingdom of the South Saxons), Middlesex (the country of the middle Saxons), Kent, Essex (the kingdom of the East Saxons), Magons, Hwicce, Middle Anglia (the country of the Middle Angles), Mercia, East Anglia (the country of the East Angles), Lindsey, Deira and Bernicia. The native peoples of Britain had been driven to the margins, and ruled their own set of kingdoms, Dumnonia, Dyfed, Powys, Gwynedd, Rheged and Elmet. By the middle of the 7th century the Anglo Saxon kingdoms had already coalesced into seven loosely organized states, the Anglo Saxon “heptarchy.” Threats from the Danes caused responsive changes in the tribal structure of government. The “Witan,” or advisory council, replaced the prior greater assembly of freemen. In the late 8th century, Offa (Mercia) became the first “King of England” (rex Anglorum and rex tortius Anglorum patria - King of the whole land of the English.) In the early 9th century, it was Egbert of Wessex who took power.

The Anglo Saxon period was a violent one. Warfare dominated its history and shaped the nature of its governance. Until conversion to Christianity (end of 6th century,) early kings won their crown on the battlefield and the right to rule was not inherited. Particularly during the eighth and ninth century, there were major Viking (Danish) invasions that the Anglo Saxons had to contend with. The Vikings established the Danelaw in a large portion of eastern England. There are over 600 village names in England which can be directly related to the Vikings (Grimsby, Thoresby, Brimtoft, Langtoft and so on). There are English counties which have about 75 percent of their village names from the Viking area. On the Shetland Islands the percentage goes up to about 99 percent. In the North East of England the Nordic languages were spoken until as late as the 12th century. On the Isle Of Man it remained spoken until the middle of the 15th century.

Apparently, a common non-Latin written language (Old English) was not established until the rule of Alfred The Great in the ninth century. He also collated the various local common law. King Alfred's Book of Laws or Dooms as set out in the existing laws of Kent, Wessex and Mercia, attempted to blend the Mosaic code with Christian principles and old Germanic customs. In the Anglo-Saxon portion, a system of governance had developed with three major divisions of local government, in ascending order of rank: the “tun”, “hundred” and “shire.” The Laws of Alfred the Great, continually amplified by his successors, grew into a body of customary laws administered by the shire and hundred courts, which, under the name of the Laws of Edward (the Confessor) the Norman kings undertook to respect and, out of much manipulation by feudal lawyers, the Common Law was founded.

The “tun” or town had local “moots” or meetings or assembly courts of all freemen that dealt with all types of local public business and police functions. The court appointed a “tun-reeve,” or quasi-executive, who with four other freemen represented the tun at the hundred and shire moots or assemblies. When the manorial system was introduced, the tun court was absorbed into the private manorial jurisdiction.

The “hundred” or “wapentake” were territorial units that formed the basis for administration of public justice and finance. Where there were a large number of hundreds in the shire, they would be grouped into larger sub-units of the shire known regionally as “laethes,” “rapes” “trithings” or ridings. Each hundred was an assembly of all freemen who met monthly to deal with all affairs, including ecclesiastical matters. Each freeman had an equal voice, but the “will” of the moot was consensus achieved by discussion. The court selected a “hundred man” who had executive duties. When the manorial system was introduced, the steward of the manorial lord began to replace the hundred man and collected judicial revenues for his lord. The king also was entitled to his judicial revenues.

William the Conqueror took over the rule of England in 1066 A.D. Among his first acts was to have himself elected as king by the Witan (before it was disbanded) and to confirm Anglo-Saxon law. He imposed the European system of feudalism over the remnants of the English manorial system.

Thomas Jefferson learned the Ancient Anglo Saxon language and translated early documents. On August 13, 1776, he wrote to Edmund Pendleton: “Are we not better for what we have hitherto abolished of the feudal system: Has not every restitution of the ancient Saxon laws had happy effects? Is it not better now that we return at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and most perfect ever devised by the wit of man, as it stood before the eighth century?”