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Y301: The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800

Depth study: Communities and kinship — communities, kinship, identity and dispute settlement

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on regiones and small peoples, Irish local society, kinship and lordship, the migration and ethnicity debates, scientific evidence, and how disputes were settled, with the arguments of Davies, Fouracre and Wormald.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Who and when

How did ties of lordship compete with ties of kinship?

Key term

Why do interpretations of local communities differ so much?

Key term

Name three peoples smaller than the great kingdoms.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Explain what is meant by a folk area or regio in early Anglo-Saxon Britain.

    Model answer

    It was a district of a few hundred square miles occupied by a named people with its own identity and leaders, which paid renders to a king and often survived as a unit long after being absorbed into a larger kingdom.

  2. 2

    Name three peoples smaller than the great kingdoms.

    Model answer

    The Hwicce of the Severn valley, the Magonsaete of the Welsh border and the Middle Angles of the east midlands.

  3. 3

    What does the Tribal Hidage suggest about local communities?

    Model answer

    By assessing more than thirty peoples separately, ranging from great kingdoms down to groups of a few hundred hides, it shows that England was still a patchwork of small self-aware communities beneath the overlordship of a few kings.

  4. 4

    How was Irish society organised at local level?

    Model answer

    It was divided into many small kingdoms, each a tuath with its own king, and these were bound to greater kings by clientship and tribute rather than absorbed into larger territorial states.

  5. 5

    Define the derbfine in Irish law.

    Model answer

    It was the kin group of the descendants of a common great-grandfather, which held land collectively, shared liability and supplied candidates for kingship.

  6. 6

    How did Anglo-Saxon kinship differ from a clan system?

    Model answer

    Descent was reckoned through both parents, so every individual had a slightly different circle of kin and there were no permanent bounded clans with heads and estates.

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