And meanwhile going back to the King Arthur topic that
started the whole film thread going...

I saw the film last night, and leaving aside the fact that
it's simply not a very good film (even the best sequence -
the battle on the ice, is a rip-off [homage to?] of
Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky)...

As both history and archaeology, it has to be considered a
failure.  Archaeologically speaking, not only is there no
real sign of 'new evidence' - the claim Ron May originally
brought to our attention - but it often relies on, or at
least strongly implies, quite outdated
historical/archaeological interpretations.

First of all, there's the history...
As Paul Courtney has already pointed out, by the 450s and
460s (the main action is '15 years later' from 452AD),
Britain had been out of the central Roman government's
control since at least 410 (when the Emperor Honorius told
the Britons to 'look after your own defence').  But even
before then, Britain had spent much of the later 4th century
out of the control of central authority, under the control
of various usurpers and imperial claimants. The idea of an
orderly, intentional, sudden withdrawal of Roman authority
from Britain, as portrayed in the film, is nonsense.  What
little we do know suggests that in the decades after 410,
some sort of Romano-British governing class continued to
exercise some sort of authority in southern Britain.  And
there's archaeological evidence of continued construction in
the 'Roman' towns even after the removal of central Roman
authority.  There were also Germanic people in Roman Britain
long before the period in 'King Arthur'; while it's hardly
my period - and I'm quite happy to stand corrected on these
points - as I understand it, there were enough Germanic
auxiliries/mercenaries in parts of southern Britain by
300AD, that there's 4th century archaeological evidence of a
syncretic ('creolised', if you prefer) Germano-Roman culture
in some areas.  While there do appear to have been new
outside arrivals/invaders in the 5th century, they were
hardly arriving on soil untouched by Germanic peoples.

Anyway, with that context out of the way, here's a quick
summary of the more obvious specific
historical/archaeological flaws I caught (dates are based on
a quick re-reading of the relevant part of John Davies'
'History of Wales', the rest from perhaps not always
faultless memory).  There might well be more, but I was
often distracted by laughing at some of what poor Clive Owen
was being forced to say as dialogue.

1) Dates are impossible.  Quite apart from the
aforementioned 410AD problem, the most likely dates for the
Battle of Badon Hill are apparently c.490-c.515 - at least
30 years after the action in the film. The latter date is
based on Gildas stating that the battle took place in the
year of his birth (though I recognise that Gildas is hardly
the most reliable written source).

2) The idea of a free Roman settler from Italy being granted
title to lands north of Hadrian's Wall by the Pope (or of
Hadrian's wall being manned by official Roman auxiliaries)
in the later 5th century is laughable.

3) The Saxons invade Britain from the wrong direction.  The
earliest Saxon kingdoms in Britain were in Kent and Sussex
rather than north of Hadrian's wall (though Kevin Costner's
Robin Hood film suggests Hollywood has a particular problem
with the wall).

4) The idea that the Saxons engaged in wholesale slaughter
of the native Romano-British/Celtic population has long
since been discredited both archaeologically and
historically, and the film's reference to this is the most
obvious example of a reliance on outmoded.  Settlement was
instead a complex process involving often unknown levels of
interaction between Saxon and native; to reduce this process
to 'kill them all' is at best unhelpful.  Though I suppose
the film's version had the 'advantage' of being able to
portray the Saxons as truly evil proto-Nazi genocidal
Aryans.

5) Bishop Germanus did indeed visit post-Roman Britain in
the later 5th century, and did indeed denounce the Pelagian
heresy - famously helping the orthodox Christians defeat
their enemies solely by shouting 'Allelulia' at them (now
why didn't that make the film? ;-).  Not sure that the
Pelagians themselves, however, would have recognised their
doctrine of free will in the film's rather modern
proto-democratic 'everything's justified in the name of
freedom' version.

6) The idea that Arthur - assuming he existed - was the
leader of a post-Roman mobile cavalry force is decades old.
Given the lack of contemporary records, if the film wants
that cavalry to be Sarmatian, then I'm personally willing to
give them a bit of dramatic licence here (others may have
more of a problem here).  But the idea that Sarmatian
cavalry men would be given French or Welsh names such as
'Lancelot', 'Tristan', or 'Gawain' does, however, stretch
the limits of dramatic licence.  The film's attempt to have
it both ways and shoehorn bits of La Morte D'Arthur into 5th
century post-Roman Britain, despite explicitly stating that
the former tradition is false, is a bit of an obvious flaw.

6a) And don't get me started on their including the Round
Table and Sword in the Stone.

The real problem - and here we reach a theme relevant to the
archaeology of any historic period - is that the film
explicity claims to be the 'real', 'true-to-life' version of
the past (not even only '_based_' on a true story), yet gets
so much wrong when dealing with those few historical facts
that _are_ known of the period.  Of course dramatic licence
is possible in a film like this (you want Merlin to be the
mysterious leader of freedom-loving Celts?  Fine by me). But
a perfectly good film could have been made by combining
dramatic licence with a more coherent version of what
archaeological and historical facts are known. Would it
really have been that difficult to start with a voiceover,
and then build the film, along the lines of:
"The Year is 469AD.  The Roman Empire is falling.  Yet in
Britain, a brave band of warriors still battles against the
advancing Barbarian hordes...  Their leader a man they call
Artorius [dramatic pause] - today we would call him Arthur".
 The film's supposed withdrawal of Roman authority aside,
would it necessarily have been a very different film if
starting like that?

I suppose for me the issue becomes the danger that this
phony 'real' Hollywood history (see also 'Braveheart', 'The
Patriot', that U-boat film, etc., as discussed by Paul
Courtney) becomes the accepted version of history, often
despite the best efforts of archaeologists and our historian
colleagues (then there are those films that mangle history -
'Gladiator' comes to mind, but without actually claiming to
be 'true' or 'real' events).  Should we be bothered by any
of this?  To what extent should we care?  Or, in the face of
the mass-media juggernaut, are our professional dissections
of the obvious flaws in blockbuster movies 'so much sound
and fury, signifying nothing'?

Alasdair Brooks