Ancestral Voices, Prophesying War

Abstract

So far in this book we have steered a chronological course, from the Roman invasion of AD 43 through to the age of Victoria. One tendency that has remained relatively consistent in this journey is that, the later the period being discussed, the more historical sources tend to be available to those who might wish to write about it. With the age of Arthur we were dealing with a period for which there is relatively little archaeological evidence, and very few written sources — so few, indeed, that we were able to discuss most of them individually. From the medieval period on, we see a rapid growth in the volume of available material, in terms both of documents and of surviving buildings and artefacts. Whether historical writers consider this proliferation as helpful scaffolding or prefer the scope for imaginative construction offered by less well-documented eras, such a blooming of evidence changes the nature of their task, in whatever genre they may be working.