Sky here with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.

Medieval historians have, for the last 50 years, successfully pushed back against the idea that the thousand-year era, after the fall of Rome and

before the Renaissance was the Dark Ages, but even the most die-hard Middle Ages fan,

we'll call the early centuries after Rome from the 500s to the 800s the Dark Ages at least in the sense of how little we know about the period

But new archaeological findings have completely upended this idea for example the Anglo-Saxon Warrior elite were equipped with

magnificent armor, influenced by the cultures of the late Romans, the Scandinavian

Vendel people, the Frankish Maryovindians, Carolingians, and Antoniansians and also the Vikings.

In fact, Anglo-Saxon metalwork from the 7th century

couldn't be replicated until the 19th century.

In today's episode, we're going to see how advance and dynamic

Anglo-Saxon England was from the 400s to the 1,000s. Today's guest is Stephen Polington,

author of Anglo-Saxon Kings and Warlords 80400 to 1070.

We look at the evolution of England from being a country fragmented by Roman withdrawal during the 5th century,

when employment of Germanic mercenaries by local rulers was commonplace. These mercenaries became settlers

forcing Romano-British communities into Wales and the West country.

Then with the Christianization of the islands by King Alfred the Great in the 9th century,

his descendants unified the country, but then later England was incorporated into a Danish Empire before it finally fell to the Normans in 1066.

This episode adds a whole lot of nuance to a period typically skipped over or discarded,

but there's a whole lot of treasures here to define.

Hope we enjoyed this discussion with Stephen Pullington.

And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for word from

our sponsors.

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