Talk:Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain

Shortening the archaeology section

My 2 cents. Our archaeology section is long, but it is also in effect relatively information free. It could be shortened to a paragraph or two without losing anything relevant to describing "Anglo Saxon settlement". Whereas a typical WP article might start with a basic summary of what evidence exists, and which conclusions are drawn from it (and debated). We honestly have nothing like that. We literally jump straight into academics talking abstractly about academia, for people who already know all they need to know about the archaeology. This is meaningless for most readers, because the context is not explained. I think discussions about academia itself should not be in this article which is not about archaeology as such. To be clear, as with the genetics section I also think the article needs new, more effective material to be ADDED, but I think we've seen this is not going to happen while the article is so bloated with "chatty" stuff which never seems to come to a point. The article is really stuck and needs some pruning. I really hope our editors can find some time to think about this. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:51, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this bold and helpful work! While there might be details that I'd like to go back and rescue, I wholeheartedly agree that this is the right approach. I appreciate you seizing the nettle. Alarichall (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Here are some notes for shortening the archaeology section. TLDR: it would be easiest to delete all this and start from scratch. Recovering the original thinking is almost impossible unless the original authors are reading this and remember what they wanted to achieve. OTOH the topics should be checked against the latest publications and we should make sure they are all written to make their relevance to THIS article relevant.

• We have another article which is not too long which is meant to be especially for Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England. I've added a link only today. Basically we are not taking advantage of that. Maybe we should move everything there?
• As so often in these articles there are lots of sub-sections, with placeholder text filling them up, so here are comments on them:

• Intro paragraph. One thing adding to the length of this article is the number of sub-sections and the habit of having introductions to small sections and sub-sections. I think at best this causes duplications. The text is in any case not to the point and seems to start mid thought, with no context. I would delete it.
• Understanding the Roman legacy. The second sentence seems a bit relevant to this article. The rest is about general methodology and not about any specific settlement-related proposals. I would delete all or most.
• Settler evidence. Vague title, and as a reader it is difficult to work out why the topics in this section were put together, and what the point is. The first paragraph is about 1980s proposals that placename and archaeological evidence implies that Anglo Saxons lived near older settlements. It seems a very weak hypothesis and the second paragraph more or less cancels it. Maybe there is more to this topic, but just based on what we have so far it would be no loss if we deleted it all.
• Tribal characteristics. This is mainly about the methodological question of trying to study ethnicity as an archaeologist. I don't think it belongs in this article, at least in this section, or in this form. There is also a mention of one burial site, but we have other sections also discussing burial sites. Obviously we can't have a section for every archaeological dig, so we need a section which brings the evidence together. It would be no big loss to delete all this, although once again maybe this is all just placeholder information for something someone once thought could be written? Now would be the time to mention it.
• Reuse of earlier monuments. Sounds relevant but it is all about reuse after the 5th century. Not relevant then, it seems.
• Landscape archaeology. Does not look like it is about the settlement period but might be relevant to Anglo Saxons. Once again it looks deletable, unless someone knows where this was meant to be heading.
• Distribution of settlements. I don't see what difference was intended between this section and the Settler evidence one. As usual there is an emphasis upon vague remarks about general methodology. A few of the sentences look a bit relevant but it is unclear whether they are about settlements from the early settling period, or just general methodologies etc.
• Cemetery evidence. Biggest sub-section. Probably the most likely to contain relevant information. As mentioned above though, I question the appropriateness of just summarizing a list of specific excavation sites. We need something which sums things up and makes them relevant to the settlement question.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:28, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

I haven't taken all this in yet, but I'm sure your instincts are right. I've wanted for a long time to spin "Reuse of earlier monuments" off into its own article. It merits about a sentence in the Settlements article but is notable in its own right, and would be easy to write with reference to ISBN 9780199683109 (sorry, I'll try to fill in that reference properly later). I'll see if I can do that. Alarichall (talk) 08:03, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I know re-use is an interesting topic but I think re-use would be a strangely minor topic to spin off into a separate article, at least while our archaeology article is so small, and so many building block topics are simply NOT covered yet. I would recommend doing that as a section in that article, at least to begin with. But I really wish we would try to get some more basic information into Wikipedia, which would also provide context to more speculative and philosophical topics which everyone seems to want to work on.

For this article here I think a basic starting point for a re-written archaeology section would be a list of archaeological evidence types which are generally seen as being relevant to the settlement discussions. I am thinking of things like grave goods, cremation burials, economic indicators such as trade goods and currency, specific house building types like Grubenhauser (nothing at all on WP?), quoit brooches, etc. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:40, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

UPDATE. I have not personally worked on this, but I still think it will be necessary to delete most of the current archaeology section. It also certainly needs to start with some basic listing out of WHAT the actual archaeological evidence is.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:56, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Recent edit conflict

@Andrew Lancaster: you undid my changes to the article structure while I was doing a complex edit on one of the sections. I've therefore overridden your edit, because it will be much easier to manually revert to the earlier structure than it will be to manually redo the more complex edits I was making.

That said, could you hold off reverting stuff until I've finished going through the article and fixing its ludicrous amounts of duplicated material? After I've done that, it'll be easy to change the structure back to something like the old one if we conclude that's better. Alarichall (talk) 09:57, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

@Alarichall: you are not really making a very convincing case for "holding off". Your edsum is misleading [1] (not mentioning the big revert you did), and your revert back to your bold restructuring is in conflict with the WP:BRD principle. I see no reason why your other types of edit require your restructuring? Indeed you seem to be saying the restructuring is a separate issue? I therefore ask you to please work according to WP:BRD and revert the structure for now, so we can indeed discuss it later if necessary. If you do not do it yourself I will review the options myself, but I don't see any reason at all why I should not simply revert you. I want to emphasize a few things:

• I personally don't see the sequence of editing actions as neutral, and you clearly also don't. It really looks like you are trying to combine these things for "strategic reasons", trying to make things difficult to reverse.
• I am extremely strongly opposed to the new structure. It is a good (ie bad) example of the exact problem these Anglo Saxons article keep accumulating, and it introduces the EXACT same structuring concept which I and other editors opposed in the first versions of what is now the historiography article. They are written for insiders who already know the basic facts, and are interested in pigeon-holing various academic trends. In fact there is a core consensus about a lot of things, and we NEED to explain this early because with out that basis, which is mainly derived from textual evidence, readers have no context to understand all these debates which you want to focus upon. We were supposedly in agreement that such a polarized scheme is no longer current in the field, and we were moving that type of stuff to the historiography article? Here is my edsum (for my revert to your bold restructuring) [2]:

• Reverting bold structuring edits which I am strongly opposed to. This is structured for academics interested in the historiography, and it does not inform others. I strongly believe that explaining the current mainstream is the main aim for this article and needs to be near the top. There is a core of it which is text based and NOT contested. The traditional account and it are apples and pears, not competing. Good explanations start with the basic facts, and THEN move to the debates and doubts

• As I have mentioned I think already, I think the whole Migration and acculturation theories should be moved to the historiography article, but you've moved it to the top! Please to begin with, because you know it is contested, explain why this section even needs to be in the article? If any of it it remains it should at least surely be at the end because it is about the history of some academic discussions.
• I've been posting updates about my proposals and edits here to try to avoid continuous clashes of editing plans, and you've ignored those, and continued to keep your own proposals mysterious and unpredictable. This is very annoying and also very inefficient. Please post your proposals before making major changes, and please reply to proposals when you know they are relevant to your own plans. That's just common sense and polite. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:23, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

RE. STYLE. Our basic aim on WP articles which are related to scholarly fields has to be explanation of the publications, and certainly not imitation of specifically academic styles of structuring texts which are generally intended to demonstrate "membership" in the qualified group, and which therefore often tend to exclude outsiders to the field. In other words, even though it might not be a conscious aim, academic style often works against the aim of clarity. In texts designed for easy readability the main points are summed up right at the beginning, and expanded in increasing detail later in the body. This principle should apply to each of our sections, and even to long paragraphs.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:30, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Really what I'm trying primarily to deal with right now is that the article tries to spell out the 'Migration and acculturation theories' many times in different sections, making the article pretty unreadable. Just bringing all that material together and removing the duplication is a big challenge, but one worth taking up I think.

I'm very keen to keep the section that I've called "Survey of evidence" as a single section, so that it's easy for readers who don't want to wade through it to skip it.

If you're keen to put the competing accounts for what was actually happening in the fifth century at the end of the article rather than at the beginning, I wouldn't see any harm in that. I would object to putting the Gildas-based 'traditional account' at the top of the article and more scholarly accounts only at the end. Alarichall (talk) 10:41, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

PS @Andrew Lancaster: but bear with me while I continue to consolidate the multiple repeated accounts of the assimilationist theory. I haven't finished removing the many duplications yet! Alarichall (talk) 10:43, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

@Alarichall: why? You've made you desires clear (by asserting yourself and ignoring others), and I have given (unlike you) a detailed list of problems with your desires. I am asking you to back down and consider my concerns, which are clearly shared by other editors. I think what we have for the assimilation/acculturation topic mainly just needs to be removed because it is not even current. It must in any case not become the structuring principle of the article, and as this seems to be what you are trying to create, please be prepared for the fact that working this way is going to lead to difficulties and awkwardness. It would be easier and more in line with community norms to work with the old structure, and then separate the different types of edits you say you are making, and get clear consensus for for different aims separately.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:03, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

OH, I get it! It hadn't even occurred to me that you think the assimilation model is wrong and therefore that it shouldn't be represented in this article at all!! No wonder I've found it so hard to work out what's bothering you here. Is that actually what you're saying? Alarichall (talk) 11:09, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Are you deliberately trying to distort what we have already discussed many time? What I am concerned with is: (a) The material which we have is too long and unfocussed. Like the archaeology it would have been better to rewrite it in a shorter form, rather than recycling it all the time. The aim has to be explanation. (b) This theme, in a simplified form, is being used by you to structure the whole article! Explaining this field in terms of it being a fight between two idealist extremes is not accurate or helpful or up to date. And that is what you keep doing. Such styles of argument simplification are sometimes used in teaching introductory courses (something I don't like either) but that's not what we are writing.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:14, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Like I say, the main thing I'm doing at the moment is consolidating the many repeats of the assimilationist argument found in this article into one section. That is fixing the problem that the article is too long and unfocused; it is rewriting the article in a shorter form; and it is not being used to structure the whole article. Alarichall (talk) 11:28, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

So... We now have two genetics discussions instead of one? The archaeology and "acculturation" discussions which needed shortening remain long, complex and unfocussed. I see you shortened some footnotes, which is good, and much needed, but the biggest changes here still feel like they have been about making this back into another historiography article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:28, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Adding to my list of style concerns, another aspect of this semi-academic style is that the excessive use of sub-sectioning. The idea seems to be that readers are going to read through the whole work, like a complex essay. Our TOC is starting to look like something from Hegel. This obsession with categorising also seem to be the only reason that there is such a push to treat written evidence as just one type of evidence, when its role in this field is clearly qualitatively different from the other types of evidence in terms of the way it structures all accounts of other evidence (whether we think that is a good thing or not). This means that the basics of these texts is building block context any reader needs to have FIRST.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:14, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't get this. Don't sub-sections make it easier for a reader not to read through the whole work as if it's a complex essay? Sub-sections make it easier for a reader to see which bits they're interested in and click through to them. Alarichall (talk) 12:07, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

If you are thinking about readability then there is a qualitative differences between having sections, and a three or four layered system of sub-sectioning. Please consider this. I know at least some academic journals also have policies about limiting this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:21, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Just pinging @Andrew Lancaster to say that I've finished the big tidy-up of duplicated material that I was doing, and also moved the sources section to the beginning of the article, so there shouldn't be much risk of edit conflicts at this point. Alarichall (talk) 13:03, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

What order to include the information in?

So, I've just been through the article and consolidated large amounts of duplicated material, so whatever its faults the article is now shorter and more focused.

My current wishlist is:

• a better (but concise) survey of where the archaeogenetic evidence has got us to so far. (Might this involve restoring or replicating some material that @JASpencer has moved to Historiography of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain?) The genetic evidence is really hard to synthesise given that we don't yet have professional scholarly syntheses, and of course our coverage needs to include criticisms of the archaeogenetic work. But the archaeogenetics strike me as an important aspect of current thinking that readers of this article will want an up-to-date take on.
• putting §2 'Competing descriptions of the settlement' at the beginning rather than after the list of sources. Whereas academic research puts the sources first and the conclusions last, readers of an encyclopedia aren't going to read our long survey of primary sources and then draw conclusions from them. So I think the survey of sources should go second — available if keen readers want it, but not in the way of readers who want to understand what scholars think happened in the fifth century.

I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth, but I think from the discussion in the previous section that @Andrew Lancaster's wishlist might include:

• keeping the order as it is but reducing the number of subheadings to produce a simpler-looking table of contents
• Andrew thinks that "explaining the current mainstream is the main aim for this article and needs to be near the top. There is a core of it which is text based and NOT contested." What I think he means by this is that he doesn't believe that the assimilationist model is mainstream, but he does believe that sources like Gildas and Bede provide a mainstream account which is not contested. Apologies if I've misunderstood.

Any views? For reference, here's the contents list as it stands at the time of writing this post:

Contents

• 1 Survey of evidence
  • 1.1 Written evidence up to Bede
    • 1.1.1 Continental Roman sources
    • 1.1.2 Gildas
    • 1.1.3 Bede
  • 1.2 Linguistic evidence
  • 1.3 Archaeological evidence
    • 1.3.1 Understanding the Roman legacy
    • 1.3.2 Settler evidence
    • 1.3.3 Tribal characteristics
    • 1.3.4 Landscape archaeology
    • 1.3.5 Distribution of settlements
    • 1.3.6 Cemetery evidence
    • 1.3.7 Isotope analysis
  • 1.4 Genetic evidence
    • 1.4.1 Ancient genome studies
    • 1.4.2 Modern population studies
    • 1.4.3 Criticism
• 2 Competing descriptions of the settlement
  • 2.1 Traditional account: a massive migration
  • 2.2 Acculturation theory: a small migration
  • 2.3 Archaeogenetics, isotope analysis, and the disruption of consensus
  • 2.4 Regional variation
  • 2.5 Debate: estimating migrants' numbers
• 3 See also
• 4 Notes
• 5 Citations
• 6 Bibliography
  • 6.1 General
  • 6.2 Archaeology
  • 6.3 History
  • 6.4 Genetics

Alarichall (talk) 13:20, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I think you know very well that you are distorting my position, now for the second time. Do not do this again. I have said that the current mainstream is no longer defined as a conflict between extreme versions of migration and assimilation arguments. (Both are now mainstream. They are [ADDED: NOT] mutually exclusive!) My proposals:

• I think the latest shortening of the genetics section can indeed be discussed. There was not really a clear agreement to move so much out of this article, although I can understand the reasoning. I know that this is a topic our editors do not always agree about. I hope other editors will comment.
• As per various past discussions and experiences trying to bring these articles into a more focussed condition I think there is some consensus here that after the lead there should be one or two sections explaining both the "traditional account" and the basic uncontroversial written evidence (controversy is for elsewhere), because these two points form the basic starting point and context which all readers will need in order to understand everything else. Not doing this, which seems to be the push, means effectively giving Bede priority over the near contemporary Gildas in a way which our readers won't be allowed to see, and which I think does not represent any field consensus. I've explained this above in many detailed ways. I have not seen a counter argument.
• We should try to limit the number of sectioning levels to 2 IMHO.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:38, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
• You moved the traditional account back together with the "competing theories". By definition, this section is not about a current competing theory, and it was made a few days back with the express intention of explaining context for readers. So this is not appropriate and I will return it. I think the whole idea of needing to call everything 2 competing theories is wrong-headed, misleading and illogical, even if it makes sense as a certain type of textbook style. I would get rid of that whole competing theories section and move the good bits elsewhere.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:42, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
• I also strongly advise that we should avoid over-complicated heading names, and over-reliance upon multiple jargon names for specific arguments if those arguments can be explained in normal everyday English. For example, assimilation, acculturation etc are being used for the arguments that there was "less" migration, whereas migration gets called traditional, migrationist etc. For a normal educated reader this can all be explained as one discussion about the relative importance of migration. We must avoid writing in academic codes.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:47, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
• And why is Peter Schrijver being discussed now only under "traditional" accounts? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:49, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
• I think maybe about 10% of the archaeology section is worth keeping, and I think the "competing descriptions" sections is also mostly off topic and redundant for this article. These two sections represent a very big part of the article. Some of the other sections perhaps deserve expansion, but trying to think about this is difficult unless there is some level of cooperation between editors, because expanding anything will probably create duplications and increase the size.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:16, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

@Alarichall: After re-reading the discussions several times I want to emphasize that what I think the article needs to open with (after the lead) is not really a complete discussion of the written evidence at all. It is background/context information that is needed for the reader to understand all the references which will be made (including in more specialized articles, which the reader may chose to click on). This would include some mention of Procopius, Gildas and Bede, only because they are part of the basic equipment the reader will need. So yes, our article basically lacks a distinct detailed section about academic doubts and debates relating to written evidence. And, to make this clear, I don't really see that as a problem. Consistent with this, I ALSO don't like the idea of this article needing long sections about ANY type of evidence. All these things CAN be farmed out to other articles. (I thought we all agreed, because it seems so obvious.) What we can fit here are only short sections, but these sections should at least list the basic evidence, with some indications about what it implies. Despite the long sections we have on some topics, those are badly failing to at least make sure we mention what evidence is used. That is a minimum/priority target and you seem to be fighting it. Instead we have lots of material where we jump too quickly in discussions about discussions, and we get stuck in those. This leaves no room for expanding anything, so for now we have to prioritize shortening and focussing those long sections, so that they at least mention the basic minimum context which a reader needs before going further, and linking them to specialist articles instead where readers can move to once they've picked up the basics. But for now, if evidence is actually listed at all (almost nothing is explained in the archaeology section) it is mentioned AFTER the discussions about the discussions, which is too late. So IMHO what is motivating me is a big practical concern about "style" for want of a better term, so please avoid making speculations about my personal opinions because AFAIK they are probably not a source of any big difference between us.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:46, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Another new article

Pagewatchers may wish to watchlist Continuity Model of British Ancestry started by JASpencer today. TSventon (talk) 20:01, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes any help would be appreciated. A lot of the continuity model seems to be out of date but it was a big deal 20 years ago. Francis Pryor did two mini-series on the idea that we were all the same from before the Bell Beaker people. Not coincidentally it was also popular around the time that Wikipedia was expanding like topsy.

Although the core of this is Anglo-Saxon, this is a small part of the theory.

JASpencer (talk) 20:08, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@JASpencer: but did it really justify a new article as opposed to the existing article about British genetics?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:36, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Why not?! Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia :-) Alarichall (talk) 11:01, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Discuss it there please. But forking, redundancy, duplication etc are not seen as positive in the WP community, and this is based on our experience as WP editors. Also, just to repeat a concern with the edits of yourself and @JASpencer:, being WP:BOLD in a good sense is certainly not the same as working strategically against WP:CONSENSUS building.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:57, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

The low cost of production and copying on the internet is a source of strength on the internet, but it is also a source of a major weak point, which is that information is copied, tweaked and distorted in a million ways very easily, creating large amounts of low quality material, and giving people very little possibility to judge it. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:45, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

We don't need to treat Wikipedia as if it's paper rationed. This was an influential school that was essentially the establishment view albeit for a short time, and it still has its adherents. It's also much wider than the Anglo-Saxon debate and definitely needed to be moved from there.

But the main point - about forking - is also something I'd contest. If it's about putting a different slant on an existing article then that's where forking is discouraged, but as a way of bringing in new articles on connected but distinct notable phenomena and at the same time removing undue weight given in existing articles it's not just encouraged - it's the natural engine of Wikipedia's growth and extensiveness and a major strength of Wikipedia to boot. JASpencer (talk) 21:05, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Nobody has suggested anything about needing to worry about paper? Nobody has mentioned concerns about articles with "distinct and notable" topics. You are clearly both trying to give the impression that I said almost the opposite of what I actually said. Here are some real concerns. Address these?

• One concern I mentioned is about your lack of thought concerning new articles which are highly overlapping and NOT clearly distinct from existing articles. POV forks are not the only type of problematic forking. Articles with high degrees of overlap generally have a lot of knock-on effects, making whole groups of articles very difficult to read or edit and we frankly already have a problem in this group of articles. This type of problem is certainly NOT seen as positive on WP.
• The new article of course has other justifications necessary (WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, WP:NOTE). These relate to core content policy. (This you can best defend over on that talk page.)
• Despite the rhetoric I've not seen the two of you helping much to shorten articles, but rather working in the opposite direction. Again, I think your talk page posts are misleading and diversionary.
• I keep mentioning the importance of building WP:CONSENSUS, and coordination with other editors. This is especially important for people obsessed with being "bold". In effect, you guys seem to think being bold means surprise attacks and telling fellow editors to take a rest from Wikipedia if they don't like your "boldness". You refuse to give clear answers to important questions about what you are doing. You ignore or deliberately distort efforts by others to try to create effective talk page discussions. This is a obviously a big source of my concerns. I think the world is suffering enough from "bold" people who think they are above working with others! --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:05, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I've proposed that this new article should not exist. WP:Articles for deletion/Continuity Model of British Ancestry. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:48, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Archaeology

As various more technical parts of the article (or the substantive bits of them) are going elsewhere, what should be done about the archeology? It's really important for early Anglo-Saxon history, but there does seem to be a lot of weight around the technical details of archaeology.

JASpencer (talk) 20:02, 11 March 2025 (UTC) @JASpencer: I've posted my detailed opinions. Please read those. The update is that we now also have a second coverage of several parts of this section, which I think is not a tenable long run situation. In short I am opposed to have a "super section" called "survey of evidence" and another "super section" called "competing descriptions". I think much of what is in these two sections is not worth keeping, and certainly not worth keeping in such a complex format. The archaeology section (like the others) should be written so that it starts with the basic information readers need, but instead we keep accumulating material which looks like vague notes for a commentary about about commentaries.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the archaeology content here falls between two stools: not detailed enough to be really useful to an interested reader, but too detailed to be readily readable. BUT people researching this topic these days would say that archaeological(and archaeogenetic) evidence is far more important for understanding what actually happened than Gildas. So I wouldn't want to see us reducing the archaeological content if doing that makes Gildas look more important than he is :-/ Alarichall (talk) 11:17, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

This is a very strange answer! Apart from your standpoint being very debatable, no-one is arguing that there should be no archaeology section, only that what we have is not fit for purpose, and you clearly accept this. Surely you are not arguing that we need to keep a large QUANTITY of text which you agree is not fit for purpose JUST SO THAT we don't make Gildas look too important? Gildas currently has a tiny two paragraph section, and no one is arguing for an expansion of that. You seem to have an obsession with trying to write Gildas out of this article, despite the fact that most things academics write about this topic can't be properly understood without understanding it as background information! (This is not the first strangely exaggerated remark you've made pretending that Gildas dominates the article.) The archaeology section is long enough to be an article, despite how uninformative it is. The solution here is surely to rewrite that section, and bring it up to standard? (There is already an archaeology article where some material might still be useful.) This has nothing at all to do with Gildas, so why mention him? If the archaeology section is dramatically reduced it could in any case easily still be twice as big as the Gildas discussion I think. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:56, 12 March 2025 (UTC)