Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 1228

The primary reason for the abandonment of the `` shore occupied by '' thesis has been the assimilation and accumulation of archaeological evidence, the most striking feature of early English studies in this century.

Again omitting recent developments, E.T. Leeds' dictum of 1913 has stood unchallenged: `` So far as archaeology is concerned, there is not the least warrant for the second ( shore occupied by ) of these theories ''.

Even earlier Haverfield had come to the same conclusion.

What they meant was that there was no evidence to show that the south and east coasts of Britain received Germanic settlers conspicuously earlier than some other parts of England.

That is, there was no trace of Anglo-Saxons in Britain as early as the late third century, to which time the archaeological evidence for the erection of the Saxon Shore forts was beginning to point.

In the face of a clear judgment from archaeology, therefore, it became impossible for a time for scholars to re-adopt the `` shore settled by '' theory.