Very good paper from a decade ago by Heinrich Harke, that sums it all up well - Anglo-Saxon Immigration and Ethnogenesis
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...d_Ethnogenesis
Some key points:
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As a result, the model envisages two broad phases in the creation of the Anglo-Saxons: an ethnically divided conquest society in the 5th/6th centuries in which immigrants and their descendants practised a form of ‘apartheid’ in order to preserve their dominance; and a phase of increasing acculturation and assimilation of the natives in the 7th/8th centuries that laid the foundations of a common English identity
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The only approach possible is, therefore, via biological data: modern DNA, stable isotopes and skeletal evidence. All of these can offer only relative, not absolute figures. The analysis of a small sample of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) set an upper limit of 20% of female immigration from northern Germany and Jutland, but the study remained un published because of insufficient data quality.26 Two studies of modern Y-chromosome DNA have estimated proportions of continental male introgression into England during the 1st millennium ad of 50 to 100%, and 54.1%, respectively; the second study noted marked regional differences (24.4 to 72.5%) within England which might point to different scales of immigration and/or to different forms of settlement (Fig 3)
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The calculation of absolute numbers of migrants requires us to put these proportions in relation to the overall size of the native population in the immigration areas of England. The population of Roman Britain is now estimated at some two to six million, with the most recent calculation arriving at 3.7 million for the late 3rd/early 4th century ad.33 It has been suggested that there was some population decline in the late Roman and sub-Roman periods, possibly as a result of disease and famine in the 5th century.34 For the discussion here, and taking into account that Roman Britain encompassed a somewhat larger area than the early Anglo-Saxon settlement areas, we may use the conservative assumption of around 2 million native Britons in the later Germanic settlement areas in England at the end of the 3rd century, followed by a decline to around one million during the 4th and 5th centuries.
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In neighbouring Wessex, archaeology contradicts both, and implies a rather different process.51 Instead of the reported conquest northwards starting in ad 495 and reaching the Upper Thames by ad 556, burials, artefacts and settlements in diagnostic Anglo-Saxon style suggest the presence of intrusive settlers by the second half of the 5th century around Winchester in southern Wessex, and even earlier (second quarter of the 5th century) further north, around Dorchester on the Upper Thames.52 There is widespread agreement that this situation reflects an early, possibly peaceful settlement of Saxons in Wessex, followed by the conquest by an ethnically mixed warband whose leaders and their descendants had British-sounding names (Cerdic, Cynric, Cædwalla) even though they were later called ‘West Saxons’
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There can be little doubt that the immigrants came from, or were made up of, a variety of ethnic groups. Bede provides two lists of ‘tribes’ represented among the incomers, a short one listing Angles, Saxons and Jutes, and a longer one listing Frisians, Rugii, Huns, Old Saxons and Bructeri.57 Ethnic interpretation of archaeological finds, while broadly supporting Bede’s short list, would also add Franks in southern England, at least one Goth in SW England, and Scandinavians from southern Norway in eastern England; and the place name Swaffham (Norfolk) would add Suevi (ie Alamanni) in East Anglia.58 Given the vagaries of transport across the North Sea and the probable inter-vention of native authorities and populations, it is highly unlikely that the incomers would have settled in the ethnic blocks reported by Bede; and there are, indeed, some hints in the archaeological record and Old English place names of ethnic overlaps and interspersed settlement.59 Over time, this would have led to mixing and fusion of immigrant groups, particularly in the face of the numerical superiority of the native population. But the exact processes involved here are difficult to elucidate from any type of evidence. It is interesting, however, that some tribal or group identities (Saxon, Anglian, Jutish) based on real or fictitious links to continental tribes and ancestors became the nuclei of emerging kingdoms and new regional identities whereas others did not.60 Unsuccessful identities included that of the ‘Frankish’ military leaders identified by Evison in southern England who were apparently subsumed in the regional identity of the new West Saxons.
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Support for the model of two coexisting populations derives from historical and linguistic evidence. The laws of King Ine of Wessex (issued ad 688 x 694) mention six classes of ‘Welsh’ (Britons) and confirm the lower status of the natives; a couple of clauses imply a reasonably close proximity of Germanic and native populations.82 The old assumption that these Britons were living in Dorset and Somerset, not in eastern Wessex, was never based on any kind of evidence.83 The historian Woolf has recently used the Laws of Ine to suggest the existence of apartheid in early Anglo-Saxon England.84 A recent sociolinguistic study has identified traces of the survival of a Brittonic substratum in early English; this presupposes close contact and interrelationship between the speakers of the two languages within settlements and residential units, but with limited interethnic marriage.
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A different situation, which may be termed ‘warband’ model, seems to be repre-sented by the cemetery of Stretton-on-Fosse II (Warwickshire).86 At this site, located on the western fringes of the early Anglo-Saxon settlement area, the proportion of male adults with weapons is 82%, well above the average in southern England. Cemetery II, the Anglo-Saxon burial site, is immediately adjacent to two Romano-British cemeteries, Stretton-on-Fosse I and III, the latter only 60 metres away from Anglo-Saxon burials. Continuity of the native female population at this site has been inferred from the con-tinuity of textile techniques (unusual in the transition from the Romano-British to the Anglo-Saxon periods), and by the continuity of epigenetic traits from the Roman to the Anglo-Saxon burials. At the same time, the skeletal evidence demonstrates the appearance in the post-Roman period of a new physical type of males who are more slender and taller than the men in the adjacent Romano-British cemeteries. Taken together, the observations suggest the influx of a group of males, probably most or all of them Germanic, who took control of the local community and married native women.
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As far as the archaeological evidence can tell us, acculturation in the settlement areas of continental immigrants was a one-way process: the common culture being created was essentially Anglo-Saxon, not mixed or hybrid Anglo-British. This mirrors the linguistic process whereby the natives adopted Old English and dropped their own language over time.
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The 7th/8th-century average stature of male individuals in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries dropped by 15 mm (⅝ in) compared with the 5th/6th-century average.106 This development is most marked in Wessex where the average dropped by 24 mm (1 in).107 This drop is not easily explained with environmental changes; there is no evidence for a change in diet in the 7th/8th centuries, nor is there any evidence of a further influx of immigrants at this time. Given the lower average stature of Britons, the most likely expla-nation would be a gradual Saxonisation or Anglicisation of the material culture of native enclaves, an increasing assimilation of native populations into Anglo-Saxon communities, and increasing intermarriage between immigrants and natives within Anglo-Saxon popu-lations, all of which would bring increasing numbers of natives into the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ sample.
In the 7th century, men with weapons and/or conspicuous grave-goods were no longer taller, on average, than men without weapons.109 This should mean that the deposition of martial symbols in graves had lost its ethnic connotations, and that the display of wealth was no longer the domain of descendants of immigrants. This development suggests that the social elite of the 7th/8th centuries became ethnically mixed, and the ritual expression of social differences superseded that of ethnic differences.
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The 7th/8th centuries witnessed the beginning of the end of a separate British identity, and the foundation of a common ‘English’ identity. It may not be a coincidence that this phase also saw the first elements of state formation in England.126 The emergence of the state might have led to the suppression of separate ethnic identities and the use of an ideology emphasising unity; alternatively it might have led to the expression of ethnic differences in new ways, eg by laws and landholding. The Christianisation of England in the 7th century is likely to have played an important role in this dual process of state formation and ethnogenesis that seems to have been largely completed by the late 9th century. The Laws of Alfred fail to mention Britons, even though they are mentioned several times in the earlier Laws of Ine that Alfred had appended to his own laws. Again, the emphasis on, or assumption of, a Christian English identity at a time when Alfred’s England was faced with the challenge of pagan Viking raiders and settlers was hardly a coincidence, and a common identity is indeed likely to have been the outcome of a common struggle.
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And the whole process of ethnogenesis resulting from the immigration of a socially and militarily dominant minority has close parallels in the German Ostkolonisation of the high Middle Ages. This colonisation provides numerous scenarios whereby German lords and landowners brought substantial groups of German and Dutch settlers into areas with Slav or Baltic majority populations; and many of the latter, having lost their own leadership, became Germanised through well-documented legal, cultural, social and economic processes that created the ‘new tribes’ of eastern Germany: the Silesians, Pomeranians and Prussians.
