User:Angusmclellan/Scotland in the Early Middle Ages
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In the Early Middle Ages Scotland was
Early Historic Scotland is the period from the fifth to the tenth centuries. This is from the end of Roman Britain until the end of the first Viking Age, although both events were of limited contemporary significance. Peripheral to the Roman world, much of Scotland's history in this period has more in common with that of Ireland or Scandinavia than with Romanised regions such as southern Britain or Gaul.
As the first two hundred years of the period are largely prehistoric, archaeology plays an important part in studies. From around 600 onwards, written sources become more common. Other aids to understanding in this period include onomastics (the study of names) - divided into toponymy (place-names), showing the movement of languages, and the sequence in which different languages were spoken in an area, and anthroponymy (personal names), which can offer clues to relationships and origins. As well as studying fossilised remains, paleobotany addresses land use, forest cover, and environmental change in more recent times.
One key event in the early part of the period is the expansion of Christianity from the margins of Scotland to become the religion of almost all inhabitants. The appearance in Scotland of the Anglo-Saxons in the middle of the period, and Vikings towards the end, provoked considerable change. In the east and north-east, the advance of Goidelic languages created new identities, beginning the process which created Scotland during the High Middle Ages.