Journals of a Time Traveller

Looking for old images to use on my reconstructed Thetford Forest Archaeology website, I came across some photos of prehistoric struck flint that I had forgotten about. One day in 2019, I was facing a life-changing and very painful process. Consequently I took a walk around the Lynford and Santon areas of Thetford Forest, where I discovered some exposed soils close to the Little-Ouse-River.

Hyper-focus is my distraction method. I was in the heart of Frances Healy's Grimes Graves Belt of late prehistoric flint flake scatters. There in sight of the river meadows, I found some thick clusters of roughly struck flint. It almost felt as though I was walking through the workshops of knappers more than four thousand years ago. I imagined them roughing out flint to transport away on the river. These scatters appear to be multi-period, throughout late prehistory from the Mesolithic, through to the Iron-Age. But perhaps there is a relationship of increased productivity linked to the flint-mines during the Later Neolithic.

Among the rough flakes and waste debris, I saw several flint hammer-stones, including that which I hold in my hand in the image. I had AI time travel back to the very local, Late Neolithic Grimes Graves flint-mine complex. Perhaps the wrist watch spooked the locals. They were quite happy working when I first arrived:

Actually there are a few problems with the above AI-generated image. You see the pick? The shape of a modern pick, rather than a utilised red deer antler as found in excavations of the flint-mine shafts at Grimes Graves. The AI tried, by giving it an antler colour. And the people are possibly a little too fair for Neolithic EEF (Early European Farmers). The housing in the background might be more representative of a later prehistoric time. I discuss these issues of AI time travel reconstruction in another recent post. But I'm glad that the AI hasn't dressed them roughly like Og the caveman, in badly tailored furs.

You can see in the image below, the crazed, impacted face of that hammer-stone. Look how well it fits into my hand. When I pick up something like this, and hold, feel and examine it, I reflect on the unrecorded life of the last person to hold it over 4,200 years earlier. There wasn't much hard stone in the Brecks area, and clearly the late prehistoric knappers would manage to use flint to fracture flint. Perhaps along with soft, organic hammers and punches for finer work? Reconstruction archaeologists find that antler tines make great punches, and are useful for pressure flaking.

Time is a strange thing. Our lives are so brief. The person that made this tool, and who sat here close to a river, thousands of years ago left no name, no ethnicity. We don't know how they identified, or how they saw the Universe. We do not know the course of their life. There were no records. Perhaps, a 140 to 180 generations have passed between the knapper's life, and my own life. Other than this hammer-stone and some lithic debris, they passed through a process of existence that was no less important than that of any other living being. Looking at these artefacts in a landscape helps me deal with the difficult times. My life isn't so important. My issues do not matter across the great span of Time. I survive, as a process, as an observer for now. Just like the person who fashioned and used this tool.

Thetford Forest Archaeology Portal & Local History Hub  - Live website.

I’ve lived through plenty of chapters—more than I suspect most people do. In one, I was a licensed radio amateur (G0AGP), keying in Morse code, studying trans-equatorial propagation and the 11-year solar cycle on the 10-metre band. When I had to move on from that world, I needed new learning curves; I needed to seek the patterns beneath the surface.

Or, as it turned out, on the surface of disturbed soils. I found myself drawn to recognising and searching for prehistoric struck flints. That, too, was a lesson in pattern-matching—a growing fascination with siliceous beauty and conchoidal fracture. I would scan the ground, filtering through the chaos of natural stones for the telltale signs of human intervention: bulbs of percussion, ripples, striking platforms, and flake scars. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel the distinct conchoidal curve of a flake struck by a knapper millennia ago. Soon, I saw how these patterns could scale up, mapping themselves onto entire landscapes. With no formal training at the time, I developed my own field techniques and methodology.

Then, computers arrived. I quickly grasped spreadsheets and databases, seeing instantly how they could help me organise and arrange these spatial patterns. Next came dial-up modems. The driving catalyst for buying a 56k modem wasn't to browse, but to build—I wanted a website to share my archaeological data.

That pursuit unlocked a new obsession: web-building. A metal-detecting webmaster of the era once joked on his links page that I would radically transform my website every few weeks. He wasn't wrong. It was a relentless search for a sense of resolution, found only in error-free perfection. In the strict syntax of HTML and XHTML 1.0 Transitional, I found a new universe of patterns.

Twenty-five years ago, web-building was a radically different landscape. There were no AI agents, no VS Code extensions, and no Git. Software packages for building websites were bought on CD-ROM; professional tools were prohibitively expensive, while the cheaper alternatives generated notoriously horrible code—bloated, messy, and unfriendly to browsers.

As an amateur webmaster working on a shoestring budget, I decided the only elegant solution was to learn how to write the code myself. The gold standard at the time had recently shifted from HTML 4 to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I mastered it, and even taught it to my young daughters. By hand-coding XHTML in basic text editors and early syntax-highlighting code editors, I built a 140-page digital estate—a cluster of interconnected micro-sites. I even wrote a tutorial over twenty years ago on how to code by hand.

Timeline

• 1999 – 2006: Writing XHTML, building and maintaining my websites.

• 2008: Interests had moved on. I stopped paying the server bill and the websites were erased. However, the Wayback Machine had archived copies on web.archive.org. Many of the images were lost, but much remained.

• 2026: A conversation with an LLM triggers a decision to attempt a total restoration and revival of my old sites.

Step 1: The Extraction (Excavation)

Gemini AI guided me to the Archivarix service. All I had to do was select the range of dates over which the Wayback Machine had originally captured the websites. (A little tip for anyone else trying this: choosing a wider date range might have captured a few more of the original images). I decided to pay the $10 USD fee (around £7.38 GBP)—a service well worth paying for. A short while later, the ZIP file was ready.

I operate from a modest Acer Chromebook. Initially, I had some issues trying to extract the files. That process would have been much easier if I had decided to reinstall the Linux (Crostini) environment right away. I have plenty of Linux experience using a variety of distros years ago, and I had used Crostini on this Chromebook before, but right then I was reluctant to set it up again. That was a wrong move. Instead, with Gemini assisting me, I bypassed the extraction issue for the moment and took the archive straight to the next stage.

Step 2: Upload to Live Status (Conservation)

Twenty-five years ago, you either used one of the awful, ad-funded free servers like Yahoo! GeoCities, or you paid for hosting and uploaded your files via FTP. Things have moved on. I prompted the AI to help me find a free home for my website, and found myself at the front door of Netlify.

Initially, I used an AI interface to help process the raw archive data. I fed the archive into the workspace, watched the AI perform its magic, and suddenly the core structure was back online. Next, I updated the URL, choosing https://thetford-forest-archaeology.netlify.app/. Naturally, twenty-five years ago, the .app top-level domain didn't even exist. But boom—there it was.

Restoration of a Broken Website

My websites were once again live on the World Wide Web, no longer confined to a dusty archive. Yet I had massive amounts of work to do. The Wayback Machine had graciously saved the text, but many of the image files were gone (specifically those that lay too many clicks away from the index file). I managed to retrieve some of these from other old repositories, my old Flickr account, and alternative archive sites, but dozens remained lost forever.

I had a lot of tidying up to do. Furthermore, I had hand-coded these 140+ files in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, only to find in 2026 that the world had moved on to HTML5. My pattern-matching tendencies wouldn't tolerate such a structural mismatch. As a hyper-systemiser working in partnership with Gemini and Claude, it took me about three weeks of editing to rationalise everything down to 116 clean web pages, alongside their supporting JPEG, CSS, and XML files.

Step 3: The Coding (Reconstruction)

I finally did what I should have done at the start: I enabled the Chromebook's Linux feature and updated the system. My Linux commands were rusty, but I had my AI friends to guide me. I generated a website folder within the Linux partition and, using Bash commands guided by Gemini, I extracted the compressed files there. Now I had a full local clone of the website sitting in my Chromebook's local storage.

A tip for Chromebook Linux newcomers: The Linux folder partition won't automatically appear in the native ChromeOS Files app unless you have opened the Linux terminal at least once during your session to mount the container.

Next, I installed Flatpak via the terminal, using it to download Visual Studio Code (VS Code) as my environment of choice. While there are countless AI extensions available for IDEs, many require paid tokens or API credits. To keep this project entirely free, I utilised a simpler workflow: I would copy my code blocks, paste them into the free-standing browser interfaces of Gemini or Claude for structural analysis, and paste the corrected code straight back into VS Code. Money saved.

What to do with the websites themselves? Three distinct components were salvageable:

1. Thetford Forest Archaeology

2. Portuguese Thetford

3. Wesley's Metal Detector Finds

I didn't want to completely modernise everything; I wanted to preserve their history while ensuring modern browser compatibility. My approach varied across the four sites:

• Thetford Forest Archaeology: A hybrid approach. I converted the skeleton to HTML5 but maintained the period-accurate CSS and styling of the early 2000s. I updated all .htm extensions to .html. This was always my prized showcase website—the original motivation for me learning to code.

• Portuguese Thetford: I let Gemini take the lead on rewriting the CSS. I didn't just sit back and blindly accept prompts; I meticulously updated the structural tags, but permitted the AI to modernise the responsive presentation layer while keeping the original text fully intact.

• Wesley's Metal Detector Finds: This old site is a classic end-of-the-20th-century creation, complete with an animated GIF and a tiled background. I chose to preserve this one completely untouched, keeping the original code exactly as it was, save for updating the broken hyperlinks.

• How to HTML!: I had entirely forgotten that I wrote this! Originally coded in strict XHTML with .htm extensions, I left the core tutorial preserved, simply removing old CSS references to background graphics that have been lost to time. Later, I decided to delete this micro-site as a distraction and no longer relevant to 2026.

To bridge the personal knowledge gap between XHTML and modern standards, I provided Claude with a link to my old "How to HTML!" tutorial. I asked the AI to use my own 20-year-old text to form the basis of a personalised transition course into HTML5. It felt as though an earlier version of me from 2005 was reaching forward across the decades to teach the 2026 version of me how to code for the modern web.

Isn't that clever? Perfect for a Time Traveller.

Step 4: The Relaunch (Publication)

To handle updates without relying on automated AI build tools, I shifted to Netlify’s direct manual folder deployment feature. This method is entirely free and bypasses the need for automated build credits.

The deployment process is incredibly elegant. It uses a local checksum mechanism: I simply select the entire website folder from the Linux directory on my Chromebook. The interface might flag that hundreds of files are being processed, but it instantly identifies the precise files that have changed and uploads only the modifications. Updates are seamless, uncomplicated, and incredibly fast. The key is simply maintaining that perfect, updated clone within the Linux environment.

I am pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it has become to maintain a web presence today. With the files live, all that remains is some foundational SEO work—submitting updated XML sitemaps to the search engines and tidying up metadata.

Digital Archaeology.  AI Image prompted by Gemini to illustrate this post. An archaeology website that has itself, become a digital artefact.

I just checked Google Search. The index appears using the string: Thetford Forest Archaeology. May the SEO prosper, and a new generation of archaeology students learn from how an amateur did it twenty years ago.

Update - 2026-06-19

I've totally succumbed to modernism and AI intervention, by allowing Anthropic Claude AI to move the Archaeology website into the 2020s, completing its move from XHTML to HTML5, and giving it a complete fresh restyle. I have removed the HTML Tutor website as obsolete.

I encountered AI (Artificial Intelligence) image generators only five months ago. Immediately, I began using them to restore and colourise scans of old black-and-white family photos. Next, I experimented with altering the ages of my ancestors, visualising them in youth or middle age. By pulling documentary evidence like height, build, hair, and eye colour from prison or military records, I could re-age them and place them in the correct uniform. I could place them in a wide variety of settings. For instance, using the military records of my mother's paternal grandfather, Alfred Henry Curtis, I could place him directly as a young man in South Africa:

I soon developed this concept further. I realised I could use AI image generators to recreate ancestors from nothing more than prison and military descriptions, combining these records with historical social conditions, local phenotypes, and a plausible likeness to their close descendants. Alternatively, I could go a step further: reconstructing them with no physical descriptions at all, but dressed in the authentic clothing of their status and time. Crucially, I could instruct the AI to prioritise raw realism over any tendency to glamourise the past.

This methodology eventually launched me into a much deeper exploration: my series on deep time, Time travel, and haplogroup ancestry. In this series, I follow an ancient story, tracing variants within mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome. To bring this journey to life, I use AI-generated images to illustrate plausible ancestors as they moved through different archaeological cultures.

Consequently, I had moved from simple photograph restoration and into the realm of time-travel photography. I found that I could use free, publicly accessible AI image generators to reconstruct entire landscapes:

It seems that I had stepped right into a burgeoning fad for creating AI images and videos that appear to portray modern individuals travelling into past ages. Time travel, it seems, is catching on. To illustrate, I just commissioned Google Gemini AI to prompt its image generator, for an image of myself, in 120 CE, on Hadrian's Wall in Northern Britain. I'm dressed in the segmented lorica segmentata (iron plate armour) and a heavy sagum wool cloak pinned with a fibula. I hold a pilum (javelin). Where is my army pension?

This inevitably raises the question of truth. We are told we can no longer believe what we see in images or videos, sparking a general panic about AI-generated fabrications and 'fake news'. I could point out, of course, that all images are an illusion—that nothing is quite as it appears, even to the naked eye. But philosophy aside, as a traditional film photographer, I am well aware of how easily one can manipulate even chemical silver salts to distort reality. Yet, it was never possible on such a scale, or with such casual ease.

As for how we view the past, our vision has always been coloured by prejudice. We inevitably view distant eras through the spectacles of our own culture, background, and ethnic identity. That is nothing new. The way the Victorians envisioned the 'Ancient Britons', for instance, was radically different from how the Tudors saw them, or how the twenty-first century understands the British Later Iron Age.

While I shall resist the temptation to dive deeper into the philosophy of truth, I must confront how these biases manifest today. As I continue to experiment, I keep encountering a fascinating reality: AI image generators have prejudices of their own. What follows is a breakdown of why this happens, how I spot it, and the specific idiosyncrasies I have recently noticed regarding AI visual time-travel.

The Flaws of AI Visual Reconstructions of the Past

AI image generators cannot understand the Bronze Age.

Seriously—go and ask one to generate a high-quality scene of a Bronze or Copper Age settlement. Because bronze is cast, rather than forged, and is a much softer metal than iron, its practical use translates into radically different engineering and casting shapes for weapons and tools compared to their equivalent iron counterparts. This may have further impacts, for example on joinery and boat-building. A simple bucket, or a timber construction will be impacted by the absence of iron.

I eventually had to give up. AI simply cannot understand bronze. Furthermore, it lazily projects an iron-forged reality even further back into the Stone Ages. Look closely at the spears it generates for pre-metal eras, or its complete inability to render early Neolithic round-bottomed pottery. I have even seen it generate Mesolithic microliths—delicate, tiny stone inserts—rendered the size of modern kitchen knives.

Cheddar Man and the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG).

Cheddar Man was an individual who lived in Cheddar Gorge, Britain, near the close of the Younger Dryas. While his remains were discovered over a century ago, it was the relatively recent sequencing of his ancient DNA that rewrote our visual understanding of him. Genetic analysis revealed alleles indicative of a dark, or very dark, skin tone, remarkably combined with light-coloured, blue eyes. Grafting these specific genetic markers onto a facial reconstruction based on his skull topology produced a striking, unique-looking individual.

But was this phenotype unique to him? It turns out it was not. Other individuals who lived across Europe between 14,000 and 5,000 years ago shared these identical alleles. Together, they form a distinct population that human population geneticists have termed the WHG (Western Hunter-Gatherers). They shared dark skin, light-coloured blue eyes, and were universally lactose intolerant.

The WHG looked like no 21st-century ethnicity. Yet, because AI image generators merely act as a mirror to their modern creators and users, they cannot easily conceptualise a people like Cheddar Man. If you ask an AI for dark skin, it automatically grafts on facial architecture and hair textures associated with modern-day people of African heritage—traits the WHG simply did not possess. To satisfy the prompt for blue eyes, it then inserts unnatural, alien, laser-like startling blue irises.

This happens because AI image generators inherit the 21st-century prejudices and commercial classifications of their developers. They are hardwired to create known, modern-day ethnicity, all while adhering to contemporary, hyper-polished standards of beauty and perfection.

Vikingisation and Ragnar Lothbrok.

But this 'Vikingisation' goes far beyond the eighth to twelfth centuries CE; it is routinely carried over into entirely unrelated historical periods. In fact, almost any archaeological age can fall victim to it. Ask an AI for a historical or prehistorical scene from the medieval era or earlier, and there you will find Ragnar waiting for you.

This bias isn't limited to battle scenes, either. I recently asked for a Chalcolithic (Copper Age) scene on a European river, set thousands of years before the first Viking ever sailed. The vessel it generated? A clinker-constructed longboat. Please! AI image generators will lazily default to dragon-headed longboats rigged with square sails—even when the period in question predates the very invention of the sail in that region.

Landscapes are subject to profound change across deep time, and these environmental shifts must be meticulously considered before we even begin prompting an image.

Above image copyright of openstreetmap.org.  Modified to show local districts of Broadland and Flegg.

Flegg is a district of two hundreds, consisting of a total of 22 parishes, set in Broadland, in the east of the East Anglian county of Norfolk.  It is thought that with the higher sea levels of the Roman period, that it would have effectively have formed  an island bordered by reed beds, marshes, river valleys on the west and south, and the North Sea in the east.  As sea levels decreased slightly during the Anglo-Saxon period, and drainage systems advanced, so Flegg became better connected to the "mainland".

Roman East Norfolk showing Flegg as an island:

The name "Flegg" is Anglo-Danish in origin, as are many of it's parish names such as Ormesby, Rollesby, Hemsby, Stokesby, Filby, Scratby, Mautby, Thrigby, Billockby etc.  No other district in East Anglia, a region that formed a part of the 10th Century Dane-Law has such a concentration of Scandinavian place-names.

In this post I want to record some transcriptions taken from some studies in my book collection, that relate to Flegg, or to the wider area of Broadland (East Norfolk), during the earlier Medieval period.

The Origins of Norfolk.  Tom Williamson 1993.  Manchester University Press.  ISBN 0 7190 3928

The Norfolk Broads - A landscape history.  Tom Williamson.  1997.  Manchester University Press ISBN 0 7190 4801.

"The Broadland fens and marshes are nowhere so extensive that the traveller loses sight of the 'upland'.  Even in the middle of the Halvergate marshes the higher ground can be seen, low on the horizon, often picked out by the lines of woodland growing on the relict 'cliffs' of the former estuary.  Some of the higher land once comprised islands: Flegg covering some 78 sq km, between the Bure and the Thurne.".

"During Middle Saxon times - roughly the period between the mid-seventh and late ninth centuries - the local population probably increased once again, and more complex forms of social and economic organisation developed.  The Broads area became a part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, which was roughly coterminous with the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk.  It is possible that the uplands here were more densely wooded than most parts of Norfolk at this time, in spite of the excellence of much of the local soil.  Certainly, many place-names in the area seem to refer to woodland: Acle for example was the ac leah, the oak wood; Fishley, 'the wood of the fisherman'; while both East Ruston and Sco Ruston incorporated the term hris tun, 'the settlement among the brushwood'.  It is possible that, remote from the main centres of power in East Anglia, and exposed to the threat of continued sea-borne raiding, the district was relatively sparsely settled, principally used for grazing.  The importance of the latter in the local economy is again suggested by place-names: Horsey was 'the horse island'; Woodbastwick and Bastwick both incorporate the element wic, 'a grazing farm, ranch'; while the names of Winterton and Somerton - the winter settlement and the summer settlement respectively - suggest the practice of transhumance, the seasonal movement of livestock to distant pastures.  Extensive areas of seasonal grazing must have been opening up in the form of low-lying fens and marshes as the estuaries here began to silt up.  The role of Broadland as an area specialising in grazing and the exploitation of woodland - complementing the arable specialisms of other parts of the East Anglian kingdom - is also perhaps indicated by a particularly noticeable feature of the area at the end of the Saxon period.  Domesday book shows that a very large proportion of the population here was classed not as bondmen - as villeins, sokemen or bordars - but as free men, liberi homines.  Such individuals were very thick on the ground both in Flegg, and on the uplands bordering the south of Broadland, and the power of manorial lords in these areas was correspondingly circumscribed.  There are many views on the nature, and significance of such men: but one interpretation is that they were the descendants of Middle Saxon peasants whose main role had been that of herdsmen or shepherds, and whose obligations to king and nobles were thus less servile or onerous than those of arable producers."

"Elsewhere in Norfolk and Suffolk free men were more thinly spread, although they were almost everywhere a more prominent feature than in other areas of England.  Like other distinctive aspects of East Anglia's social and tenurial structure, they are often interpreted as a consequence of the settlement here, during the ninth and tenth centuries, of immigrants from Scandinavia.  While in reality, the origins of Norfolk and Suffolk's medieval idiosyncrasies are much more complex than this, a Viking elite clearly did come to dominate the East Anglian kingdom around 869 when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'The host went from Cirencester into East Anglia, and occupy that land, and share it out.'

In restricted areas there also appears to have been large-scale peasant immigration from Scandinavia.  One of these was Broadland.  Viking place-names - especially those featuring the suffix -by, 'farm, settlement' - are densely clustered on the island of Flegg (a name itself derived from a Scandinavian word meaning reeds), widespread in Lothingland, and scattered more thinly along the upland margins of the Yare and Waveney."

"Whatever the nature (and extent) of Viking settlement in the area, there is no doubt that by the time of the Domesday survey in 1086 the upland parts of Broadland were no longer a sparsely-settled landscape of woodland and pasture.  They were now - together with the neighbouring clayland areas to the south and west - one of the most densely settled and intensively farmed regions in the whole of England.".

"The region's dense population, and complex social structure, are manifested in another way: in the small sizes of parishes, and thus in the large number of parish churches.  Indeed the upland areas of Broadland have one of the highest densities of parish churches in Britain.  Many of these (although not the present structures) were already in existence by the time of Domesday: their proliferation reflects not only the comparative wealth of this fertile region, and the need to house large congregations, but also perhaps the confused tenurial structure of the locality.  Families of freemen may have been keen to endow churches in order to establish their status: church-building was the mark of the lord, rather than the peasant."

"In East Anglia, in contrast [sic to the classic "great open fields" elsewhere in medieval English parishes - PB] medieval agricultural systems were much more flexible and individualistic: seldom were the strips widely scattered across two or three great 'fields' but were instead more closely clustered in the vicinity of the peasant's homestead, and individual farmers had more freedom of choice about what they grew and when.  In the west of Norfolk, such freedoms were somewhat limited by the institution of the 'fold course' - the right of the manorial lord to graze sheep across the tenants' land for much of the year.  In Broadland however - where the power of manorial lords was more circumscribed - fold courses were rare and tenants enjoyed almost complete freedom over how they organised their cropping, and rights of grazing over others' land were often limited to the period after the harvest."

Medieval Flegg.  Two Norfolk Hundreds in the Middle Ages East and West Flegg, 1086 - 1500.  Barbara Cornford.  2002. Larks Press.  ISBN 0 948400 98 6

p 16. "Flegg farmers have always distinguished between the upland and the marsh (The upland in Flegg is all land over five feet above sea level)."

p20. "Yarmouth has always been the market town and urban centre for Flegg.  In the Middle Ages corn from Flegg fed the town.  For centuries Flegg farmers and small-holders have sold their livestock, vegetables and fruit at the Wednesday and Saturday markets."

p22. "The Danish settlement of East Anglia began after 880 AD, when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Danes occupied the land and shared it out.  They must have come to Flegg in considerable numbers for they gave names to thirteen out of twenty-two villages in Flegg."

p22 "The name Stokesby, which is Saxon in its first element and Danish in its second, is an interesting one.  Not only does it suggest the mingling of the two groups, but it may also explain why the Danes found the Muck Fleet valley virtually empty.  The Saxon word 'stoc', pronounced with a long 'o', was used to describe an 'outlying pasture near water where cattle are kept for part of the year'.  If this is true of Stokesby, then the Danes may well have found only cattle-minders in the valley, with perhaps small and scattered settlements around the heath to the west."

p23. "Most of the Danish village names in Flegg incorporate a personal name, such as Orm (Ormesby), Malti (Mautby), or Hrodulfr (Rollesby).  Dr Sandred believes that these are the names, not of warrior chiefs, but of free farmers, more interested in acquiring land than pillage and warfare."

p24-25. "Danish words have survived in Flegg as they have generally in Norfolk.  Holme means an island and is applied to an area of dry ground in the marsh, often a gravel bank.  Winterton and Somerton Holmes are sufficiently well drained to be ploughed and contain farms.  Medieval field-names include 'gate' for a road, 'wong' for a furlong or collection of strips in the open fields and the 'syk', a marshy strip of land by a stream.  These words are still used.  Ferrygate and Damgate are roads in Martham, villagers go 'over the wongs' from the church to the hamlet of Cess, or through the 'syk' meadow, marshy ground, which was once a navigable stream, marking the boundary between Martham and Bastwick.  One Danish name has vanished.  The hamlet of Sco, mentioned in the Domesday survey, lay where Martham, Bastwick, and Rollesby meet around the present Grange Farm (OS TG 437 172), but Sco never became an ecclesiastical or civil parish.  The word is Danish, from skogre, a wood, and is appropriate for a settlement at the bottom of Speech Oak Hill."

p29-30. "A few words of explanation are needed about the terms used in the extract.  The hide was a Saxon measurement of land, which notionally contained 120 acres.  In Norfolk, the Danish word carucate, also 120 acres, was used instead of hide.  The carucates and acres recorded are not very accurate measurements but they give a rough idea of the size of a manor dmesne ir a freeman's farm.  The demesne was the home farm of a manor and its produce went to the lord of the manor for his use.  Villeins and cottars, or bordars as they are called in Norfolk, were attached to the manors and provided much of the labour force on the demesne.  Serfs, possibly slaves, were present in small numbers on a few manors.  Freemen and sokemen were always regarded as free tenants.  The number of ploughs is always recorded on manors and on the freemen's and sokemen's holdings.  The word 'plough' includes a team of eight oxen."

p31. "The two Flegg Hundreds, along with others in East and South Norfolk, were the most densely populated in the county.  The freemen, villeins and other tenants were heads of households with dependant families.  I was surprised to see how close the number of Domesday households were to returns from the first Census of 1801.  Many readers will have some idea of what life was like in Norfolk two hundred years ago in the days of Nelson, Parson Woodeford and the Agricultural Improvers.  It is important to remember that Norfolk was probably as busy a place in the late eleventh century, as it was several hundred years later."

"Over two thirds of the inhabitants of Flegg were freemen and sokemen, that is men and women of free status, but it is not always easy to define their position in society.  Sokemen are almost always attached to manors and on some manors had specific services to render to their lords.  On manors belonging to St Benet's Abbey they were often employed as ploughmen.  In theory at least, freemen were free of all feudal control, but most had commended themselves to a powerful lord in order to gain protection.  These freemen, in commendations only, as Domesday says, had minimal obligations to their lords.  They could sell their land, often without even consulting the lord.  They had the right to attend the Hundred Court and to take part in its deliberations.

Freemen and sokemen were numerous all over Eastern England, their numbers declining towards the west.  Historians have thought that it was a Danish origin or influence which enabled the freemen to maintain their independence from feudal pressures.  A more likely cause is now thought to have been the general economic prosperity of eastern England that helped the freemen to withstand the pressures of the feudal lords."

p33."Villeins and bordars account for only a third of the tenants.  Whatever their exact legal status, they were certainly under close control of their manors on which they lived and where they provided most of the labour on the demesnes.  They had their own farms, but the size of their holdings is nor recorded.  A  hundred years later the usual villain holding in Martham was about twelve acres, but there were wide variations.  Bordars had smaller holdings, perhaps about five acres.  Bordars are particularly numerous in west Flegg where the small manors sometimes relied entirely on them for labour.  Only twelve serfs are recorded in Flegg."

p36. "Corn was not the only valuable commodity produced in Flegg.  Both salt production and sheep farming brought in extra income.  The spring tides up the river Bure flooded pools in the estuary with salt water that gradually evaporated in the summer sun and wind.  The resulting brine was taken to earthenware pans on the marsh edge where the brine was heated until the salt crystallised.  At the time of Domesday, Flegg was the centre of salt production in East Norfolk."

p53. "In the twelfth century the introduction of windmills gave the landlords other sources of income.  By 1200 windmills at Herringby and Rollesby had been recorded and by 1300 windmills were common in all Flegg villages.  At the same time the use of horses for ploughing meant that the lords were less dependent on the ox-drawn ploughs of their freemen and sokemen to cultivate the demesne.  By 1245 ploughing was done by horses on the Abbot of St Benet's manor of Ashby and no doubt on most other manors."

p91. "At Martham, as was usual in East Norfolk, a tenant's holding was not a block of land, but a collection of strips in the open fields, usually in the fields nearest to the tenant's home, although some holdings were scattered more widely in the village."

p138. "The Black Death arrived in Norfolk in the spring of 1349 and spread up the river valleys from Yarmouth.  It was particularly severe in South Norfolk, along the Yare and the Bure valleys and on the coast."

p139. "The Inquisition Post Mortem taken after the death of Thomas de Essex in 1351 for his manor of Runham states that all the tenants were dead.".

p144. "It is surprising that Flemings left the Low Countries to work in England after the Black Death.  Flemings were employed in many places in East Norfolk in the 1350s.  In 1355 a Fleming was hired to cut and harvest five acres of wheat in Martham for which he was paid 3s. 4d.  This separate entry suggests that perhaps he worked away from the other harvesters.  The next year a Fleming was employed for eleven days to thresh seven quarters of wheat at 3d. a quarter, which is considerably less than the usual rate of 5d. a quarter.  I have found Flemings mentioned at Rollesby, Ashby, and Scottow.  St Benet's Abbey employed twelve Flemings for the harvest of 1356.  Perhaps these men went round in a gang hiring themselves wherever they were needed.  It is difficult to understand why they came across the North Sea to seek farm work.  It has been suggested that the Black Death did not claim so many lives in the Low Countries where the standard of living was higher and resistance to the disease greater than in most of Europe."

I'm stopping there.  I could take it through the Peasant's Rebellion and the Late Medieval.  I highly recommend Barbara Cornford's little book.  She in particular, has dissected the manorial records of Martham, Norfolk.  She successfully brings the Medieval in that manor to life.  Not so alien.  People were still clearly very much people as we know them.

Summary

On a personal, genealogical level, I have many, many Broadland ancestors on my mother's side recorded over the past 400 years or so.  However, their main cluster area was immediately to the south of Flegg, along the Yare valley in Broadland.  But tracing back - some of the lines there had moved down from the general region of Flegg - Moulton St Mary, Acle, South Walsham, Stokesby, Repps-with-Bastwick, Herringby, Rollesby, Ormesby, etc.  Therefore on a personal level, I've enjoyed researching this history, as I most likely had many ancestors on Flegg a few centuries earlier, during the Later Medieval at least.

I don't have very many photographs taken on Flegg.  Once I've completed the Wherryman's Way long distance trail, I need to explore the churches and landscape of Flegg.

On a Population Genetics Level - 3 points.

1. The 1348 Black Death.  It killed a lot of families.  At least one third of the population died, in addition to a famine and hard times that preceded the disease for several years before the outbreak.
2. Once again, I find evidence of admixture in East Anglia, from the Low Countries.  The long term link across the North Sea to the Lower Rhine Valley.
3. Movement during the 15th Century.  As Feudalism gradually collapsed over the 150 years following the Black Death, more and more people started to move around England - away from their ancient manors and parishes.  Cornfield noted three brothers from Martham during the 15th Century.  One ended up in Ely, Cambridgeshire, another in Halesworth, Suffolk, and the third in London.  Should any of the brothers had returned to the manor they would have owed money to their lord.  They didn't, people were moving around by then.

Flegg doesn't yet have a great landscape history of the Late Prehistoric.  It does have an importance during the Romano-British, with the Fort of Caister etc.  The current story picks up during the Middle Saxon, where we currently get the impression that this last wild landscape of East Anglia was picked up - vulnerable to sea raiders.  It's natural resources at first exploited for woodland materials, then more so as grazing land and pasture.  It's almost bizarre concentration of Danish place-names and words from the Late Saxon period.  I cannot think other than that an Old Danish-speaking people - at the very least, a significant immigration, settled here, and finally founded villages and farmsteads with names.  It's not the traditional story of raiding, marauding Vikings, but of the immigration of farmers.

By Domesday it's full of people and production.  A centre, an agrarian hub.  The imposition of feudal pressure by Norman lords being resisted for centuries by local freemen farmers.  They say that Norfolk does different.  Flegg certainly did, with it's proto-capitalism and relatively (to the West Midlands for example) free labour markets.

Worth recording and appreciating.

Thurne Mill.

July 2018 - I recently completed a BERT (Basic Excavation and Recording Techniques) Course in Archaeology at the SHARP Project in Sedgeford, Norfolk.  I've been interested in archaeology for decades.  My interested probably kicked off during the early 1970's when as a kid, I witnessed a number of excavations around my father's shop in Norwich.  Around 16 - 21 years ago, I was a keen amateur archaeologist.  I studied part-time for two years with the UEA, and gained a certificate in "Field Archaeology & Landscape History".  I contributed as a volunteer field-walker, or as I liked to call it, surface-collection surveyor.  I carried out a one man survey of over thirty compartments with disturbed soils in Thetford Forest.  Here is a link to the restoration of my old project website Thetford Forest Archaeology.

My main interest was in survey methodology, late prehistory, and in British lithics.  However, Life moved on as it does for me.  Years later, I look at the SHARP (Sedgeford Archaeological & Historical Research Project) website, and spot their course, BERT (Basic Excavation & Recording Techniques).  I remembered field-walking for a day at Sedgeford, with the UEA group, around 19 years ago.  The Sedgeford Project was still up and running after all of these years!  I'd never excavated before.  I liked field-walking as it gave me independence to carry out all aspects of the project.  But even though I had a long term interest in archaeology - I'd never myself, as much as lifted a trowel at a dig.  Time is moving on - I decided to add it to the bucket list of life, and to execute it.  I signed up for a BART Course to commence and run for six days in July 2018.  This is what I experienced.

SHARP (Sedgford Archaeological & Historical Research Project) is a project both to a) deep research over a long term period, one English village parish, set in the North West Norfolk landscape - using multiple archaeological and historical research methods, and b) in democratic archaeology, where locals, members of the public, amateurs, students, enthusiasts, and volunteers can contribute to and become involved in a high quality research project.  Archaeology is demystified, as volunteers often gain enough experience to become supervisors and trainers at the Project themselves.

I'd say that they have achieved both of those goals, and over an incredible 23 year period - and still going strong, with plenty of excavations and other research possibilities to keep them busy in that one small Norfolk parish, for many years to come.  Indeed one very important lesson of SHARP - is that Sedgeford is just one rural East Anglian village parish.  Not particularly special.  Out of some 1,200 or more East Anglian parishes.  Yet it has proven to provide decades of research and opportunities.  For those that believe that Archaeology is all done and dusted, think again.

The setting.  Sedgeford, a parish in the north west corner of the East Anglian county of Norfolk.  A few miles from the coast of the Wash and the North Sea.  July 2018.    A small stream passes through the village.  In past times, it was a navigable stretch of Heacham River.

The UK has been in a drought for several weeks, and are in what the media refer to as a "heatwave", the hottest and driest for over forty years.

Above image copyright from openstreetmap.org.

I purchased a place on the BERT course at the off-site rate (GBP £290).  Full Rate On-Site (GBP £430 - there is also a concession rate) would have entitled me to a pitch in their camp, as well as to evening meal, evening community activities (some of which may require a further fee), and to breakfast.  I know that I was missing out on that aspect of the SHARP experience.  During the week, evening activities included a quiz, a game of cricket, a lecture, and at the end, a storytelling evening followed by a punk rock act!  However, as my interest was in the archaeology, I couldn't justify the extra cost when I could drive home to sleep and rest each evening.

There were a number of things that I was notified of that I needed: a few basic tools, including an archaeology trowel, a leaf trowel, a plumb bob, line level, pencils, 5 metre steel tape, a broad rimmed hat, sun lotion, etc.  Of those, the most essential were the archaeology trowel, pencils, the hat, and sun lotion.  In addition, had I known, I would have brought a pen, a drink mug, food dish / bowl, and knife and fork.

Day 1. Sunday

Day 2. Monday.

Day 3. Tuesday.

On Day 3 we had training on the identification, context, and recording of small finds in an excavation.  We each had to complete the session by filling out a small find record, complete with description, context, dimensions, description, and a drawing of a metal artefact.

Next session was Bulk Finds - cleaning and treatment of different materials such as daub, bone, shell, ceramics, etc.  We were taught to systematically keep bulk find trays with context tabs.

Some more trowel work in Trench 23.  Practical assessment of the ability to plot a plan of a trench and features.

Day 4. Wednesday

Training with a Dumpy Level - in order to record height of excavation features and small finds.

Training in site photography.  How to clean and prepare a feature such as post holes, take photographic records, fill in the photography register, use metre sticks, context boards, etc.

More general trench trowelling and other work.

Day 5. Thursday

Environmental Archaeology.  Trained to strain soil samples in a flotation tank, in order to separate light organic material, heavier bulk finds such as daub, from soil.  We also sorted through the bulk finds from a flotation sample - separating finds such as daub and bone.

I and another student, Anna, were asked to excavate a sondage on the edge of Trench 23, in order to test if a Saxon dated drainage ditch continued in that direction.  I particularly took great joy in that work - but so hot in the heat-wave.

Day 6. Friday - Goodbyes.

We had a recap on excavation recording.

An introduction to geophysics and non-intrusive archaeological methods.  As I studied non-invasive archaeology with the UEA for two years in the past, this was like a recap and update for myself.  However - we got to play with a magnetometer (flux gradiometer) out in the field, which was certainly a new experience.

We also had an introduction to reporting.  Each week, the new crop of BERT students have to complete a new section of a report for the Trench 23 excavation.

I was allowed to complete my beloved sondage trench, and yes - it revealed the soil stain of the Middle Saxon ditch:

We were presented our BERT certificates.  With another student, I was tasked to guide some members of the public visiting the excavation.  We got the thumbs up from a supervisor.  At close of the week some of us made a presentation to the SHARP team about what we had been learning.

Summary

It wasn't just trowel work, site photography, dumpy levels, or even flotation that I learned about and experienced over the week.  What I also discovered were human stories and community.  I saw a sort of collectivism in action, in the form of People's Archaeology - individuals helping each other up.  I enjoyed the work.  I enjoyed meeting like minded people on their own journeys.  So much so that I'm looking forward to returning next summer as a volunteer at Sedgeford.  Last day was actually emotional.

Thank you SHARP.

The above image illustrates of some of my ancestral locations, as according to documented genealogy.  As can be seen.  I have quite a lot of East Anglian ancestry.  What might also be observed, is the location of East Anglia, and of South East England, in relation to Belgium, the Netherlands, and North East France.

I'm an East Anglian.  Much of my family tree is East Anglian.  Before documented genealogy picks up my family trail, who were the East Anglians, what were their origins?  The traditional answer would be that they were the descendants of the Angles.  An early 5th Century AD tribe, that relocated from Angeln, now in Schleswig Holstein, on the North Germany, South Denmark border.  Them, and maybe a few Saxons, Jutes, Suevvi, etc.  All pretty much from what is now North Germany and Denmark.  See the map below:

Archaeology sort of backs this up ... but also offers some slight alternatives.  At first, British Archaeology supported the Historians - that there was a near genocidal event during the 5th and 6th centuries, where the Anglo Saxon tribes arrived and displaced the Romano-Britons that had until then, lived in South East Britannia.  There certainly is plenty, even, overwhelming evidence, of Anglo-Saxon culture if not settlement in East Anglia at this time.  Below are the locations of a few of the many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries found in East Anglia - and their closest artifact correlations on the Continent - in Northern Germany:

It's all adding up.  However, then, a new trend appears in British Archaeology that plays down the Anglo-Saxon invasion hypothesis. From the 1980's onward, some British archaeologists started to argue that they saw patterns of land use continuity between the Romano-British and Pagan Saxon periods.  They argued there was no archaeology of genocide.  No battle sites.  No mass graves.  Instead they proposed that only limited numbers of Anglo Saxons arrived - and that their culture was largely adopted by the Romano-Britons that already lived here.  Some even suggested that no Anglo Saxons came here - it was merely a cultural import.

Then Genetics stepped in.  Most notably with POBI (Peopling of the British Isles) 2015, but also with a number of other studies, often comparing the DNA from excavated remains to modern populations.  They proposed a new middle house consensus.  No there was no genocide.  The modern English have more old British ancestry than Anglo-Saxon.  However, there was a significant Anglo Saxon immigration event.  But they mixed, intermarried.  Anglo-Saxon culture was adopted, but Anglo Saxons had not displaced the Britons.  They had married them.  The modern English it seems have around 10% to 40% Anglo Saxon ancestry, and 60% to 90% British.  Sort of watered down Celts.

The assumption that we have made, is that rural populations on the front-line immigration - such as East Anglians, were the most watered down, with highest percentages of Anglo-Saxon ancestry.  Why not.  The archaeology would support that.  The East Anglian landscape is littered with Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Danish place-names.  It is the most Anglo-Saxon landscape, and later, was firmly within the Dane-Law.

My Ancestry

It's all over this blog.  However, in summary, I am an East Anglian.  Born at Norwich, with all four grandparents of Norfolk birth.  I have been researching my family tree using genealogy, for thirty years, on and off.  I have accumulated the recorded names of 490 direct ancestors.  Around 80% or more of this ancestry lived here in East Anglia.  At Generation 6 (3rd great grandparent), my ancestry was 97% South East English, and 3% Swiss.  This is demonstrated in this fan chart of my recorded ancestry:

If that's not East Anglian enough - look at the right hand side of that fan chart, my mother's side.  My mother has 225 of her direct ancestors recorded, and everyone lived firmly in East Anglia.

I have documents, likenesses in family photos, and family stories to back my narrative ancestry; but I am also gradually building biological evidence through the use of DNA matches to other testers, that share a common ancestry with me, that correlates well with the shared DNA:

That the vast majority of our ancestry is very rural, and poor agricultural working class, would suggest that we have had ancestry here in East Anglia for a very, very, long time.  I have traced some lines back to early parish records in the 16th Century.  I would expect that many of our ancestors belonged to peasant families in Medieval Norfolk and Suffolk.  These, I'd expect were the descendants of Anglo Saxons, Romano-Britons, and Danes.

Here comes the paradox.

Population Genetics and the DNA

Documentary evidence confirms that I'm an East Anglian, and English.  But when I tested with the commercial DNA-for-ancestry vendors, such as 23andme or FT-DNA, my results, although seeing me as pretty firmly, a North West European, doesn't really see me as particularly British.  23andme suggested only 32% British.  They instead suggest that my ancestry is rather Continental.  High levels of "West European" or "French & German".  I at first assumed that this was ancient or early medieval ancestry, my Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish East Anglian roots showing through.

But is that the case?  Analysis using some of the latest calculators challenge that.  Here are the PCA locations of myself and my mother, on one such calculator.  This one (By David Wesolowski) includes many modern references grouped on language family, but also includes some references from actual ancient DNA in Northern Europe, including some extracted from Anglo Saxon remains in Cambridgeshire, close to East Anglia:

You see the red squares represent the Anglo Saxons in Cambridgeshire?  Mine and even my very rural East Anglian mother's place well to the right of them, closer to modern day Irish speakers, overlapping with modern day French speakers.  More Celtic it seems than Anglo Saxon.

Here's another PCA showing our positions (red myself, orange, my mother), this one by Lukasz, but based on the Eurogenes K36 calculator:

It puts me closer to Flemish then Walloon, followed by SE English.  Finally a third PCA, from Eurogenes K15: 

We consistently position between SE England and North France, Belgium, and the Netherlands; rather than between SE England and Northern Germany and Denmark.  It appears that we relate closer to Normans, Belgians, Walloons, Flemish, and Dutch - than we do to modern day North Germans or Danes.  Here is our K36 Oracle maps by Lukasz:

My mother has a slight more pull from Denmark and Schleswig Holstein.  Perhaps this is from early medieval Angle/Danish settler in East Anglia?  However, we both pull strongest outside of England, from the Low Countries.  Flemish, Dutch, and Walloon come up as closest Continental matches.  I'm not surprised.  I've noticed for some time, that the big vendors appear to give some testers of Normandy, Hauts-de-France, Belgium, and the Netherlands ancestry, very similar results to my own.

If our results were at all representative of East Anglians of local ancestry, then the modern East Anglian is perhaps as much, or more of a Belgian than he or she is a Dane or Angle.  So I've added a secondary circle to the map that I used above, to illustrate what are popularly beleved to be the origins of the East Anglians.  The new blue circle, represents not what history or archaeology suggests, but what my family's DNA currently suggests:

Note that I have included South East Britain in there - because clearly, there was no displacement.  The Romano-Britons were among our ancestors.

The Language Connection.

It has long been noted, that the very closest dialect or language to English, is West Frisian.  Old Frisian and Old English (or Anglo Saxon) were close.  Linguists group them together as "Anglo-Frisian".  Why is this?  If we all descend from Angles and Danes?

When did our "Belgian" ancestors arrive in Britain?

By Belgian, I'm referring to ancestors that we share not only with Belgians of local ancestry, but also the North French, and the Dutch.  Answer.  I don't know.  All that I am pointing out, is that the DNA of my East Anglian family appears to be more like that of people that today live in that part of the Continent, than in Denmark, Norway, or even North Germany.  However, here are a few ideas:

1. The Bell Beaker.  During the Late Neolithic.  We believe that the British Bell Beaker people largely crossed over from the Lower Rhine Valley.
2. The Belgae.  I'm not quite so sure about this one, but let's just go with it.  Roman historians recorded a late Iron Age migration from the Belgium area, into South East Britain.  They described them as using a Celtic language and culture, but being closer related to Germanic tribes to the east.
3. An unrecorded migration from Northern France to Southern Britain during Late Prehistory.  This one was suggested by POBI 2015, that claimed to detect a relationship between the Southern British and Northern France, that they claimed was most likely Late Prehistoric.
4. Roman Britain.  Britannia was often administered along with Gaul.
5. Saxo Frisia.  Saxons didn't only Southern Britain, they also settled the Low Countries, where they took the name of the earlier tribe there - the Frisians.  Did many Anglo-Saxon settlers actually crossed over from Frisia?
6. Norman.  1066 and all that.  A whole new elite arrived, often bringing artisans and supporters with them.
7. Angevin and Medieval French.  For a time, large regions of France were ruled along with England.  French artisans, merchants, monks, priests, etc.
8. The Elizabethan Strangers.  Protestant refugees were invited from the Low Countries, both Dutch and Walloons.  They particularly settled towns in South East England such as Norwich, and Colchester during the 16th and 17th centuries.
9. The Huguenots.  French Protestant refugees that arrived during the 17th and 18th centuries.
10. Background migration.  My favourite.  In addition to all of the aforementioned proposed migration events, the slow, gradual contact between South East England and the Low Countries / Northern France, that has always been there.  The drip-drip in the background.  That the North sea and Dover Strait separating the two areas is so narrow.  Merchants, refugees, masons, artisans, weavers - the Dutchmen and Frenchmen recorded as Aliens in many post medieval surveys.  The fishermen from Haut-de-France that frequently beached on the Norfolk coast.  The dutch herring fishermen that traded herring at Yarmouth market.

References and quotes

Above image modified from NordNordWest [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In the previous post (The First Anglians Part I), I referred to excavation reports from Caistor St Edmund, as published in 1973.  Here, I mainly refer to a book that was recommended to the landscape history, The Origins of Norfolk by Tom Williamson, MUP 1993.

Williamson refers to local Pagan Saxon cemeteries, that largely date to the 5th to 7th centuries AD. He tells us that a large number of these cemeteries have been found in Norfolk, with many of the earlier cemeteries containing decorated urns of the cremated dead.

I recently visited one of these cemeteries, the infamous Spong Hill, near to North Elmham, Norfolk:

The book reports that:

Catherine Hills, moreover, has shown that the burial practices employed at the largest Norfolk cemetery yet excavated, at Spong Hill near North Elmham, are so close to those practised in parts of northern Europe that they surely must represent the graves of people of Continental origin or descent.  More than this, she has demonstrated that the cemetery's closest parallels are with the Anglian, rather than with the Saxon, areas of the Continent.  Hills compared the burials at Spong Hill with those at Suderbrarup and Bordesholm in Schleswig-Holstein, and at Westerwanna in Lower Saxony.  The range of grave-goods found at all the sites was similar, but the closest similarities were consistently between Spong and the Schleswig sites.  Thus for example 'The most characteristic late fourth to fifth century burials at Suderbrarup seem to be those which contain sets of miniatures with combs, in pots which either have no decoration or a horizontal/vertical bossed and grooved design.  Very similar burials occur at Spong Hill' (Hills, forthcoming).

The Anglian affinities were not entirely clear-cut.  In particular, the Spong pottery urns, with their use of stamped ornament, showed closest affinities with those from the Westerwanna cemetery.

It's not clear cut is it?  I think that what we see in East Anglia, is a general migration from the area of northern Germany and Jutland.  Perhaps even further afield, from Frisia, and from tribes further to the south - a Norfolk inhumation suggests Allemani, a place name (Swaffham) suggests Suevvi.  However, culturally, that area of what is now Northern Germany, including Schleswig-Holstein, appears to have given lead in identity.

I currently feel that late 5th / early 6th century AD East Anglia, although with this Anglian bias, was a pretty multicultural area, with many people the descendants of Angles, but also from other tribes scattered from Frisia to Jutland - and also often sharing local Romano-British ancestry.  During the 6th Century, as new elites emerged, they claimed heroic ancestry from the Angles of Schleswig-Holstein.  It may, or may not have been true.  The East Anglian Royal family actually claimed dual ancestry - to be descended both from Woden, and from Julius Caesar! (That might suggest some lingering Romano-British identity in the emerging kingdom).  However, it was 7th century cool to be associated with Beowulf adventurers of the North Sea.

The Spong Hill Man.  Norwich Castle Museum.