Editing Armorica (section)

== History ==
[[Image:Britonia6hcentury.png|thumb|right|200px|Map of Briton settlements in the 6th-century, including what became Brittany and [[Britonia]] (in Spain).]]

[[Pliny the Elder]], in his ''[[Pliny's Natural History|Natural History]]'' (4.17.105), claims that Armorica was the older name for ''[[Aquitaine|Aquitania]]'' and states Armorica's southern boundary extended to the [[Pyrenees]]. Taking into account the Gaulish origin of the name, that is perfectly correct and logical, as Aremorica is not a country name but a word that describes a type of geographical region, one that is by the sea. Pliny lists the following [[Celtic tribe]]s as living in the area: the [[Aedui]] and [[Carnuteni]] as having treaties with [[Rome]]; the [[Meaux|Meldi]] and [[Segusiavi|Secusiani]] as having some measure of independence; and the [[Boii]], [[Senones]], [[Aulerci]] (both the [[Eburovices]] and [[Aulerci Cenomani|Cenomani]]), the [[Parisii (Gaul)|Parisii]], [[Tricasses]], [[Andicavi]], [[Viducasses]], [[Baiocasses|Bodiocasses]], [[Veneti (Gaul)|Veneti]], [[Coriosolites|Coriosvelites]], [[Diablinti]], [[Rhedones]], [[Turones]], and the [[Etusiati|Atseui]].

Trade between Armorica and Britain, described by [[Diodorus Siculus]] and implied by Pliny<ref>[http://www.history-compass.com/images/store/HICO/chapters/523.pdf History Compass : Home<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090419084640/http://www.history-compass.com/images/store/HICO/chapters/523.pdf |date=April 19, 2009 }}</ref> was long-established. Because, even after the campaign of [[Publius Licinius Crassus (son of triumvir)|Publius Crassus]] in 56 BC, continued resistance to Roman rule in Armorica was still being supported by Celtic aristocrats in [[Roman Britain|Britain]], [[Julius Caesar]] led two invasions of Britain, in 55 BC, and again in 54 BC, in response. Some hint of the complicated cultural web that bound Armorica and [[Roman Britain| the Britanniae]] (the "Britains" of Pliny) is given by Caesar when he describes [[Diviciacus (Suessiones)|Diviciacus]] of the [[Suessiones]] as "the most powerful ruler in the whole of Gaul, who had control not only over a large area of this region but also of Britain"<ref>Caesar, ''[[De Bello Gallico]]'' ii.4.</ref> Archaeological sites along the south coast of England, notably at [[Hengistbury Head]], show connections with Armorica as far east as the [[Solent]]. This 'prehistoric' connection of Cornwall and Brittany set the stage for the link that continued into the medieval era. Still farther East, however, the typical Continental connections of the Britannic coast were with the lower Seine valley instead.

[[File:Celtic billon stater Armorican tribe.jpg|thumb|left|A Celtic [[stater]] made from [[Billon (alloy)|billon alloy]] found in Armorica]]
[[Image:Kartenn Galianed.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Map of the [[Gauls|Gallic]] people of modern [[Brittany]]:
{{legend|#66CC80|[[Osismii]]}}
{{legend|#80FFCE|[[Veneti (Gaul)|Veneti]]}}
{{legend|#FFCC00|[[Curiosolitae|Coriosolites]]}}
{{legend|#FF6600|[[Redones]]}}
{{legend|#FF8080|[[Namnetes]]}}
]]

Archaeology has not yet been as enlightening in Iron-Age Armorica as the coinage, which has been surveyed by [[Philip de Jersey]].<ref>"Coinage in Iron Age Armorica", ''Studies in Celtic Coinage'', 2 (1994)</ref>

Under the [[Roman Empire]], Armorica was administered as part of the province of [[Gallia Lugdunensis]], which had its capital in [[Lugdunum]], (modern day [[Lyon]]). When the [[Roman province]]s were reorganized in the 4th century, Armorica (''[[Tractus Armoricanus et Nervicanus]]'') was placed under the second and third divisions of Lugdunensis. After the legions retreated from Britannia (407 AD) the local elite there expelled the civilian magistrates in the following year; Armorica too rebelled in the 430s and again in the 440s, throwing out the ruling officials, as the Romano-Britons had done. At the [[Battle of the Catalaunian Plains]] in 451 a Roman coalition led by General [[Flavius Aetius]] and the Visigothic King [[Theodoric I]] clashed violently with the Hunnic alliance commanded by King [[Attila the Hun]]. [[Jordanes]] lists Aëtius' allies as including Armoricans and other Celtic or German tribes (Getica 36.191).

The "Armorican" peninsula came to be settled with [[Britons (historic)|Britons]] from Britain during the poorly documented period of the 5th&ndash;7th centuries.<ref>Leon Fleuriot's primarily linguistic researches in ''Les Origines de la Bretagne'', emphasizes instead the broader influx of Britons into Roman Gaul that preceded the fifth-century collapse of Roman power.</ref> Even in distant Byzantium [[Procopius]] heard tales of migrations to the Frankish mainland from the island, largely legendary for him, of ''[[Brittia]]''.<ref>Procopius, in ''History of the Wars'', viii, 20, 6-14.</ref> These settlers, whether refugees or not, made the presence felt of their coherent groups in the naming of the westernmost, Atlantic-facing provinces of Armorica, [[Cornouaille]] ("[[Cornwall]]") and [[Domnonée|Domnonea]] ("[[Devon]]").<ref>K. Jackson, ''Language and History in Early Britain'' Edinburgh, 1953:14f.</ref> These settlements are associated with leaders like Saints [[Samson of Dol]] and [[Pol Aurelian]], among the "founder saints" of Brittany.

The linguistic origins of [[Breton (language)|Breton]] are clear: it is a [[Brythonic languages|Brythonic language]] descended from the [[Celtic languages|Celtic]] [[British language (Celtic)|British language]], like [[Welsh language|Welsh]] and [[Cornish language|Cornish]] one of the [[Insular Celtic languages]], brought by these migrating Britons. Still, questions of the relations between the Celtic ''cultures'' of Britain&mdash; [[Cornish language|Cornish]] and [[Welsh language|Welsh]]&mdash;and Celtic [[Breton language|Breton]] are far from settled. Martin Henig (2003) suggests that in Armorica as in [[sub-Roman Britain]]:

<blockquote>There was a fair amount of creation of identity in the [[migration period]]. We know that the mixed, but largely British and Frankish population of Kent repackaged themselves as '[[Jutes]]', and the largely British populations in the lands east of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) seem to have ended up as 'West Saxons'. In western Armorica, the small élite which managed to impose an identity on the population happened to be British rather than 'Gallo-Roman' in origin, so they became Bretons. The process may have been essentially the same."<ref>[[Martin Henig]], [http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba72/book.shtml. ''British Archaeology'', 2003, review of ''The British Settlement of Brittany'' by Pierre-Roland Giot, Philippe Guigon & Bernard Merdrignac]</ref></blockquote>

According to [[C. E. V. Nixon]], the collapse of Roman power and the depredations of the [[Visigoths]] led Armorica to act "like a magnet to peasants, ''coloni'', slaves and the hard-pressed" who deserted other Roman territories, further weakening them.<ref>C.E.V. Nixon, "Relations Between Visigoths and Romans in Fifth Century Gaul", in John Drinkwater, Hugh Elton (eds) ''Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?'', Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 69</ref>

[[Vikings]] settled in the [[Cotentin]] peninsula and the lower Seine around [[Rouen]] in the ninth and early tenth centuries and, as these regions came to be known as ''[[Normandy]]'', the name ''Armorica'' fell out of use in the area. With western Armorica having already evolved into ''[[Brittany]]'', the east was recast from a [[Carolingian Empire|Frankish]] viewpoint as the [[Breton March]] under a Frankish [[margrave]].