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REVIEWS Les origines DE LA BRETAGNE. By L. Fleuriot. Paris: Payot, 1980. Pp. 352, 13 maps. Professor Fleuriot brings a formidable armoury of philological and historical learning to bear on the problems of Breton settlement in post- Roman Armorica. His analysis of the linguistic and onomastic evidence brings the most substantial new results. In chapter three he argues with a wealth of detail that Gaulish continued to be spoken in much of Armorica until the seventh century, thus facilitating the settlement of Breton-speaking immigrants, whose language was closely related. In chapter four he analyses the relationship between Breton and Latin, the predominance of one or the other being determined by politico- geographi- cal conditions and the pattern of settlement. In chapter five he uses the distribution of place names containing the element Brit- or Bret- to trace the original extent of Breton settlement in Gaul, extending far beyond the later boundaries of Brittany itself. Philologists may argue about the details of this analysis, but the account is impressive both for its comprehensiveness and its precision. The historical chapters of the book are principally based on a re- examination of the ancient literary sources, which are listed and discussed in a long and useful appendix. Fleuriot is clearly right to insist on the broad chronological limits of Breton emigration to the continent, part of a pattern that spread over several centuries, rather than the product of one or two organized colonial expeditions. In support of this view he naturally appeals to the geographical conditions, and the constant use of the sea routes which always linked Brittany with the British Isles and ensured, in effect, that the Armorican peninsula did not become a mere cul-de-sac for ideas and cultural movements from continental France. He fails, however, to make much use of the archaeological evidence which, at all periods, constitutes the most reliable gauge of these cross-channel connections. Instead his conclusions are drawn from a detailed perusal of the histoire dvenementelle of dark age Britain and Gaul, which falls short of demonstrating that emigration and settlement were a continuous process, however plausible that hypothesis may be. It is characteristic of this approach that, apart from some unsatisfactory brief remarks in the final chapter, he includes no discussion of the size and type of settlements, the social and political organisation of the Breton communities before or after the migration, or of their economic structure. Even his useful remarks on the ships and the naval expertise of the Bretons are hardly integrated into the overall exposition. Yet factors such as these surely shaped the basic outlines of migration and settlement. Fleuriot also seems to underestimate the extent to which Roman rule between the first century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. interrupted the usual rhythms of tribal life along the Atlantic seaboard. In attempting to reconstruct a picture of Gaulish and British society in the dark ages, against which the political events of the period may be interpreted, it