This study seeks to examine how late antique culture in the Bristol Channel region changed so dramatically in the two centuries following the collapse of Roman authority. It draws on post-colonial theory to examine local social and cultural responses, and substitutes the idea of cultural hybridisation for the received notion of monolithic cultural identities such as British, Celtic or Anglo-Saxon. Discussion centres on architecture (with the sites of Congresbury and Cadbury Castles and Dinas Powys reappraised), ceramics, and personal artefacts such as brooches.