ABSTRACT
The population of Flanders at the beginning of the Christian era was primarily Celtic, with some Romans and a few Germans. Although the Romans are now known to have occupied the southern Low Countries more thoroughly than was once thought, particularly before the third century ad, Flanders was far less Romanized than either northern France or the eastern Low Countries. But the Germans were not the Romans' only problem. Roman civilian settlement in the southern Low Countries came between the first and second 'Dunkirk transgressions'. The latest Roman graves at Oudenburg are from the beginning of the fifth century, when the second Dunkirk transgression cut it off from its hinterland. One of the two settlements at Bruges was also not flooded and was repopulated in the fourth century. The Romans abandoned the area, and Salian Franks settled in the Leie and Scheldt valleys.
