In the post-Roman years wealth and status was a matter of lineage. Those who claimed descendancy from the Romano-British aristocracy were at the top of the social scale. Finds excavated at Dinas Powys near Cardiff have revealed the lifestyle of one group of these people. Although their settlement was a defensive timber structure on a hill which resembles an earlier Iron Age hill fort, they enjoyed a sophisticated life. They ate beef and pork, cooked with imported olive oil and drank Mediterranean wine. They used tableware from the Byzantine empire, glass beakers from France and wore brooches with enamel and millefiori (patterns made from tiny rods of coloured glass) glass.

The land was divided into a number of small kingdoms. Within each, below the king, society was divided between freemen and unfree or bondsmen working the land. According to Irish law only people of royal rank were allowed to wear gold. The Welsh lived in a similar way to the Irish at this time and so this suggests that when gold jewellery is found on a site the people who lived there were of very high status.