NEW research suggests historians may have got it wrong about the Dark Ages of British history.

Far from being a period when men and women were more interested in making war than love, the Dark Ages were an enlightened period where some woman carried spears - and some men carried handbags and wore jewellery.

It was really an age of peace, tranquillity and a good standard of living, from 458-650 AD, according to leading archaeologist Dominic Powlesland after 24 years of digging out the facts.

But his most discovery, greatly assisted by DNA testing at a university in Manchester, is that it was a matriarchal society - and tolerant of cross-dressing.

Mr Powelsland, director of the English Heritage-funded excavation of a

Dark Age Anglo-Saxon village at Heslerton, near Malton, North Yorkshire, said: "Our work is going to lighten the legendary dark centuries. History will have to be reused to help change our understanding of early Anglo-Saxon England."

Mr Powlesland, 45, regarded as one of Britain's most gifted and eccentric archaeologists, is often called in as a consultant by colleagues worldwide.

But his Heslerton site is regarded as unique - a whole village and graveyard with the remains of more than 280 people, all buried with pagan rites.

The team's work shows that women appeared to have equality and some trained as hunters.

DNA tests on the remains of two people, buried with spears and a knife, and assumed to he men, were in fact women.

Six sets of remains, thought to be those of females because they were buried with brooches, beads and remains of handbags, were men.

He said: "Our evidence from 288 years show an enlightened, happy society with no evidence of injuries from fighting.

"Their timber homes were well-built, with raised wooden floors, and set out in an orderly fashion - what I call the Barratt style of the mid first millennium.

"There's evidence of craftsmanship in so many ways, and good husbandry: cows, sheep, pigs, goats, hunting dogs."

His team used computer techniques to check evidence, which apart from human remains also produced animal bones.

"One of the most surprising aspects is that there were no fences and there is evidence of foreign trade.

"The history books suggest England fell apart when the Romans left.

"Our work, the most important Anglo-Saxon project ever to take place in this country, an entire settlement and cemetery, tells a far different story."

The excavations, in a four-acre quarry, were protected from souvenir and treasure hunters for more than 28 years.

Heslerton means Hamlet in the Clearing. Mr Powlesland does not know what happened to the hamlet.

He thinks that when marauders arrived from Scandinavia and Europe, villagers may have moved to a safer haven, outside the Vale of Pickering, after 658 AD.

He said DNA testing done on the teeth - under the enamel - will greatly assist archaeologists to explore other unclear periods of history