Sarmatians

Approximate extent of East Iranian languages in the 1st century BC is shown in orange.
Total population
Unknown
Regions with significant populations
Eastern Europe Central Asia Northern India
Languages
Fragments of unknown Middle Iranian languages or dialects
Related ethnic groups
Scythians

Map of the Roman empire under Hadrian (ruled 117-138 AD), showing the location of the Sarmatae in the South Russian steppe region

The Iron Age Sarmatians (Latin Sarmatæ or Sauromatæ, Sanskrit Sakas Greek Σαρμάται, Σαυρομάται) were an Iranian people in Classical Antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD.^[1][2]

Their territory was known as Sarmatia to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponding to the western part of greater Scythia (modern Southern Russia, Ukraine, and the eastern Balkans). At their greatest reported extent, around 100 BC, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian seas as well as the Caucasus to the south.^[3]

The Sarmatians declined in the 4th century with the incursions connected to the Migration period (Huns, Goths). The descendants of the Sarmatians became known as the Alans during the Early Middle Ages, and ultimately gave rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group.^[4]

Name[link]

Sarmatae is in origin probably just one of several tribal names of the Sarmatians which came to be applied to the entire group as an exonym in Greco-Roman ethnography. Strabo in the 1st century names as the main tribes of the Sarmatians the Iazyges, the Roxolani, the Aorsi and the Siraces.

The Greek name Sarmatai derives from the shortening of Sauromatai apparently by association with lizards (sauros). Suggestions for the reason the Sarmatians were associated with lizards include their reptile-like scale armour and their dragon standards.^[5]

Both Pliny the Elder (Natural History book iv) and Jordanes are aware that the names in Sar- and in Sauro- are interchangeable variants, referring to the same people.

Greek authors of the 4th century (Pseudo-Scylax, Eudoxus of Cnidus) mention Syrmatae as the name of a people living at the Don, perhaps reflecting the ethnonym as it was pronounced in the final phase of Sarmatian culture. The Avesta mentions Sairima as a region "in the west".

Origins[link]

The Sarmatians emerged in the 7th century BC in a region of the steppe to the east of the Don River and south of the Ural Mountains in Eastern Europe. For centuries they lived in relatively peaceful co-existence with their western neighbors the Scythians. Then in the 3rd century BC they spilled over the Don to attack the Scythians on the Pontic steppe to the north of the Black Sea. The Sarmatians were to dominate these territories over the next five centuries.^[6] Pliny the Elder wrote that they ranged from the Vistula River in Poland to the Danube.

Archaeology[link]

Great steppe of Kazakhstan in early spring.

Sarmatian cataphracts during Dacian Wars as depicted on Trajan's Column.

Sarmatians on Roman relief, second half of the second century AD.

"Sarmatia Europæa" separated from "Sarmatia Asiatica" by the Tanais (the River Don), based on Greek literary sources, in a map printed in London, ca 1770.

Soviet archaeologist Boris Grakov in 1947^{[citation needed]} defined a culture flourishing from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD, apparent in late Kurgan graves, sometimes reusing part of much older Kurgans. It is a nomadic steppe culture ranging from the Black Sea to beyond the Volga, and is especially evident at two of the major sites at Kardaielova and Chernaya in the trans-Uralic steppe. Grekov defined four phases:

1. Sauromatian, 6th-5th centuries BC
2. Early Sarmatian, 4th-2nd centuries BC
3. Middle Sarmatian, late 2nd century BC to late 2nd century AD
4. Late Sarmatian: late 2nd century AD to 4th century AD

It is important to note that while "Sarmatian" and "Sauromatian" are synonymous as ethnonyms, they are given different meanings purely by convention as archaeological technical terms.

In Hungary, a great Late Sarmatian pottery center was reportedly unearthed between 2001–2006 near Budapest, in Üllő5 archaeological site. Typical gray, granular Üllő5 ceramics forms a distinct group of Sarmatian pottery found everywhere in the northcentral part of the Great Hungarian Plain region, indicating a lively trading activity. A 1998 paper on the study of glass beads found in Sarmatian graves suggests wide cultural and trade links.^[7]

Archaeological evidence suggests that Scythian-Sarmatian cultures may have given rise to the myth of Amazons. Graves of armed females have been found in southern Ukraine and Russia. David Anthony notes, "About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons."^[8]

Language[link]

The numerous Iranian personal names in the Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea Coast indicate that the Sarmatians spoke a North-Eastern Iranian dialect ancestral to Ossetic (see Scytho-Sarmatian).^[9]

Appearance[link]

Like the Scythians, Sarmatians were of a Caucasoid appearance, and before the arrival of the Huns (4th century AD) it is thought that few had Asiatic or turco-Mongol features. Sarmatian noblemen often reached 1.70-1.80m (5ft 7ins-5ft 11ins) as measured from skeletons, and they had sturdy bones, long hair and beards.

The Alans who were a group of Sarmatian tribes according to the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus "Nearly all the Alani are men of great stature and beauty , their hair is somewhat yellow, their eyes are frighteningly fierce".^[6]

Greco-Roman ethnography[link]

Herodotus (Histories 4.21) in the 5th century BC placed the land of the Sarmatians east of the Tanais, beginning at the corner of the Maeotian Lake, stretching northwards for fifteen days' journey, adjacent to the forested land of the Budinoi.

As seen in Roman depictions of Sarmatians they are of caucasian types^[10]

Herodotus (4.110-117) gives a story of the Sauromatians' origin from an unfortunate marriage of a band of young Scythian men and a group of Amazons. In the story, some Amazons were captured in battle by Greeks in Pontus (northern Turkey) near the river Thermodon, and the captives were loaded into three boats. They overcame their captors while at sea, but were not able sailors. Their ships were blown north to the Maeotian Lake (the Sea of Azov) onto the shore of Scythia near the cliff region (today's southeastern Crimea). After encountering the Scythians and learning the Scythian language, they agreed to marry Scythian men, but only on the condition that they move away and not be required to follow the customs of Scythian women. According to Herodotus, the descendants of this band settled toward the northeast beyond the Tanais (Don) river and became the Sauromatians. Herodotus' account explains the origins of the Sarmatians' language as an "impure" form of Scythian and credits the unusual freedoms of Sauromatae women, including participation in warfare, as an inheritance from their supposed Amazon ancestors. Later writers refer to the "woman-ruled Sarmatae" (γυναικοκρατούμενοι).^[11] However, Herodotus' belief that the Sarmatians were descendants of mythological Amazons is very likely a fictional invention designed to explain certain idiosyncrasies of Sarmatian culture.

Hippocrates ^[12] explicitly classes them as Scythian and describes their warlike women and their customs:

Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm.

Strabo ^[13] mentions the Sarmatians in a number of places, never saying very much about them. He uses both Sarmatai and Sauromatai, but never together, and never suggesting that they are different peoples. He often pairs Sarmatians and Scythians in reference to a series of ethnic names, never stating which is which, as though Sarmatian or Scythian could apply equally to them all.^[14]

In Strabo, the Sarmatians extend from above the Danube eastward to the Volga, and from north of the Dnepr into the Caucasus, where, he says, they are called Caucasii like everyone else there. This statement indicates that the Alans already had a home in the Caucasus, without waiting for the Huns to push them there.

Even more significantly, he points to a Celtic admixture in the region of the Basternae, who, he says, are of Germanic origin. The Celtic Boii, Scordisci and Taurisci are there. A fourth ethnic element being melted in are the Thracians (7.3.2). Moreover, the peoples toward the north are Keltoskythai, "Celtic Scythians" (11.6.2).

Strabo also portrays the peoples of the region as being nomadic, or Hamaksoikoi, "wagon-dwellers" and Galaktophagoi, "milk-eaters" referring, no doubt, to the universal koumiss eaten in historical times. The wagons were used for porting tents made of felt, which must have been the yurts used universally by Asian nomads.

Pliny the Elder writes (4.12.79-81):

From this point (the mouth of the Danube) all the races in general are Scythian, though various sections have occupied the lands adjacent to the coast, in one place the Getae … at another the Sarmatae … Agrippa describes the whole of this area from the Danube to the sea … as far as the river Vistula in the direction of the Sarmatian desert … The name of the Scythians has spread in every direction, as far as the Sarmatae and the Germans, but this old designation has not continued for any except the most outlying sections ....

According to Pliny, Scythian rule once extended as far as Germany. Jordanes supports this hypothesis by telling us on the one hand that he was familiar with the Geography of Ptolemy, which includes the entire Balto-Slavic territory in Sarmatia^{[citation needed]}, and on the other that this same region was Scythia. By "Sarmatia", Jordanes means only the Aryan territory. The Sarmatians therefore did come from the Scythians.

Tacitus' De Origine et situ Germanorum speaks of “mutual fear” between Germanic peoples and Sarmatians:

All Germania is divided from Gaul, Raetia, and Pannonia by the Rhine and Danube rivers; from the Sarmatians and the Dacians by shared fear and mountains. The Ocean laps the rest, embracing wide bays and enormous stretches of islands. Just recently, we learned about certain tribes and kings, whom war brought to light.^[15]

According to Tacitus, like the Persians, the Sarmatians wore long, flowing robes (ch 17). Moreover, the Sarmatians exacted tribute from the Cotini and Osi, and iron from the Cotini (ch. 43), “to their shame” (presumably because they could have used the iron to arm themselves and resist).

By the 3rd century BC, the Sarmatian name appears to have supplanted the Scythian in the plains of what is now south Ukraine. The geographer, Ptolemy,^{[citation needed]} reports them at what must be their maximum extent, divided into adjoining European and central Asian sections. Considering the overlap of tribal names between the Scythians and the Sarmatians, no new displacements probably took place. The people were the same Indo-Europeans they used to be, but now under yet another name.

Later, Pausanias, viewing votive offerings near the Athenian Acropolis in the 2nd century AD,^[16] found among them a Sauromic breastplate.

On seeing this a man will say that no less than Greeks are foreigners skilled in the arts: for the Sauromatae have no iron, neither mined by themselves nor yet imported. They have, in fact, no dealings at all with the foreigners around them. To meet this deficiency they have contrived inventions. In place of iron they use bone for their spear-blades and cornel wood for their bows and arrows, with bone points for the arrows. They throw a lasso round any enemy they meet, and then turning round their horses upset the enemy caught in the lasso. Their breastplates they make in the following fashion. Each man keeps many mares, since the land is not divided into private allotments, nor does it bear any thing except wild trees, as the people are nomads. These mares they not only use for war, but also sacrifice them to the local gods and eat them for food. Their hoofs they collect, clean, split, and make from them as it were python scales. Whoever has never seen a python must at least have seen a pine-cone still green. He will not be mistaken if he liken the product from the hoof to the segments that are seen on the pine-cone. These pieces they bore and stitch together with the sinews of horses and oxen, and then use them as breastplates that are as handsome and strong as those of the Greeks. For they can withstand blows of missiles and those struck in close combat.

Pausanias' description is well borne out in a relief from Tanais.^{[citation needed]} These facts are not necessarily incompatible with Tacitus, as the western Sarmatians might have kept their iron to themselves, it having been a scarce commodity on the plains.

In the late 4th century, Ammianus Marcellinus^[17] describes a severe defeat which Sarmatian raiders inflicted upon Roman forces in the province of Valeria in Pannonia in late AD 374. The Sarmatians almost destroyed two legions: one recruited from Moesia and one from Pannonia. The last had been sent to intercept a party of Sarmatians which had been in pursuit of a senior Roman officer named Aequitius. The two legions failed to coordinate, allowing the Sarmatians to catch them unprepared.

Decline in the 4th century[link]

The Sarmatians remained dominant until the Gothic ascendancy in the Black Sea area. Goths attacked Sarmatian tribes on the north of the Danube in Dacia, what is today Romania. The Roman Emperor Constantine called Constantine II up from Galia to run a campaign north of the Danube. In very cold weather, the Romans were victorious, killing 100,000 Goths and capturing Ariaricus the son of the Goth king.^[18][19][20]

In their efforts to halt the Gothic expansion and replace it with their own on the north of Lower Danube (present-day Romania), the Sarmatians armed their captives. After the Roman victory, however, the local population revolted against their Sarmatian masters, pushing them beyond the Roman border. Constantine, on whom the Sarmatians had called for help, defeated Limigantes, the leader of the revolt, and moved the Sarmatian population back in. In the Roman provinces, Sarmatian combatants were enlisted in the Roman army, whilst the rest of the population was distributed throughout Thrace, Macedonia and Italy. The Origo Constantini mentions 300,000 refugees resulting from this conflict. The emperor Constantine was subsequently attributed the title of Sarmaticus Maximus.^{[19][21][22][23][24]}

In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Huns expanded and conquered both the Sarmatians and the Germanic Tribes living between the Black Sea and the borders of the Roman Empire. From bases in modern day Hungary, the Huns ruled the entire former Sarmatian territory. Their various constituents flourished under Hunnish rule, fought for the Huns against a combination of Roman and Germanic troops, and went their own ways after the Battle of Chalons, the death of Attila and the disappearance of the Chuvash ruling elements west of the Volga.^{[citation needed]}

Genetics[link]

Ancient DNA of 13 Sarmatian remains from Pokrovka kurgan burials in the southern Ural steppes along the Kazakhstan and Russian border was extracted for comparative analysis. Most of the mitochondrial haplogroups determined were of western Eurasian origin, while only a few were of "central/east Asian Haplotype which is found among the Turkic speaking nomadic people. This Haplotype is almost (one base pair missing) identical with the Haplotype of the (Kazakh) women from western Mongolia." ^[25][26]

See also[link]

• Hittites
• Scythians
• Iranian People
• Sarmatism
• Sindes
• Tirgatao
• Amazons
• Geto-Dacians

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sarmatians

Bibliography[link]

• Richard Brzezinski and Mariusz Mielczarek, The Sarmatians 600 BC-AD 450 (Men-At-Arms nr. 373), Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002. ISBN 978-1-84176-485-6.
• Davis-Kimball, Jeannine. 2002. Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines. Warner Books, New York. first Trade printing, 2003. ISBN 0-446-67983-6 (pbk).
• Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, Vladimir A. Bashilov, Leonid T. Yablonsky, Eds. Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age. Berkeley: Zinat Press 1995. ISBN 1-85979-00-2
• Tadeusz Sulimirski, The Sarmatians (vol. 73 in series "Ancient People and Places") London: Thames & Hudson/New York: Praeger, 1970.
• Alexander Guagnini (1538–1614), Sarmatiae Europeae descriptio, Spira 1581.
• Bruno Genito, 1988, The Archaeological Cultures of the Sarmatians with a Preliminary Note on the Trial-Trenches at Gyoma 133: a Sarmatian Settlement in South-Eastern Hungary (Campaign 1985), Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, Vol. 42, pp. 81–126. Napoli.

External links[link]

• Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: "Sarmatae"
• Studies in the History and Language of the Sarmatians
• Ptolemaic Map (Digital Scriptorium)
• Map of Sarmatia 1697
• Kurgans, Ritual Sites, and Settlements: Eurasian Bronze and Iron Age
• THE ANONYMOUS PILGRIM OF BORDEAUX (333 A.D.)

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the German Wikipedia. (January 2012) Don't speak German? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the German article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|de|Völkerwanderung}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Migration Period
Migrations
Other names	Babarian Invations
Time	300 - 700 AD
Place	Europe and Northern Africa
Event	Tribes invading declining Roman Empire

The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions (German: Völkerwanderung "migration of peoples"), was a period of intensified human migration in Europe from about 400 to 800 AD.^[1][2] This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Migrations were catalyzed by profound changes within the Roman Empire and on its "barbarian frontier". The migrants who came first were Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii and Franks; they were later pushed westwards by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars and Alans.^[3] Later migrations (such as the Arab conquest and Viking, Magyar, Moorish, Turkic, and Mongol invasions) also had significant effects (especially in North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, Anatolia and Central and Eastern Europe); however, they are outside the scope of the Migration Period.

Chronology[link]

[edit] Origins of Germanic tribes

Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia, Denmark and adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder rivers after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward (pushing the resident Celts west to the Rhine River by about 200 BC) and moving into southern Germany up to the Roman province of Gaul by 100 BC, where they were stopped by Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar. It is this western group who was described by the Roman historian Tacitus (56 – 117 AD) and Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC). A later wave of German tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia between 600 and 300 BC to the opposite coast of the Baltic Sea, moving up the Vistula near the Carpathians. During Tacitus' era they included lesser-known tribes such as the Tencteri, Cherusci, Hermunduri and Chatti; however, a period of federation and intermarriage resulted in the familiar groups known as the Alamanni, Franks, Saxons, Frisians and Thuringians.^[4]

[edit] First phase

The Migration Period may be divided into two phases. The first phase, occurring between 300 and 500 AD, is partly documented by Greek and Latin historians but difficult to verify archaeologically. It puts Germanic peoples in control of most areas of the then-Western Roman Empire.^{[citation needed]} The Visigoths entered Roman territory (after a clash with the Huns) in 376. The following year in Marcianopolis, the escort to Fritigern (their leader) was killed while meeting with Lupicinus.^[5] The Visigoths rebelled, eventually invading Italy and sacking Rome in 410, before settling in Iberia and founding a kingdom which lasted for 200 years. They were followed into Roman territory by the Ostrogoths, led by Theodoric the Great, who settled in Italy.

In Gaul the Franks (a fusion of western Germanic tribes whose leaders had been aligned with Rome since the third century AD) entered Roman lands gradually and peacefully during the fifth century, and were accepted as rulers by the Roman-Gaulish population. Fending off challenges from the Allemanni, Burgundians and Visigoths, the Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of the future France and Germany. The initial Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain occurred during the fifth century, when Roman Britain no longer existed.^[6]

[edit] Second phase

The second phase took place between 500 and 700 and saw Slavic tribes settling in central and eastern Europe (particularly in eastern Magna Germania), gradually making it predominantly Slavic.^{[citation needed]} In 567, the Avars and the Lombards destroyed much of the Gepid Kingdom. The Lombards, a Germanic people, settled in northern Italy in the region now known as Lombardy. The Bulgars (people of Turkic or Iranic origin who were present in far eastern Europe since the second century) conquered the eastern Balkan territory of the Byzantine Empire in the seventh century.

During the early Byzantine–Arab Wars the Arab armies attempted to invade southeast Europe via Asia Minor during the late seventh and early eighth centuries, but were defeated at the siege of Constantinople by the joint forces of Byzantium and the Bulgars. During the Khazar–Arab Wars, the Khazars stopped the Arab expansion into Europe across the Caucasus. At the same time, the Moors (consisting of Arabs and Berbers) invaded Europe via Gibraltar (conquering Hispania—the Iberian Peninsula—from the Visigothic Kingdom in 711), before being halted by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in 732. These battles largely fixed the frontier between Christendom and Islam for the next millennium. The following centuries saw the Muslims successful in conquering Sicily and parts of southern Italy from the Christians.

[edit] Climatic factors

A number of contemporary historical references worldwide refer to an extended period of extreme weather during 535–536. Evidence of this cold period is also found in dendrochronology and ice cores. The causes and consequences of this cold period are debated.

[edit] Discussions

Barbarian identity[link]

The analysis of barbarian identity and how it was created and expressed during the Migration Age has elicited discussion among scholars. Herwig Wolfram (an historian of the Goths),^[7] in discussing the equation of migratio gentium with Völkerwanderung, observes that Michael Schmidt introduced the equation in his 1778 history of the Germans. Wolfram observed that the significance of gens as a biological community was shifting even during the early Middle Ages; "to complicate matters, we have no way of devising a terminology that is not derived from the concept of nationhood created during the French Revolution".

The "primordialistic"^[8] paradigm prevailed during the 19th century. Scholars such as German linguist Johann Gottfried Herder viewed tribes as coherent biological (racial) entities, using the term to refer to discrete ethnic groups.^[9] He believed that the Volk were an organic whole, with a core identity and spirit evident in art, literature and language. These were seen as intrinsic characteristics unaffected by external influences, even conquest.^[10] Language, in particular, was seen as the most important expression of ethnicity. They argued that groups sharing the same (or similar) language possessed a common identity and ancestry.^[11] The Romantic ideal that there had once been a single German, Celtic or Slavic people who originated from a common homeland and spoke a common tongue helped provide a conceptual framework for political movements of the 18th and 19th centuries such as German nationalism and Pan-Slavism.^[10]

Beginning in the 1960s a reinterpretation of archaeological and historic evidence prompted scholars (such as Goffart and Todd) to propose new models for explaining the construction of barbarian identity, maintaining that no sense of shared identity was perceived by the Germani;^[12][13][14] a similar theory has been proposed for Celtic and Slavic groups.^[15] This theory states that the primordialist mode of thinking was encouraged by a prima facie interpretation of Graeco-Roman sources, which grouped together many tribes under such labels as Germani, Keltoi or Sclavenoi (encouraging their perception as distinct peoples. Modernists argue that the uniqueness perceived by specific groups was based on common political and economic interests, rather than biological or racial distinctions.

The role of language in constructing and maintaining group identity was ephemeral, since large-scale language shifts have been common in history.^[16] Modernists propose the idea of "imagined communities"; the barbarian polities in late antiquity were social constructs, rather than changeless lines of blood kinship.^[17] The process of forming tribal units was called "ethnogenesis", a term coined by Soviet scholar Julian Bromley.^[18] The Austrian school (led by Reinhard Wenskus) popularized this idea, which influenced medievalists such as Herwig Wolfram, Walter Pohl and Patrick Geary.^[19] It argues that the stimulus for forming tribal polities was perpetuated by a small nucleus of people, known as the Traditionskern ("kernel of tradition"), who were a military or aristocratic elite. This core group formed a standard for larger units, gathering adherents by employing amalgamative metaphors such as kinship and aboriginal commonality and claiming that they perpetuated an ancient, divinely-sanctioned lineage.^[20]

A capable soldier would be able to assume the group identity without being born into the "tribe". “A victorious campaign confirmed [the leaders'] right to rule and drew [to] them an ever-growing people who accepted and shared in their identity”.^[20] In time, these heterogeneous armies grew into a new people possessing "a strong belief in a common biological origin".^[21] Halsall argues that no objectively-definable criterion can be consistently used to distinguish ethnic groups from one another: language, social customs, geographic habitation, religion or a common origin. "The only common factor in defining ethnicity is belief: in the reality of your group and the difference to others".^[22]

Walter Pohl highlights the dynamic nature of group identity, proposing that during the Migration Period people could live in circumstances of "ethnic ambiguity". Given that ethnicity was important for the upper classes, they could adopt multiple ethnicities to secure the allegiance of their partners and followers: a phenomenon referred to as "situational ethnicity".^[22] To advance socially, one needed to "grow into a dominating group with high prestige, to copy its lifestyle".^[23] The process of assimilation could produce "a wide variety of transitional stages".^[24] Followers could also disband from larger units. Factions arose, challenging the right to lead the people and uphold their traditions. Conversely defeat by an external power could mean the end of a ruler and his people, who were absorbed into the victorious confederacy.^[25] “Seen in this light, ‘ethnic’ identity among barbarians was extraordinarily fluid, as new groups emerged and old ones disappeared".

Peter Heather suggests that constructionism and modernism represent two extremes of the spectrum of possibilities. The process of assimilation and appropriation of new group identity varied from group to group. He alludes to literary sources, which describe two contrasting models of interaction: the Sclavenes were prepared (after a given period) to accept prisoners as full and free members of their tribal groups; on the other hand, the Huns (although incorporating non-Hun groups) kept them separate and subordinate. Rather than being aristocratic kernels, he argues that the identity of tribal groups was maintained by a contingent of "notables" and freemen. He clarifies that while groups like the Goths were multi-ethnic, full assimilation was not the rule.^[26] He proposes that conquered groups held a subordinate status either as otherwise-autonomous tribute-payers or as disadvantaged strata within mixed settlements. Even when a homogeneous material culture arose, disparate groups were likely to preserve their unique identity and language.^[27]

Whatever the case, this process of building large-scale group identity was particularly evident along the Roman frontier, prompted by the example of Roman provincial life and the threat of Roman attack.^[28] Ethnicity was a complex, subjective and multi-layered process, and the Migration Period saw groups rise and fall. Confederations like the Huns and the Vandals arose, to vanish abruptly within a few generations. Other, previously-obscure groups (like the Angles and the Franks) created enduring polities. Even ancient groups like the Goths (who existed from late antiquity until the Middle Ages) underwent profound transformation. Given constant migrations, changing allegiances, and new cultural appropriations, all that remained constant was their Gothic name.^[29] As Thomas Noble states, "tribes are no longer imagined to have been "marching for centuries at a time in ordered ranks with homogeneous ethnic compositions" from a distant, localized homeland across Europe into a settlement on Roman soil. "The common, track-filled map of the Völkerwanderung may illustrate such [a] course of events, but it misleads. Unfolded over long periods of time, the changes of position that took place were necessarily irregular...(with) periods of emphatic discontinuity. For decades and possibly centuries, the tradition bearers idled, and the tradition itself hibernated. There was ample time for forgetfulness to do its work".^[30]

"Invasion" versus "migration"[link]

Several explanations have been given for the appearance of "barbarians" on the frontier: weather and crops, population pressure, a "primeval urge" to push into the Mediterranean or the "domino effect" (whereby the Huns fell upon the Goths who, in turn, pushed other Germanic tribes before them). Entire barbarian tribes (or nations) flooded into Roman provinces, ending classical urbanism and beginning new types of rural settlements.^[31] French and Italian scholars viewed this as a catastrophic event: the destruction of a civilization and the beginning of a "Dark Age" which set Europe back a millennium.^[31] In contrast, German and English historians saw it as the replacement of a "tired, effete and decadent Mediterranean civilization" with a "more virile, martial, Nordic one".^[31] Rather than "invasion", German and Slavic scholars use the term "migration" (German: Völkerwanderung, Czech: Stěhování národů and Hungarian: népvándorlás), aspiring to the idea of a dynamic and “wandering Indo-Germanic people”.^[32]

Guy Halsall argues that barbarian movement was the result of the fall of the Roman Empire, not its cause.^[31] Archaeological finds confirm that Germanic and Slavic tribes were settled agriculturalists^[33] that were merely "drawn into the politics of an empire already falling apart for quite other causes". The Crisis of the Third Century caused significant changes within the Roman Empire, in both its western and eastern portions.^[34] In particular, economic fragmentation removed many of the political, cultural and economic forces which held the empire together.^[35] The rural population in Roman provinces was distant from the emperor, and there was little to differentiate them from other peasants across the Roman frontier. In addition, Rome increasingly used foreign mercenaries to defend itself. This "barbarisation" of the Empire was paralleled by changes within barbaricum. The Roman Empire played a vital role in building up barbarian groups along its frontier. Propped up with imperial support and gifts, armies of allied chieftains served as buffers against hostile barbarian groups. The disintegration of Roman economic power weakened groups formerly dependent on Roman gifts for maintenance of their own power. With the arrival of the Huns, this prompted many groups to invade the provinces for economic reasons.^[36]

The barbarian takeover of former Roman provinces varied by region; for example, in Aquitaine the provincial administration was largely self-reliant. Halsall argues that local rulers simply "handed over" military rule to the Ostrogoths, acquiring the identity of the newcomers.^[37] In Gaul the collapse of imperial rule resulted in anarchy; the Franks and Alemanni were pulled into the ensuing "power vacuum",^[38] resulting in conflict. In Spain local aristocrats maintained independent rule for some time, raising their own armies against the Vandals. Meanwhile, the Roman withdrawal from lowland England resulted in conflict between Saxons and the Brythonic chieftains (whose power retreated westward). The Eastern Roman Empire attempted to maintain control of the Balkan provinces, despite a thinly-spread imperial army with local militias and an extensive re-fortification of the Danubian limes. The grandiose program of fortifications collapsed, worsening the impoverished conditions of the local populace and resulting in colonization by Slavic warriors and their families.^[39]

Halsall and Noble argue that the changes which took place were the result of breakdown in Roman political control, which exposed the weakness of local Roman rule. Instead of large-scale migrations, there were military takeovers by small groups of warriors and their families (who usually numbered in the tens of thousands). This process involved active, conscious decision-making by Roman provincial populations. Collapse of centralized control severely weakened the sense of Roman identity in the provinces; this explains dramatic cultural changes seen in the absence of large numbers of barbarian migrants.^[40] Ultimately, the Germanic groups in the Western Roman Empire were accommodated without "dispossessing or overturning indigenous society" and maintained a structured and hierarchical (albeit degenerate) form of Roman administration.^[41] Paradoxically, they lost their unique identity as they were absorbed into Latinhood. This contrasted with the situation in the east, where Slavic tribes maintained a more "spartan and egalitarian"^[42] existence bound to the land "even in times when they took their part in plundering Roman provinces".^[43] Their organization was not based on Roman models, and their leaders were not normally dependent on Roman gold for success. Thus, their effect was more thorough than what the Goths, Franks or Saxons ever achieved.^[44]

Ethnicity[link]

Based on the belief that particular types of artifacts (generally elements of personal adornment found in a funerary context) are thought to determine the race or ethnicity of the person buried, the "Culture-History" school of archaeology assumed that archaeological cultures represent the Urheimat (homeland) of tribal polities named in historical sources.^[45] As a consequence, the shifting extensions of material cultures were interpreted as the expansion of peoples.^[46] Influenced by constructionism, process-driven archaeologists rejected the Culture-Historical doctrine;^[47] they marginalized the discussion of ethnicity altogether, and focused on the intragroup dynamics which generated such material remains. Moreover, they argued that adoption of new cultures could occur through trade in or internal political developments rather than military takeovers.

Many scholars take a more moderate position. While recognizing that artifacts do not possess an inherent "ethnic ascription", some artifacts may have been used as "emblems in identity and otherness – of belonging and exclusions".^[48] Peter Heather suggests that although shifts in culture should not solely rely on migratory explanations, there is no reason to a priori rule them out (especially if there is evidence from literary sources).^[49] Profound changes in culture (and language) could occur through the influx of a ruling elite with minimal (or no) impact on overall population composition,^[50] especially if it occurs when the indigenous population is receptive to such changes.

Depiction in media[link]

• Terry Jones' Barbarians, a 4-part TV documentary series first broadcast on BBC 2 in 2006
• Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion, a Real Time Strategy game

Appendix - maps[link]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Migration period

Ancient Germanic culture portal

• Dark Ages (historiography)
• Late Antiquity
• Medieval demography
• Migration Period art

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Barford, Paul M (2001), The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-3977-9 
• Curta, Florin (2001), The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, C. 500–700, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-80202-4 
• Dumville, David (1990), Histories and pseudo-histories of the insular Middle Ages, Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum 
• Geary, Patrick (2003), Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe, Princeton Paperbacks, ISBN ISBN 0-691-11481-1 
• Halsall, Guy (2006), "The Barbarian invasions", in Fouracre, Paul, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500 – c. 700, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-36291-1 
• Halsall, Guy (2008), Barbarian migrations and the Roman West, 376–568, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-43491-2 
• Heather, Peter J (1998), The Goths, Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-20932-8 
• Kulikowski, Michael (2007), Rome's Gothic Wars: from the third century to Alaric, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-84633-1 
• Noble, Thomas; Goffart, Walter (2006), From Roman provinces to Medieval kingdoms, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-32742-3 
• Pohl, Walter (1998), "Conceptions of ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies", in Little, Lester K; Rosenwein, Barbara, Debating the Middle Ages: issues and readings, Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 1-57718-008-9 
• Todd, Malcolm, The Early Germans, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 0-631-19904-7 
• Wolfram, Herwig (2001), Die Goten . Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts ., München: C.H.Beck