Shoulder-clasps from the 7th century Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo. Alternate view. British Museum.

Migration Period art denotes the artwork of the Germanic peoples during the Migration period (ca. 300-900). It includes the Migration art of the Germanic tribes on the continent, as well the start of the Insular art or Hiberno-Saxon art of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic fusion in the British Isles. It covers many different styles of art including the polychrome style and the animal style. After Christianization, Migration Period art developed into various schools of Early Medieval art in Western Europe which are normally classified by region, such as Anglo-Saxon art and Carolingian art, before the continent-wide styles of Romanesque art and finally Gothic art developed.

Background[link]

Germanic fibulae, early 5th century

In the 3rd century the Roman Empire almost collapsed and its army was becoming increasingly Germanic in make-up, so that in the 4th century when Huns pushed German tribes westward, they spilled across the Empire's borders and began to settle there. The Visigoths settled in Italy and then Spain, in the north the Franks settled in to Gaul and western Germany, and in the 5th century Scandinavians such as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain. By the close of the 6th century the Western Roman Empire was almost completely replaced with smaller less politically organized, but vigorous, Germanic kingdoms.

Although these kingdoms were never homogeneous, they shared certain common cultural features. They settled in their new lands and become farmers and fishermen. Archaeological evidence shows no tradition of monumental artwork, such as architecture or large sculpture in permanent materials, but a preference instead for "mobile" art for personal display, usually also with a practical function, such as weapons, horse harness, tools, and jewelry which fastened clothes. The surviving art of the Germanic peoples is almost entirely personal adornment, portable, and before conversion to Christianity was buried with its owner. Much art in organic materials has no doubt not survived.

Three styles dominate Germanic art. The polychrome style originated with the Goths who had settled in the Black Sea area. The animal style was found in Scandinavia, north Germany and England. Finally there was Insular art or the Hiberno-Saxon style, a brief but prosperous period after Christianization that saw the fusion of animal style, Celtic, Mediterranean and other motifs and techniques.

Migration art[link]

Polychrome style[link]

During the 2nd century the Goths of southern Russia discovered a new found taste for gold figurines and objects inlaid with precious stones. This style was borrowed from Scythians and the Sarmatians, had some Greco-Roman influences, and was also popular with the Huns. Perhaps the most famous examples are found in the fourth-century Pietroasele treasure (Romania), which includes a great gold eagle brooch (picture). The eagle motif derives from East Asia and results from the participation of the forebears of the Goths in the Hunnic Empire, as in the fourth-century Gothic polychrome eagle-head belt buckle (picture) from South Russia.

The Goths carried this style to Italy, southern France and Spain. One well known example is the Ostrogothic eagle fibula from Cesena, Italy, now at the museum in Nuremberg. Another is the Visigothic polychrome votive crown (picture) of Recceswinth, King of Toledo, found in a votive crown hoard of c. 670 at Fuente de Guarrazar, near Toledo. The popularity of the style can be attested to by the discovery of a polychrome sword (picture) in the tomb of Frankish king Childeric I (died ca 481), well north of the Alps.

Animal style[link]

Purse lid from Sutton Hoo, c. 625

The study of Northern European, or "Germanic", zoomorphic decoration was pioneered by Bernhard Salin^[1] in a work published in 1904.^[2] He classified animal art of the period roughly from 400 to 900 into three phases: Styles I, II and III. The origins of these different phases are still the subject of considerable debate; the development of trends in late-Roman popular art in the provinces is one element, and the older traditions of nomadic Asiatic steppe peoples another. The first two styles are found very widely across Europe in the art of the "barbarian" peoples of the Migration Period.

Style I. First appears in northwest Europe, it became a noticeable new style with the introduction of the chip carving technique applied to bronze and silver in the 5th century. It is characterized by animals whose bodies are divided into sections, and typically appear at the fringes of designs whose main emphasis is on abstract patterns.

Style II. After about 560-570 Style I was in decline and Salin's Style II began to replace it. Style II's animals are whole beasts, but their bodies are elongated into "ribbons" which intertwined into symmetrical shapes with no pretence of naturalism, and rarely any legs, so that they tend to be described as serpents, although the heads often have characteristics of other types of animal. The animal becomes subsumed into ornamental patterns, typically using interlace. Thus two bears are facing each other in perfect symmetry ("confronted"), forming the shape of a heart. Examples of Style II can be found on the gold purse lid.

After about 700 localised styles develop, and it is no longer very useful to talk of a general Germanic style.^[3] Salin Style III is found mainly in Scandinavia, and may also be called Viking art.

Christian influence[link]

The Church in the early Migration period emerged as the only supranational force in Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. It provided a unifying element and was the only institution left that could preserve selected rudiments of classical civilization. As the conversion of Germanic peoples by the end of the 7th centuries in western Europe neared completion, the church became the prime patron for art, commissioning illuminated manuscripts and other liturgical objects. The record shows a steady decline in Germanic forms and increasing Mediterranean influence. This process occurred quickly with the Goths of Italy and Spain and more slowly the further north one looked. This change can be observed in the 8th century Merovingian codex Gelasian Sacramentary, it contained no Style II elements, instead showing Mediterranean examples of fish used to construct large letters at the start of chapters.

Insular art[link]

Insular art, often also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, especially in relation to illuminated manuscripts) was confined to Great Britain and Ireland and was the fusion of Germanic traditions (via the Anglo-Saxons) with Celtic traditions (via Irish monks). It can first be seen in the late 7th century and the style would continue in Britain for about 150 years until the Viking invasions of the 9th century (after which we see the emergence of Anglo-Saxon art), and in Ireland up until the 12th century (after which see Romanesque art).

History[link]

Tara Brooch, front view, early 8th century.

Ireland was converted to Christianity by missions from Britain and the continent, beginning in the mid-fifth century, while simultaneously pagan Angles, Saxons and Jutes were settling in England. The extreme political fragmentation of Ireland and its total lack of urban development prevented the emergence of a strong episcopal structure. Monasticism consequently emerged as the dominant force in Irish Christianity, and thus in Irish Christian art.

Celtic Christianity also developed a strong emphasis on missionary activity. Around 563 Saint Columba founded a base on the Scottish island of Iona, from which to convert Pictish pagans in Scotland; this monastic settlement became long remained a key centre of Christian culture in northern Britain. Columban monks then went to Northumbria in 635 and founded a monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, from which to convert the north of England. However Rome had already begun the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons from the south with a mission to Kent in 597. Conflict arose between the Irish monks and Rome on the date to celebrate Easter, leading to withdrawal of the Irish mission from Lindisfarne to Iona. However, the widespread use of Irish decorative forms in art produced in England, and vice versa, attests to the continuing importance of interaction between the two cultures. England would come under increasing Mediterranean influence, but not before Irish Celtic and Anglo-Saxon art had profitably fused.

The first major work that can be called purely Hiberno-Saxon is the Book of Durrow in the late 7th century. There followed a golden age in metalworking, manuscripts and stone sculpture. In the 9th century the heyday of the Hiberno-Saxon style neared its end, with the disruptions of Viking raids and the increasing dominance of Mediterranean forms (see Anglo-Saxon art).

Illuminated manuscripts[link]

Book of Durrow, 7th century Ireland. One of the earliest pieces of Hiberno-Saxon art. Trinity College Library, Dublin.

The surviving evidence of Irish Celtic art from the Iron Age period is dominated by metalwork in a La Tène style. Hanging bowls such as those found at Sutton Hoo are among some of the most important of these crafts. As Irish missionaries began to spread the word of the Gospels they needed books, and almost from the start, they began to embellish their texts with artwork drawing from the designs of these metalworking traditions. The spirals and scrolls in the enlarged opening letters—found in the earliest manuscripts such as the 7th century Cathach of St. Columba manuscript—borrows in style directly from Celtic enamels and La Tene metalworking motifs.

After the Cathach of St. Columba, book decoration became increasingly more complex and new styles from other cultures were introduced. Carpet pages—entire pages of ornamentation with no text—were inserted, usually at the start of each Gospel. The geometric motifs and interlaced patterns may have been influences from Coptic Egypt or elsewhere in the Byzantine Middle East. The increasing use of animal ornamentation was an Anglo-Saxon contribution of its animal style. All of these influences and traditions combined into what could be called a new Hiberno-Saxon style, with the Book of Durrow in the later 7th century being the first of its type. The Lindisfarne Gospels is another famous example.

The Book of Kells was probably created in Iona in the 8th century. When the monks fled to Ireland in the face of Viking raids in 807, they probably brought it with them to Kells in Ireland. It is the most richly decorated of the Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts and represents a large array of techniques and motifs created during the 8th century.

Metalworking[link]

In the 7th century there emerged a resurgence of metalworking with new techniques such as gold filigree that allowed ever smaller and more detailed ornamentations, especially on the penannular and pseudo-penannular Celtic brooches that were important symbols of status for the elite, and also worn by clergy as part of their vestments. The Tara Brooch and Ardagh Hoard are among the most magnificent Insular examples, whilst the 7th century royal jewellery from the Sutton Hoo ship burial shows a Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon style. They brought together all of the available skills of the goldsmith in one piece: ornamentation applied to a variety of techniques and materials, chip carving, filigree, cloisonné and rock crystal.

Stone sculpture[link]

The skills displayed in metalworking can be seen in stone sculptures. For many centuries it had been Irish custom to display a large wooden cross inside the monastic building enclosure. These were then translated in to stone crosses called high crosses and covered with the same intricate patterns used by goldsmiths, and often figure sculptures.

See also[link]

• Norse art
• Hercules' Club (amulet)
• Confronted-animals

Notes[link]

1. ^ Biography on swedish Wikipedia
2. ^ Die altgermanische Thierornamentik, Stockholm 1904, The Open Library online text, written in German and heavily illustrated.
3. ^ Rituals of power: from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, By Frans Theuws, Janet L. Nelson, p. 45

References[link]

• Martin Werner, "Migration and Hiberno-Saxon Art", Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol-8, ISBN 0-684-18274-2
• "Hiberno-Saxon style". In Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Further reading[link]

• Boltin, Lee, ed.: Treasures of Early Irish Art, 1500 B.C. to 1500 A.D.: From the Collections of the National Museum of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, Dublin, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977, ISBN 0-87099-164-7.

External links[link]

• Images from History, see "Iron Age Europe".
• Eagle Fibula at the Walters Art Museum

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 

Doug Aitken
Aitken's Sleepwalkers displayed at the Museum of Modern Art 2007
Born	1968 (1968) Redondo Beach, California
Nationality	American
Field	Multimedia art

Doug Aitken is an American multimedia artist.

Early life and career[link]

Doug Aitken was born in Redondo Beach, California in 1968. In 1987, he initially studied magazine illustration^[1] with Philip Hays at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena before graduating in Fine Arts in 1991. He moved to New York in 1994 where he had his first solo show at 303 Gallery.^[1] He currently lives and works in Venice, California, and New York.^[2]

Work[link]

Aitken’s body of work ranges from photography, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to narrative films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, and installations.^[3][4] Aitken's video works have taken place in such culturally loaded sites as Jonestown in Guyana, Africa's diamond mines, and India's Bollywood.^[5]

Since the mid-1990s, Aitken has created installations by employing multiple screens. Diamond Sea (1997), for example, includes two video projections, one suspended video monitor, and one full-color, illuminated duratrans image in a dimly lit space. Four speakers create a surround sound experience; the film shows a guarded region in the Namib desert in southwestern Africa known as Diamond Area 1 and 2. The territory, estimated over 40,000 square miles, has been sealed off since 1908. Within its borders exists the world’s largest and richest computer-controlled diamond mine.^[6] Hysteria (1998–2000) uses film footage from the past four decades that shows audiences at pop and rock concerts working themselves into a frenzy.^[7] Filmed and photographed in the dusty sound stages and film sets of Bombay, the twenty-four hours screening of Into the Sun (1999) focuses on the frenetic activity of Bollywood.^[8] Diamond Sea was presented at the 1997 Whitney Biennial and his Electric Earth installation drew international attention and earned him the International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999.^[3]

Aitken has collaborated on his videos with a wide variety of musicians, from hip hop artist André 3000 of Outkast, who was in Aitken’s 2002 multiscreen Interiors to indie bands like Lichens, Fury in the Slaughterhouse^[9] and No Age, which contributed to his score for his 2008 film Migration and 2011's Black Mirror, respectively.

Conversations[link]

In 2006, Aitken produced Broken Screen: 26 Conversations with Doug Aitken (Distributed Art Publishers, 2006), a book of interviews with twenty-six artists who aim to explore and challenge the conventions of linear narrative. Interviews included Robert Altman, Claire Denis, Werner Herzog, Rem Koolhaas, Kenneth Anger and others.^[10] The Idea of the West (2010) presents the collective response of 1000 people on the street who were asked “What is your idea of the West?” to create a manifesto from the quotes and comments of random individuals. Another interview project, Patterns & Repetition (2011) is a series of filmed conversations about creativity in the 21st Century in which Aitken conducts short conversations with pioneers in different artistic disciplines, including Devendra Banhart, Thomas Demand, Jack White, James Murphy, Mike Kelley, Jacques Herzog, Fischli & Weiss, Yayoi Kusama, Michael Nyman, Stephen Shore, and Dan Graham.^[11]

Outdoor Film Installations[link]

In 1998, Glass Horizon, an installation comprising a projection of a pair of eyes onto the facade of the Vienna Secession building after it had closed for the night, showcased an interest in architectural structures and in art that interacts with urban environments.^[12] In 2001, Aitken’s exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery used the entire building for the complex installation New Ocean.^[13]

In the winter of 2007, Aitken's Sleepwalkers was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The project included actors such as Donald Sutherland and Tilda Swinton, as well as musicians Seu Jorge and Cat Power.^[14] Five interlocking vignettes shown through eight projections were displayed upon the exterior walls of the museum so as to be visible from the street. Concurrent with the exhibition, Aitken also presented a "happening" inside the museum that featured live drummers and auctioneers, and a performance by Cat Power.^[15]

In 2008, Aitken produced another large scale outdoor film installation, titled Migration for the 55th Carnegie International show titled "Life on Mars" in Pittsburgh, PA. The first installment in a three-part trilogy entitled Empire, the work features migratory wild animals of North America as they pass through and curiously inhabit empty and desolate hotel rooms.^[16] He also produced a collection of photographs, 99 Cent Dreams, which captures "moments between interaction" to create a 21st century nomadic travelogue.^[17]

Happenings[link]

Aitken has directed many live "happenings" including his Broken Screen happening in Los Angeles and 99 cent dreams happening and Sonic happening in New York. He often borrows Allan Kaprow’s term “Happening” for such performances and invokes Fluxus as a precedent.^[18] In 2009, Aitken orchestrated a real-time opera that assembled auctioneers performing against the rhythms of his Sonic Table, at Il Tempo del Postino, at Theater Basel.^[19]

Continuing his work in innovative outdoor projects, Aitken presented his latest large-scale installation, Frontier, on the Tiber river’s Isola Tiberina in the heart of Rome in November 2009. The film featured a protagonist played by the iconic American artist Ed Ruscha, as he's seen caught in a landscape between fiction and non-fiction. The work creates a futuristic journey from day to night in a world where reality is put into question.^[20][21] First shown at the Deste Foundation’s project space "Slaughterhouse" on the Greek island of Hydra, Black Mirror is projected on five screens reflected “into infinity” across black mirrors and stars Chloë Sevigny tethered only by brief conversations over the phone and through voiceover in such disparate locales as Mexico, Greece, and Central America.^[22]

Photographs and Light Boxes[link]

Passenger, a group of still photographs made in 1999, shows planes in flight, most of which focus on the faint traceries of takeoffs and landings over desolate airport landscapes.^[23] More recently, Aitken has created aluminum light boxes that combine photographic image and text.

Sound Experiments[link]

Interested in the uneasy intersection of nature and culture or narrative variability, the artist has incorporated into his scores what he calls "field recordings," such as jungle noises from Jonestown, Guyana (in his 1995 monsoon), and the reverberations of tremors generated by the eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat (in eraser, 1998). In 1996, for the public art organization Creative Time, Aitken conceived an installation piece in the Anchorage, a cavernous space inside the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, that used recordings of the traffic noises overhead. In 2004, he completed a sound sculpture for the Barcelona Pavilion composed of a central post supporting a few sweeping steel branches that rotated while highly directional speakers at the end of each branch played snippets of scripted conversation.^[24] In October 2009, Aitken's Sonic Pavilion opened to the public. The pavilion is located in the forested hills of Brazil, at Inhotim. The Sonic Pavilion provides a communal space to listen to the sounds of the earth as they are recorded through highly sensitive microphones buried close to a mile deep into the ground and carried back into the pavilion through a number of speakers. The sound heard inside the pavilion is the amplified sound of the moving interior of the earth.^[25]

Books[link]

Aitken also produced several books: I AM A BULLET: Scenes from an Accelerating Culture (2000) where he supplied the photographs to be seen alongside Dean Kuipers text, Broken Screen, a book of interviews with 26 artists pushing the limits of linear narrative, 99 Cent Dreams, a collection of photographs, Alpha, published in 2005 by the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Sleepwalkers, published by the Museum of Modern Art, in correspondence to the short film of the same name, Write In Jerry Brown President (2008), a folded artist book published by the Museum of Modern Art,^[26] The Idea of the West (2010) which asked 1,000 people what their idea of the west was, and was in collaboration with a happening at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,^[27]

Exhibitions[link]

Doug Aitken has participated in over 150 art exhibitions throughout the world.^[28] His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Among others, he had solo exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Serpentine Gallery, London, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Deste Foundation, Greece and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Japan. In 2006, the Aspen Art Museum mounted the first exhibition dedicated solely to Aitken's photography.^[29]

Aitken is represented by 303 Gallery, New York; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich; and Victoria Miro Gallery, London.

Prizes[link]

• 2009 Aurora Award, Aurora Picture Show, Houston, Texas^[30]
• 2007 German Film Critic's Award, KunstFilmBiennale, Cologne, Germany^[31]
• 2000 Aldrich Award, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT^[32]
• 1999 International Prize – Golden Lion, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy^[32]

Aitken's installation "electric earth", a non-linear portrayal of one man’s journey through an anonymous urban wasteland, was included in the Whitney Biennial, 2000 and was awarded the International Prize at the Venice Biennale, 1999.^[33]

Collections[link]

Major works by Doug Aitken are held by the Art Institute of Chicago; Astrup Fearnley Meseet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo; the Broad Collection, Los Angeles; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine, Geneva; Dallas Museum of Art; Foundazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per l'Arte, Turin; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Fundacio “la Caixa”, Barcelona; La Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.^[34]

See also[link]

• List of video artists

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} Dorothy Spears (July 21, 2011), Can You Hear Me Now? New York Times.
2. ^ Media Art Net | Aitken, Doug: Biography
3. ^ ^{a b} UC Berkeley Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium - Bio: Doug Aitken
4. ^ Sleepwalkers exhibition catalogue, published by the Museum of Modern Art, 2007, ISBN 978-0-87070-045-3
5. ^ Doug Aitken, September 10 – October 8, 2005 Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
6. ^ Doug Aitken: Diamond Sea Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe.
7. ^ Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop, 24 May to 26 August 2002 Tate Liverpool.
8. ^ Doug Aitken: Into the Sun, 7 October - 12 November 1999 Victoria Miro Gallery, London.
9. ^ http://www.devlinpix.com/blog/2011-08-17/music-video-fury-slaughterhouse-every-generation-got-its-own-disease
10. ^ Bryant Rousseau (May 6, 2006). Doug Aitkens Happening: Can You Hear Me Now?. ARTINFO. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/15467/doug-aitkens-happening-can-you-hear-me-now/. Retrieved 2008-05-20 
11. ^ Patterns & Repetition
12. ^ In a First, ‘Sleepwalkers' Lights Up MoMA's Facade - January 17, 2007 - The New York Sun
13. ^ Adventures in white space| Showbiz | This is London
14. ^ Smith, Roberta (January 18, 2007). "The Museum as Outdoor Movie Screen". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/arts/18moma.html?ex=1326776400&en=4f0ed9ce0acf1e98&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Retrieved May 1, 2010. 
15. ^ Doug Aitken Happening, The Museum of Modern Art, New York - artreview.com
16. ^ Smith, Roberta (May 9, 2008). "An Alien Sighting on Planet Pittsburgh". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/arts/design/09carn.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=roberta+smith+carnegie&st=nyt&oref=slogin. Retrieved May 1, 2010. 
17. ^ 99 Cent Dreams, published by the Aspen Art Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-934324-37-3
18. ^ Andrew Berardini (June 7, 2011), [Doug Aitken: Infinite Regress] Art in America Magazine.
19. ^ Art Knowledge News
20. ^ The Art Newspaper
21. ^ Frieze Magazine
22. ^ Fan Zhong (June 2011), June 20: Doug Aitken's Black Mirror W Magazine
23. ^ Doug Aitken: Passenger (2004) Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
24. ^ Jori Finkel (October 1, 2009), Doug Aitken ARTINFO.
25. ^ New York Times
26. ^ Doug Aitken Victoria Miro Gallery, London.
27. ^ Idea of the West
28. ^ http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artists_detail.asp?G=&gid=796&which=&aid=1315&ViewArtistBy=online&rta=http://www.artnet.com
29. ^ Doug Aitken: A Photographic Survey, June 1 – July 23, 2006 Aspen Art Museum.
30. ^ Spacetaker
31. ^ The Winners of the KunstFilmBiennale 2007
32. ^ ^{a b} Narrative remixed
33. ^ Doug Aitken: Migration, September 20 - November 1, 2008 303 Gallery, New York.
34. ^ Doug Aitken Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo.

External links[link]

• Doug Aitken Workshop: official website
• Articles about Doug Aitken
• sleepwalkers 30-second trailer on YouTube
• Doug Aitken information at 303 Gallery
• Essay on"Sleepwalkers" by John Haber
• Doug Aitken: The Sonic Happening (Migration) / 303 Gallery, New York Video at VernissageTV.
• Installation "Nine New Destinations" at the Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim in Brumadinho, Brazil
• Interview with Doug Aitken at www.theartnewspaper.tv