NOTES

PROLOGUE

1 Annal of Fulda 882 for the incident with Poulik (1986) on the archaeology.

1. MIGRANTS AND BARBARIANS

1 Bohning (1978), 11.

2 For useful summaries of the modern evidence, see Salt and Clout (1976); King (1993); Collinson (1994), 1–7, 27–40; Holmes (1996); Cohen (1995), (1996), (1997), (2008); Vertovec and Cohen (1999). Canny (1994) provides an introduction to early modern migration evidence. 200,000 Germanic-speaking peasants: Kuhn (1963), (1973); Bartlett (1993), 144–5; and see, more generally, Phillips (1988), (1994).

3 For an introduction to the pre-Roman world of the Celts, see e.g. Cunliffe and Rowley (1976); Cunliffe (1997); James (1999). In fact, there is no one-to-one equation between Celts and the Oppida culture, and Roman conquest did advance just beyond its bounds: see Heather (2005), 49–58.

4 For useful introductions to the early Germanic world, see Hachmann (1971); Todd (1975), (1992); Krüger (1976), vol. 1; Pohl (2000). Note, though, that there is a strong tendency in some of this literature to avoid discussing Germanic groups around the Vistula and further east – a squeamishness resulting from the Nazi era, when the fact that ancient Germanic speakers had once dominated these lands was used as an excuse for territorial aggression.

5 For an excellent, recent overall introduction, see Batty (2007); on the broader cultural role played by Scythia in the formation of the Greek world view, see Braund (2005).

6 Khazanov (1984) provides an excellent introduction to the world of the steppe.

7 ‘The Veneti have taken’: Tacitus, Germania 46.2 (cf. 46.4 on what lay beyond); see also Pliny, Natural History 4.97; Ptolemy, Geography 3.5.1 and 7. On the geography and ancient archaeological patterning of the society and economy of these regions, see Dolukhanov (1996). Within the Russian forest zone, many of the river names are actually Balt rather than Slavic in origin, even in areas where Slavs would be dominant by the year 1000 AD. It is thus unclear whether Tacitus’ Veneti are likely to have been Slavic-speakers, Balt-speakers, or speakers of a tongue ancestral to them both (see Chapter 8).

8 Nomads too played their part: the Huns in the fall of the Roman Empire, the Avars in the slavicization of central and eastern Europe, and the Magyars and Bulgars in laying the foundations of two substantial political entities whose lengthy histories underlie the existence of modern Hungary and Bulgaria.

9 The literature on the cultural significance of the rise of nationalism is now vast, but for introductions, see Gellner (1983); Anderson (1991); Geary (2002).

10 Early modern and modern accounts of Germanic migration consistently pictured migrants as family groups, while more contemporary Roman sources, when they said anything, also sometimes recorded the presence of women and children alongside the warriors. (I have simplified here, and the actual evidence will be surveyed in subsequent chapters.) Students of the collapse of the Roman Empire are broadly divided between viewing the Germanic invasions as its cause, and as its result. For useful overviews of the range of opinion, see Demandt (1984) and Ward Perkins (2005). With regard to the Slavs, one body of opinion has wanted to identify a very large, if submerged, population of Slavic-speakers throughout central and eastern Europe since the Bronze Age, but the evidence remains unconvincing (see Chapter 8). For a useful survey of traditional approaches to the Vikings, see Sawyer (1962), chapter 1. Nationalist conflicts also led to the downplaying of the so-called ‘Normanist’ view, that Vikings were responsible for the first Russian state: see Melnikova (1996), chapter 1 (and see also my Chapter 9).

11 Childe (1926), (1927).

12 See note 9 above. The general point is accepted even by those, such as Smith (1986), willing to conceive of relatively solid and sizeable group identities in at least some corners of the pre-nationalist past.

13 Leach (1954); ‘evanescent situational construct’: Barth (1969), 9. For more recent overviews, see e.g. Bentley (1987); Kivisto (1989); Bacall (1991).

14 That hypothesis was already marked in the work of Kossinna himself: see especially Kossinna (1928). It showed itself even more strongly in the equally influential work of Gordon Childe (see note 11 above), who generalized many of Kossinna’s ideas, while dropping some of his assumptions about Nordic racial superiority. On Kossinna’s legacy, see e.g. Chapman and Dolukhanov (1993), 1–5; Renfrew and Bahn (1991).

15 For an overview of these intellectual developments, see Shennan (1989); Renfrew and Bahn (1991); Chapman and Dolukhanov (1993), 6–25 (which includes an instructive difference in emphasis on the part of the two authors); Ucko (1995). The work of Ian Hodder – especially (1982) and (1991) – has been particularly important in rehabilitating the view that patterns of similarity and difference in material cultural items might sometimes reflect important aspects of human organization.

16 Clark (1966) represents a key turning point away from the invasion hypothesis. For accounts of the range of explanatory hypotheses that have been tried since, see e.g. Renfrew and Bahn (1991); Preucel and Hodder (1996); Hodder and Hutson (2003).

17 Halsall (1995b), 61; and see his further comment: ‘[The invasion hypothesis] is rarely given much credence in archaeological circles today. It is too simplistic, rather on a par with asserting that the change from neo-classical to neo-Gothic architecture or from classical to romantic art in the nineteenth century was the result of an invasion’ (p. 57). This ‘before’ and ‘after’ approach to migration is quite common. See, for a further example, the comments of Nicholas Higham in Hines (1997), 179, where a reinterpretation of a set of remains that had excluded migration from its discussion is lauded as ‘more complex’. The discussion in question is in Hines (1984).

18 Wenskus (1961); cf., amongst others, Wolfram (1988) on the Goths, and Pohl (1988) on the Avars.

19 Geary (1985) and (1988) provide introductory essays composed from this perspective, Halsall (2007) a full-scale study of the fourth to sixth centuries. The migration topos features in Amory (1997) and Kulikowski (2002).

20 On the ‘wave of advance’ model, see, most famously, Renfrew (1987), chapters 1–2, 4 (summarizing previous approaches), and 6 (the model itself).

21 For a detailed case study of ‘elite transfer’, see my Chapter 6.

22 See note 13 above. Smith (1986) explores some historical applications of this more solid vision of group identity; Bentley (1987), 25–55 uses Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus as the basis of a theorized approach towards how identity might be programmed into the individual by the society in which they grow up. When talking about the kinds of differences that prevent the individual from changing group identity so easily (religion, language, social values and so on) the ‘primordialists’ can sound as though they are still stuck in the intellectual world of pre-1945, making out checklists and ticking boxes. But in the primordialist view, it is not these ‘things’ themselves that decide identity, but the individual’s reaction to them. In most of Europe, being a Catholic or Protestant is not a major determinant of group affiliation, but in Northern Ireland, for particular historical reasons, the same religious difference functions as a strong symbol of communal allegiance. It is not the item ticked in a box that decides group affiliation, but how individuals react to that item.

23 On the Greeks and Romans, see Sherwin-White (1973). Halsall (1999) objects to my earlier use of this analogy, but he doesn’t seem to realize that Gastarbeiter and migrants without green cards don’t enjoy remotely full citizenship rights in the societies in which they live, and ignores substantial evidence that even in the first millennium group identity was sometimes made the basis of differentiated rights in culturally complex contexts: see Chapter 5. He also takes the to my mind bizarre view that just anyone could turn up to claim a share when barbarian conquerors of different parts of the Roman west were handing out economic assets: see Heather (2008b).

24 Cf. Antony (1990), 895–9; Antony (1992) notes that these revised understandings render obsolete many older theoretical discussions that assumed much starker archaeological correlates of migration.

25 Härke (1998), 25–42, offers a fascinating insight into which contemporary archaeological traditions are more accepting of migration as a possible engine of change, and which more dismissive. British ‘immobilism’ – rejection of migration – finds parallels in the old Soviet Union and Denmark; the German tradition still incorporates migration as one of its basic paradigms.

26 Jerome (1926).

27 A recent five-hundred page book devoted to migratory activity around the fall of the Roman west, for instance, contents itself with drawing on a few summaries of the literature drawn up for archaeologists rather than engaging with it at first hand: Halsall (2007), 417–22. By contrast, the same book devotes an entire chapter to the group-identity question, based on intense (and insightful) engagement with the specialist literature.

28 On Irish and Dutch migrants, see Bailyn (1994), 1–2. On overall patterns in modern instances, see Fielding (1993a); King (1993), 23–4; Rystad (1996), 560–1. On the historical parallels, see Canny (1994), especially 278–80 (with full references).

29 On the calculation of costs, see Rystad (1996), 560–1; Collinson (1994), 1–7 (both with useful further references.). On return migration, see e.g. Gould (1980); Kuhrt (1984).

30 For reviews of changing policies towards migrants in Western Europe, and their overall effects, see Cohen (1997); King (1993), 36–7; Fielding (1993b); Collinson (1994), chapter 4; Rystad (1996), 557–62; Cohen (2008). Obviously in recent years, EU enlargement has led to a huge influx of Eastern European migrants.

31 ‘Gives a shock’: King and Oberg (1993), 2. For general discussions of a qualitative definition of mass migration, see e.g. King and Oberg (1993), 1–4; Fielding (1993a).

32 For discussion, though, of the high Middle Ages, see Phillips (1988), (1994); Bartlett (1993), 144–5.

33 In the 1990s there were discussions of how an end to Fordist mass-production techniques in industry were likely to affect future migration flows: Fielding (1993a). We now partly know the answer, with skilled labour being sucked into Western Europe, for instance, while the demand for mass labour in the Middle East continues to grow apace: Cohen (2008).

34 On Spanish migration to the new world, and British migration to Australia and New Zealand, see Sanchez-Albornoz (1994); Borrie (1994), 45ff. The convict ships to Australia were another kind of involuntary state-assisted scheme.

35 Bartlett (1993), 134–8.

36 Helpful general discussions of motivation include Fielding (1993a); Collinson (1994), especially 1–7; Voets et al. (1995), especially 1–10; Rystad (1996); Vertovec and Cohen (1999); Cohen (2008). Some case studies are provided by the essays of Atalik and Beeley, Cavaco, Montanari and Cortese, Oberg and Boubnova, in King (1993).

37 See e.g. Cohen (1996), (2008).

38 See e.g. Rystad (1996), 560–1; Bailyn (1994), 4–5.

2. GLOBALIZATION AND THE GERMANI

1 Ammianus 16.12.23–6. For attempts at localizing these early units, see Krüger (1976–83), vol. 1, 44–55, 202–19. For the view that little changed between the first and fourth century, see e.g. James (1989), 42, after Thompson (1965), 40.

2 The literature on Arminius and Maroboduus is enormous, but for introductions, see Krüger (1976–83), vol. 1, 374–412; Pohl (2000), 21–4. On early kingship, and its general lack, see Green (1998), chapter 7. On Maroboduus’ lack of heirs, see Tacitus,Germania42.

3 Chnodomarius, Serapio and Mederichus: Ammianus 16.12.23–6; Vadomarius and Vithicabius: Ammianus 27.10.3–4; Gundomadus: Ammianus 16.12.17. Optimates: Ammianus 16.12.23–6. This view of hereditary canton kingship would be accepted by the vast majority of scholars working in the field: see e.g. Pohl (2000), 29–30, 102ff.; Drinkwater (2007), 117ff. (with full references). Some of the old sub-group names within the Alamanni (Brisigavi, Bucinobantes, Lentienses) survive as modern place names (Breisgau, Buchengau, Linzgau).

4 On the first- and second-century leagues and alliances, see e.g. Tacitus, Germania 38–40 (on the Sueves). For more general commentary, see e.g. Hachmann (1971), 81ff.; Krüger (1976–83), vol. 1, 374–412; Pohl (2000), 65f. The revolt of Julius Civilis, for instance, combined elements from the Batavi, Frisians, Caninefates, Bructeri and Tencteri (Tacitus, Histories 4.18; 21) but no unity survived his fall.

5 ‘There fell in this battle’: Ammianus 16.12.60; Julian’s diplomacy is recounted at Ammianus 17.1, 17.6, 17.10 and 18.2. Vadomarius: Ammianus 21.3–4; Macrianus: Ammianus 28.5, 29.4, 30.3.

6 Early Medieval Ireland and England provide, respectively, more and less articulated examples: see e.g. Binchy (1970a) and the papers in Bassett (1989) for an introduction. I take here a very different view to the minimalist line in germanophone scholarship, a full introduction to which is provided by Humver (1998), and to Drinkwater (2007), 121ff., who argues that there was no urge to unification among fourth-century Alamanni, although he does admit that once Roman manipulation was removed in the fifth century, unification happened.

7 See Wolfram (1988), 62ff., with further arguments in Heather (1991), 97ff. against e.g. Thompson (1966), 43–55; cf. Thompson (1965), 29–41. The three generations are: Ariaricus (in power in 332), Ariaricus’ anonymous son, and the son’s son Athanaric. For this particular reconstruction of Gotho-Roman relations, which is again argued against Thompson (1966), see Heather (1991), 107–21. Others would reconstruct Gotho-Roman relations differently, but none doubts that the Tervingi survived heavy defeat at the hands of Constantine, or that the position of ‘judge’ survived.

8 Batavi: Tacitus, Histories 4.12; Germania 29. Chatti, Bructeri and Ampsivarii: Tacitus, Annals 58; Germania 33. Hermenduri: Tacitus, Annals 13.57.

9 On Ejsbøl Mose, see Ørsnes (1963). Sacrifices of the weapons of a defeated enemy are reported at Caesar, Gallic War 6.17; Tacitus, Annals 13.57.

10 Chnodomarius: Ammianus 16.12.60. Drinkwater (2007), 120–1 supposes that the king and his three friends had fifty followers each, rather than Chnodomarius having all two hundred, but if that were the case, it is hard to see why he was king. Tervingi:Passion of St Saba. On retinues more generally, see e.g. Hedeager (1987); Todd (1992), 29ff. (with references). The contrast with the public bodies of the early Roman period is very striking: see Thompson (1965), 29ff.

11 See Green (1998), chapter 7; cf. Wolfram (1997), chapter 1; Pohl (2000), 66ff. ‘They chose kings’: Tacitus, Germania 7 (‘reges ex nobilitate duces ex virtute sumunt’).

12 See Chapter 6 below on the rise of Clovis. Clovis operated on Roman soil, however, which meant that he could support a much larger retinue, whereas a Germanic economic context (see below) would have imposed tighter economic constraints and perhaps made this impossible.

13 On Chnodomarius’ armour, see Ammianus 16.12.25; we will return to these swords on p. 78.

14 On Odry, see Kmiecinski (1968). In these eastern areas of Germania, the cemeteries were much more permanent than any settlements in the first two centuries AD, and are marked by large stone circles which contained few if any burials. It has been plausibly suggested that this reflects the fact that cemeteries rather than settlements provided the locus for social gatherings.

15 The fullest discussion is Haarnagel (1979).

16 On Wijster, see Van Es (1967). See more generally the relevant studies in Krüger (1976–83): compare vol. 1, chapter 11 with vol. 2, chapter 5; Myhre (1978); Steuer (1982), 258ff.; Hedeager (1988), (1992), 193ff.; Todd (1992), chapter 4. There is a useful discussion of the Roman side of the frontier in Carroll (2001), chapter 4.

17 Goffart (2006), 26–32 objects to old-style assumptions, based on the famous Jordanes, Getica 4.25, that Scandinavia in particular and Germania in general was a womb of nations, endlessly producing future invaders of the Roman Empire until it was overwhelmed. As a comment on old-fashioned historiography, this is fair enough, though his work does not engage with the detailed archaeological evidence.

18 See Urbanczyk (1997b).

19 On the Pietroasa treasure, see Harhoiu (1977). On fibula production at the Runder Berg (see note 24 below), see Christlein (1978), 43–7, 171. On pottery, see Heather and Matthews (1991), chapter 3 (Cernjachov); Drinkwater (2007), 89–93; cf., more generally, Krüger (1976–83), vol. 2, 123ff.

20 On glass, see Rau (1972). On combs, see Palade (1966).

21 The groundwork was laid by Steuer (1982).

22 For an introduction to the historiography, see Thompson (1965). I strongly suspect that measuring social status via artefacts will tend to place the basic erosion of human equality (to the extent that it ever existed) at far too late a date in the history of Homo sapiens sapiens.

23 For useful surveys, see Thompson (1965), chapters 1–2; Todd (1992), chapter 2; for more detailed discussions, see Gebuhr (1974); Hedeager (1987), (1988), (1992), chapters 2–3; Hedeager and Kristiansen (1981); Steuer (1982), 212ff.; Pearson (1989). For Odry, see note 14 above.

24 On Runder Berg, see Christlein (1978); Siegmund (1998); and cf. Brachmann (1993), 29–42; Drinkwater (2007), 93–106, which point out that there must have been other lowland Alamannic elite sites, none of which has yet been identified. On Feddersen Wierde, see Haarnagel (1979). On Gothic areas, see Heather (1996), 70ff. (with references). For more general discussion, see Krüger (1976–83), vol. 2, 81–90; Hedeager (1988), (1992), chapter 4; Todd (1992), chapter 6; Pohl (2000).

25 The two classic and highly influential general accounts are the solidly Marxist interpretation of Fried (1967), and the more optimistic line adopted by Service (1975). These studies set the agenda for more detailed subsequent studies of intermediate societies (between the very small and the more modern). The four areas I identify represent a distillation from the helpful collections of papers in Claessen and Skalnik (1978), (1981); Claessen and van de Velde (1987); Skalnik (1989); Earle (1991); Claessen and Oosten (1996).

26 This is true whether (see previous note) one adopts Service’s view of the process (by which a wider range of functions is more efficiently fulfilled) or Fried’s less optimistic Marxist view (whereby the growth of the bureaucracy entails the further rigidification of power structures).

27 The key term here is ‘reciprocity’, meaning that ruler and ruled exchange something that is of mutual value. This probably won’t be (and certainly doesn’t have to be) an equal exchange, but even the act of exchanging makes the interaction honourable. If it is one-sided, then it is demeaning.

28 Alamanni: Ammianus 16.12. Tervingi: Heather (1991), 109 (on pre-376 AD, based on Ammianus 20.8.1, 23.2.7, and 26.10.3), 146. Drinkwater (2007), 142–4 proposes that there were 15,000 Alamanni and allies at Strasbourg. He consistently downplays Alamannic numbers on the basis of his prior assumption that they posed no real threat to Roman frontier security, which is in my view a circular and unconvincing approach: see Heather (2008a). The evidence strongly suggests that these societies possessed slaves and that slaves were not normally liable for military service. We do not know the proportion of slaves, but they are likely enough to have been a significant portion of the population, so that merely to number fighting men will be to underestimate the total of young adult males in these societies.

29 For waterborne summits, see Ammianus 27.5.9 (cf. Themistius, Orations 10), 30.3.4–6. For Burgundian/Alamannic boundaries, see Ammianus 28.5.11.

30 For an introduction to the evidence, see Heather & Matthews (1991), chapter 5.

31 On the Gothic contingents, see note 28 above, with Heather (1991), 107ff. for the crucial link that military service was something imposed on the Goths by the Romans when they held the diplomatic upper hand. On the Alamannic contingents, see Heather (2001). On the loan word, see Green (1998), chapter 11.

32 Vannius: Tacitus, Annals 12.25. On Roman imports on elite Gothic sites, see Heather (1996), 70–2. On trade and diplomacy, see Heather (1991), 109. Of course, Chnodomarius may possibly just have been offering a share of war booty rather than cash up front.

33 On the ‘wall’ of Athanaric, see Ammianus 31.3.8, with Heather (1996), 100 for the identification. On Runder Berg and other sites, see note 24 above.

34 Based on a trawl through the literature cited in note 25 above. Not even the famously inert Irish kings of the Middle Ages – so wonderfully caricatured by the late Patrick Wormald as a ‘priestly vegetable’ – failed to exercise powers over dispute settlement. In the famous tract on Irish kingship, Crith Gablach, one day was reserved for this function: see Binchy (1970b); cf. Wormald (1986).

35 For an introduction to early Anglo-Saxon tax systems, see Campbell (2000); Blair (1994). These kinds of arrangement have also been found in areas of Britain that never fell under Roman rule: see Barrow (1973).

36 The mobility of Alamannic kings is suggested by the difficulty the Romans faced in trying to kidnap one of their number: see Ammianus 29.4.2ff. For an excellent introduction to the immense bibliography on itineration, see Charles-Edwards (1989).

37 See Thompson (1966); cf. Heather (1991), 177ff. (with full references). For Gundomadus, see note 3 above. Even if one accepts the hypothesis of Drink-water (2007), 142–4 that there were 24 Alamannic canton kings, they would have produced no more than 4,800 retinue warriors between them. On the range of material in burials, see e.g. Steuer (1982); Weski (1982); Harke (1992). On burials entirely empty of goods, see e.g. Heather and Matthews (1991), 62, for some examples from Gothic-dominated territories.

38 A quick read of the relevant law collections from the Visigothic, Frankish, Lombard, Burgundian, and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms brings out the importance of this group, who also feature in materials from the ‘smaller’ political entities, such from Thuringia, Bavaria, and Alamannia.

39 On the proportion of freemen to slaves, see Heather (1996), 324–5, after Procopius, Wars 3.8.12 (1 elite to 4 subordinates in one Gothic force); 8.26.12 (close to 1:1 in a Lombard force). On this warfare, see Heather (1996), especially Appendix I (collecting the evidence for two classes of warrior being mentioned in Roman narrative sources). For charter evidence, see Wickham (1992); (2005), part 3. Post-Roman society did not immediately fall under the sway of the much smaller landowning elite, who can be seen to be dominant from the Carolingian period of c.800 and beyond: see for example Chapter 6 above on the growth of landed estates, which was the basis of aristocratic/gentry domination in Anglo-Saxon England and northern Francia; and, for more general comment, Wickham (2005), part 2.

40 The village community at least attempted to protect the Christians in their midst: see Passion of St Saba 4.4; Heather and Matthews (1991), chapter 4.

41 See Ammianus 31.3.8.

42 The law codes again show that social value varied substantially with age, with women’s value famously being highest during child-bearing years. But age was clearly important to men too: older men were buried with spurs but not weapons, for instance, suggesting that there was an age limit to military obligation: see Hedeager (1988). Children were likewise sometimes not buried in cemeteries: see e.g. Siegmund (1998), 179ff.

43 On the general importance of feasting as part of ‘reciprocity’ (see note 27 above), see Earle (1984), (1991). The first-century evidence is discussed in Thompson (1965). On Anglo-Saxon ideologies and realities, see Charles-Edwards (1989); Campbell (2000),chapter 8.

44 For the early Roman period, see Thompson (1965), 37ff. On Roman control of assemblies, see Dio 72.19.2; 73.2.1–4. On fourth-century village assemblies, see Passion of St Saba; cf. Heather and Matthews (1991), chapter 4. On the decision to cross into the Empire, see Ammianus 31.3.8: ‘diuque deliberans’ (see Chapter 4 below). Thompson (1965), (1966) emphasizes the absence of reference in fourth-century sources (which basically means Ammianus) to regular councils among the Goths and other Germani. While a correct observation, it does not mean they weren’t happening.

45 The literature on sacral kingship is huge, but see e.g. Wenskus (1961) and Wolfram (1994). The terminology and concept of heilag is nevertheless clear: see Green (1998), chapter 7 for the linguistic evidence; and cf. Pohl (2000) and Moisl (1981) for a practical application. On the actual (as opposed to invented) history of the Amal dynasty, see Heather (1991), chapters 1–2, and part 3; Heather (1996), chapters 6, 8 and 9.

46 See Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.9; the Chatti are also mentioned at Ammianus 20.10. Salii: Ammianus 17.8; cf., amongst a huge range of possible secondary literature, James (1988), chapter 1, and the relevant papers in Wieczorek et al. (1997). The political processes behind the generation of the Alamanni may not have been totally dissimilar. No old names survived into the fourth century, but the confederation does seem to have built up gradually over time. In the third century, for instance, the Iuthingi (itself a new name) seem to have been a separate grouping, but by the fourth were operating as an integral part of the broader confederation: see Drinkwater (2007), 63ff.

47 For Gargilius’ cow, see Boeles (1951), 130, plate 16, cited in Geary (1988), 3; the calculation of legionaries’ demands is from Elton (1996).

48 Julian’s treaties are discussed in more detail in Heather (2001). On the frontier and its operations, see generally Whittaker (1994); Elton (1996); Wells (1999), chapter 6; Carroll (2001), of which the two latter focus greater attention on the Roman side of the Rhine.

49 On loan words and trade, see Green (1998), 186f. and chapter 12. On iron production, see Urbanczyk (1997b); cf. more generally Krüger (1976–83), vol. 2, 157ff.

50 On the forced drafts of recruits, see Heather (2001).

51 See Green (1998), chapter 12.

52 Caesar, Gallic War 4.2; Tacitus, Germania 5 (who notes, however, that interior Germanic groups still did not value Roman silver coins); cf. Green (1998), chapter 12. On fourth-century coin concentrations, see Drinkwater (2007), 128–35; Heather and Matthews (1991), 91–3.

53 On the Tervingi and trade, see Themistius, Orations 10, with the commentary of Heather (1991), 107ff. For general orientation on Roman imports and their patterns, see Eggers (1951); Hedeager (1988); von Schnurbein (1995); Wells (1999), chapter 10; Drinkwater (2007), 34ff.

54 For Roman goods and social status, see Steuer (1982). For the amber causeways, see Urbanczyk (1997b). For tolls, see Green (1998).

55 See Caesar, Gallic War 6.17; Tacitus, Annals 13.57. For the bog deposits, see Orsnes (1963), (1968); Ilkjaer and Lonstrup (1983); Ilkjaer (1995); for more general comment, see e.g. Hedeager (1987); Steuer (1998); Muller-Wille (1999), 41–63.

56 For a thoughtful critique of the importance of trade, see Fulford (1985). On ninth- and tenth-century beneficiaries, see Chapter 10 above. For an introduction to ‘agency’, and its more particular problems, see Wilson (2008).

57 For a detailed report of the find, see Kunzl (1993); for an English summary, see Painter (1994).

58 For a more detailed account, with full references, see Heather (2001).

59 Ammianus 17.12–13, with Heather (2001). On the removal of potentially dangerous leaders, see Ammianus 21.4.1–5; 27.10.3; 29. 4.2 ff.; 29.6.5; 30.1.18–21.

60 On the rationale of hostage-taking, see Braund (1984). On subsidies, Klose (1934) collects the evidence from the early period, Heather (2001) for that of the later Empire.

61 ‘So eagerly did our forces’: Ammianus 19.11. For further comment on the balance between resettlement and exclusion, see Chapter 3 above; and cf. e.g. Heather (1991), chapter 4, on standard Roman immigration policies; and Carroll (2001), 29ff., on the amount of organized restructuring of adjacent populations that went on as Rome created its German frontier.

62 Valentinian’s reduction of gifts: Ammianus 26.5; 27.1. For commentary, see Heather (2001); and Drinkwater (2007), chapter 8 (who seeks, in my view damagingly, to demonstrate that the Alamanni could never have represented any kind of threat).

63 On the Rhine–Weser, see Drinkwater (2007), 38–9. On fifth-century economic expansion in Alamannia, see ibid., 355–44.

64 See Wells (1999), chapters 10–11, following von Schnurbein (1995), who stresses the increase in imports of Roman weaponry into Germanic contexts after the mid-second century.

65 Athanaric: Ammianus 27.5; Macrianus: Ammianus 30.3. In both cases, though, the relevant emperor was being pressed by problems elsewhere – Valentinian in the Middle Danube, and Valens in Persia: see Heather and Matthews (1991), chapter 2.

3. ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME?

1 ‘They were expecting . . .’: Dio 32. 8–10.

2 For a good introduction, see Birley (1966), chapters 6–8, with Appendix III; see also Böhme (1975).

3 See Dio 72.20.1–2 (on the stationing of troops); 72.11–12, 72.20.2, 72.21 (on the movements of the Asdingi, Quadi, and Naristi respectively); 72.15, 72.16.1–2, 72.19.2, 73.3.1–2 (on trading privileges and neutral zones); 72.19.2, 73.2.1–4 (on assemblies).

4 ‘Not only were . . .’: Historia Augusta: Marcus Aurelius 14.1; for an introduction to the trickeries of this text, see Syme (1968), (1971a), (1971b). For Roman aggression, see Drinkwater (2007), 28–32, who adds further thoughts on the possible impact of the plague, and Marcus’ sense of duty, to the argument.

5 On Rhine frontier damage, see Carroll (2001), 138; and cf., on the legions and Marcus’ self-monumentalization, Birley (as note 2 above). See also Chapter 2, note 28 above.

6 For the first-century homeland of the Langobardi, see Tacitus, Germania 40. That group of 6,000 clearly did not represent more than a subgroup, and they would be followed south by more Langobardi in the fifth century (see Chapter 5 below). These later Langobardi invaded the Middle Danube proper from intermediate settlements in Bohemia, but it is unknown whether this was true also of the second-century group. For references to permanent displacements, see note 3 above.

7 See Dio 72.3.1a.

8 See e.g. Barford (2001), introduction and chapter 1.

9 Of fundamental importance here is the work of the late Kazimierz Godlowski, especially his general treatment of north-central Europe in the Roman period: Godlowski (1970). Shchukin (1990) supplies a good general survey, building on Godlowski’s pioneering work. The argument continues over details, and many more ‘cultures’, and phases within ‘cultures’, have acquired much more precise and absolute dates. In pioneering days, only Roman coins provided any indication of absolute chronology. Since 1945, the chronological development of Roman wheel-turned pottery became better understood, both for fine wares (dinner services) and amphorae (storage jars for olive oil and wine). Two later techniques supply still more precise dates: carbon-14 (which produces a date-range) and dendrochronology, based on tree rings (which tells you precisely when a given tree was cut down). Combined with Godlowski’s general method, these technical advances have generated a wealth of knowledge that would have astonished previous generations of scholarship.

10 In technical dating terms, the expansion occurred in Roman Iron Age periods B2, B2/C1a. These paragraphs distil information in two important collections of papers: Peregrinatio Gothica 1 and 2; and cf. Shchukin (2005).

11 For a fuller discussion, see Heather (1996), 35–8. There is a range of fragmentary references in classical sources indicating that Gothic groups were moving south and east: see Batty (2007), 384–7.

12 The relevant literature is huge. For a brief introduction, with full references, see Heather (2005), chapter 2.

13 For a recent comprehensive treatment, with full refererences, see Drinkwater (2007), chapter 2. (Note his important argument on pp. 43–5 that a group called the Alamanni clearly existed already in the 210s, a point to which we shall return.) On the brutal violence, see ibid., 78f. (with further examples); Carroll (2001), chapter 9.

14 On Alamannic origins, see Drinkwater (2007), 48f., 108–16 (with full references).

15 Argaith and Guntheric: Jordanes, Getica 16.91 (cf. Historia Augusta: Gordian 31.1 on ‘Argunt’, which probably represents a conflation of the two). Cniva: Zosimus 1.23; Jordanes, Getica 18.101–3; Zonaras, Chronicle 12.20.

16 The principal source is Zosimus 1.31–5. For additional sources and commentary, see Paschoud (1971–89), vol. 1, pp. 152ff., n. 59ff.

17 Zosimus 1.42–3, 46, with Paschoud (1971–1989), vol. 1, pp. 159ff. n. 70ff.

18 Historia Augusta: Aurelian 22.2. There is no evidence that he was related to the Cniva who had been operating in the same region a generation before: see note 15 above. On all these third-century attacks, see Batty (2007), 387–95.

19 Eutropius, Breviarium 8.2.

20 For first- and second-century references to the Goths, see Tacitus, Germania 43–4; Strabo, Geography 7.1.3 (‘Butones’); Ptolemy Geography 3.5.8. Kulikowski (2007), chapters 3–4; cf. Jordanes, Getica 4.25–8 (on Filimer: see p. 122).

21 For more detail on the Tervingi, see Chapter 2 above. Jordanes’ anachronisms were first demonstrated in Heather (1991), chapters 1–2 (where I show my own scepticism of Jordanes, pace Kulikowski).

22 On the first and second century, see Shchukin (1990); and cf. Batty (2007), 353ff. on Bastarnae, Sarmatians, and Dacians of various kinds (with full references, and noting the distorting political agendas that have sometimes been applied to these materials). For an introduction to Ulfila and his Bible, see Heather and Matthews (1991), chapters 5–7.

23 For the first- and second-century placement of Goths, see note 20 above. Rugi: Tacitus, Germania 44. Vandals: Courtois (1955), chapter 1. (Kulikowski does not discuss the broader range of evidence.)

24 Carpi: see note 38 below. On the 330s, see Anonymous Valesianus I.6.30.376, chapter 4. On the migration habit, see above, p. 30.

25 In technical terms, these transformations occurred in period B2–C1a/b. For fuller discussion, see Heather (1996), 43–50, drawing on the materials mentioned in note 9, and now supplemented by Shchukin (2005). Kulikowski (2007), 60ff. dismisses the importance of the archaeological evidence in very general terms without discussing the phenomenon of Wielbark expansion.

26 For introductions to this material, see Kazanski (1991); Shchukin (2005), with a fuller literature listed at Heather (1996), 47–50.

27 See Kazanski (1991); Heather (1996), 47–50; Shchukin (2005).

28 Jordanes, Getica 4.25–8.

29 Jordanes, Getica 16–17.90–100 records the third-century triumphs of the Amal King Ostrogotha. The king is entirely mythical, however, invented to explain why the Ostrogoths were so called, and his name has been added to known historical events: see Heather (1991), 22–3, 368.

30 For more detail, see Heather (1991), chapter 1 and 84–9.

31 Batavi: Tacitus, Histories 4.12, Germania 29. Chatti, Bructeri and Ampsivarii: Tacitus, Annals 58, Germania 33.

32 The element of fragmentation under Filimer is quoted on p. 122. Berig: Getica 4.25–6, with 17.94–5. Goffart (1988), 84ff. is reasonably concerned to undermine old assumptions that Gothic oral history suffuses the Getica, but is arguably a little too dismissive: see Heather (1991), 5–6, 57–8, 61–2.

33 See e.g. Borodzej et al. (1989); Kokowski (1995); Shchukin (2005).

34 See Drinkwater (2007), chapter 2 and 85–9 (with references).

35 See Ionita (1976).

36 On Heruli casualties, see George Syncellus, Chronicle, ed. Bonn, I.717. For other figures from the Aegean expedition (2,000 boats and 320,000 men), see Historia Augusta: Claudius 8.1. Cannabaudes’ defeat is said to have cost 5,000 Gothic dead: Historia Augusta: Aurelius 22.2. Much of this material derives from the contemporary account of Dexippus. If the parallel with Viking activity is to be taken to the ultimate, one would suspect that relatively small groups made the initial moves, only for their very success to encourage larger entities to participate in the action. The state of the third-century evidence, however, does not make such a chronological progression certain. For further commentary on scale, see Batty (2007), 390ff.

37 Langobardi: Dio 72.1.9. Quadi: Dio 72.20.2 (explicitly pandemei, ‘all the people’).

38 For the protest of the Carpi, see Peter the Patrician fr. 8. For the exodus on to Roman soil, see Aurelius Victor, Caesars 39.43; Consularia Constantinopolitana, s.a. 295. See, more generally, Bichir (1976), chapter 14. A total of six campaigns were fought against the Carpi during the reign of the Emperor Galerius (293–311).

39 Naristi: see p. 98. Limigantes: see p. 85. On the Greek cities, the classic works of Minns (1913) and Rostovzeff (1922) remain essential. For an introduction to the archaeological evidence that has since become available, see Batty (2007), 284–9 (with references).

40 Drinkwater (2007), 43–5 rightly rejects the recent tendency to claim that Alamanni did not exist before the 290s, but then attempts to make all the action of the third century, including the whole settlement of the Agri Decumates, into the result of warband activity. This argument fails to convince.

41 See above Chapter 9.

42 For female burial costume, see note 26 above. For an introduction to the Gothic Bible, see Heather and Matthews (1991), chapters 5–7. The contrast with the originally Norse Rurikid dynasty, who quickly took Slavic names (see above Chapter 10), is extremely striking. See also Chapter 6 below for discussion of the linguistic evidence from the Anglo-Saxon conquest of lowland Britain.

43 Quadi: Dio 72.20.2. Hasding Vandals: Dio 72. 12.1.

44 ‘Commonsense’: Drinkwater (2007), 48. For Burgundian linguistic evidence, see Haubrichs (2003), (forthcoming).

45 For a qualitative definition of ‘mass’ migration, see pp. 31–2 above. If ‘mass’ sounds too redolent of the invasion hypothesis, then alternative terms might be found (perhaps ‘significant’?), but there is surely virtue in bringing first-millennium usage into line with the norms prevailing in specialist migration studies.

46 Panegyrici Latini 3 [11].16–18.

47 See above Chapter 2.

48 On military inscriptions, see Speidel (1977), 716–18; cf. Batty (2007), 384–7. On shipping, see Zosimus 1.32.2–3.

49 I would therefore strongly argue that the ‘interaction’ theme that has been so marked a feature of frontier studies in recent years – e.g. Whittaker (1994); Elton (1996) – must be balanced with a proper appreciation of the frontier’s equally real military function.

50 See pp. 43ff. Oddly, Drinkwater (2007), 48–50, while accepting the evidence for increased competition within the Germanic world, refuses to recognize that this would naturally lead to increased pressure on the Roman frontier, amongst other areas, as groups sought to escape the heightened dangers of their existence. Wells (1999), chapter 9 is similarly – and equally oddly – ‘internalist’ in interpretation, seeking to locate the causes of third-century disturbances within the frontier zone, and particular the Roman side of it.

51 Ammianus 26.5, 27.1; cf. Drinkwater (2007), chapter 8.

52 Tacitus, Annals 12.25.

53 See e.g. Anokhin (1980); Frolova (1983); Raev (1986).

54 Peter the Patrician fr. 8.

55 The rhythms of Roman frontier management perhaps aided the process. Thinning out the frontier zone periodically, as the Romans did, to reduce overcrowding and the potential for violence (see p. 85), can only have made it easier for more peripheral groups eventually to build up a sufficient manpower advantage to overthrow established Roman clients.

56 Cf. Chapter 2 above, p. 101. I would in any case strongly argue that freeman and retinue society were unlikely to be completely separate.

57 Jordanes, Getica 55.282 (‘ascitis certis ex satellitibus patris et ex populo amatores sibi clientesque consocians’).

58 For references, see note 10 above, with Kmiecinski (1968) on Odry. Descriptive terms like ‘semi-nomad’ are sometimes used, but to my mind misleadingly. What we’re talking about here are mixed farming populations, who kept many animals, perhaps measured their wealth in cattle, but also engaged in extensive arable agriculture, despite lacking the techniques to maintain the fertility of individual fields over the long term.

4. MIGRATION AND FRONTIER COLLAPSE

1 Before these tumultuous events of the late fourth century, the western border of Alanic territory lay on the River Don. This just about made them outer clients on Rome’s Lower Danube frontier, especially since the Empire retained strong contacts with the southern Crimea. But they can only be classed as complete outsiders when it comes to the convulsion of 405–8, which affected the Middle Danubian frontier region.

2 The same basic vision of the crisis can be found, amongst other sources, in Ammianus 31; Eunapius frr. (and Zosimus 4.20.3 ff., which is largely but not completely dependent on Eunapius); Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica 4.34; Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica6.37. The total figure of 200,000 is provided by Eunapius fr. 42, whose account is generally vague and rhetorical, and therefore unconvincing by itself: see Paschoud (1971–89), vol. 2, 376 n. 143. The figure has, however, been accepted by some: see e.g. Lenski (2002), 354–5 (with references). On the 10,000 warriors, see Ammianus 31.12.3; these may have represented only the Tervingi: see Heather (1991), 139. On the wagon trains, see Ammianus 31.7, 31.11.4–5, 31.12.1ff. On social dependants, see e.g. Ammianus 31.4.1.ff.; Zosimus 4.20.6.

3 Matthews (1989) stresses Ammianus’ literary artistry, where Barnes (1998) stresses his lack of candour. These two most recent studies disagree on many things but both stress that Ammianus is not a straightforward read. For further comment, see Drijvers & Hunt (1999); G. Kelly (2008).

4 For the ‘more secret’ archive, see Ammianus 14.9.1. For career documents, see Ammianus 28.1.30. For military dispatches, see Sabbah (1978).

5 On the migration topos, see Kulikowski (2002). On causation, see Halsall (2007), chapter 6.

6 For examples of the migration topos in action, see pp. 122 and 251 above. Ammianus on warbands: e.g. 14.4; 17.2; 27.2; 28.5. Ammianus on Strasbourg: 16.12.7; 31.8.3.

7 The recruitment of this extra mercenary support has sometimes been confused with the arrival of the Greuthungi alongside the Tervingi. This is a serious mistake: see Heather (1991), 144–5, and Appendix B.

8 On the split of the Tervingi, see Ammianus 31.3.8ff.; 31.4.13. The Greuthungi seem also to have fragmented, in that a leader called Farnobius and his followers, found alongside the main body as it crossed the Danube, then suffered an entirely different fate from the rest: see Ammianus 31.4.12; 31.9.3–4.

9 Only Kulikowski (2002) really dares to suggest that Ammianus might be completely misleading, and even he seems to backtrack substantially in Kulikowski (2007), 123ff., which, while wanting to minimize any unity among the Goths, still accepts that they formed a mixed group of humanity ‘numbered at least in the tens of thousands, and perhaps considerably more’ (p. 130). Among the other anti-migrationists, Halsall (2007) is willing to think in terms of over 10,000 warriors and a total mixed group of 40,000 people; while Goffart (1981), (2006) has never treated the events of 376 in any detail.

10 See Halsall (2007), 170ff., drawing particularly on the analysis of Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica 4.33 in Lenski (1995).

11 I therefore remain entirely happy with the analysis of the ‘Ammianus versus Socrates’ issue I offered, with references, in Heather (1986). Halsall’s desire to avoid a sequence of events that would put predatory migration at the heart of causation seems to provide the principal reason for rejecting the contemporary and more detailed Ammianus in favour of the later and less detailed Socrates, but he offers no good reasons based on the historical evidence, and in my view this line of argument allows preconception to justify unsound methodology.

12 Ammianus 31.3.8.

13 Zosimus 4.20.4–5.

14 Ammianus 31.3.2–8.

15 On the Caucasus raid, see Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 51–9 (who does think they came from the Danube). For other Goths north of the Danube in 383, see (Arimer) Achelis (1900); and (Odotheus) Zosimus 4.35.1, 4.37–9.

16 Some Hunnic groups did operate further west before 405–8, but the numbers were very small up to about 400: just the mercenaries who joined the Goths south of the Danube in autumn 377 (see note 7 above) and another Hunnic/Alanic warband found near Raetia in the 380s (Ambrose, Epistolae 25). Uldin’s force from c.400 was clearly a bit larger, but even his command paled compared to the Hunnic forces that arrived in the Middle Danube after 405–8: see above Chapter 5. In general terms, all of this suggests to me that the action of 376 should be viewed rather along the lines of Caesar’s description of the move of the Tenctheri and Usipetes west of the Rhine in the mid-first century BC. In that case, an extended series of smaller-scale raids and attacks, rather than one outright invasion, convinced them that they could no longer live securely east of the Rhine: Caesar, Gallic War 4.1.

17 On discussion, see Ammianus 31.3.8. On persuasion, see Heather (1991), 176–7,179–80.

18 On the archaeology and group identity, see above Chapter 1. The particular items within the Cernjachov culture that strike me as a priori promising for distinguishing the immigrant groups are its bone combs, particular fibulae and north European, Germanic longhouse types. Unfortunately, no detailed mapping of these items has yet been made.

19 For an introduction to Ulfila, see Heather and Matthews (1991), chapter 3. I suspect that the alternative view, of a swift social amalgamation, involves a degree of wishful thinking, largely inspired in reaction to the horrors of the Nazi era, that shrinks from accepting such unequal relationships between relatively bounded groups of human beings. The eastern expansions of the Goths and other Germanic groups in the late Roman period were enthusiastically seized upon by Hitler’s propagandists to justify the poisonous activities of the Third Reich: see Wolfram (1988), chapter 1. But a laudable determination to condemn Nazi atrocities becomes muddled thinking if we try to make the past conform to our wish rather than to the reasonable probability of its evidence.

20 Different grades of warrior are not specifically mentioned in the Hadrianople campaign, but they do feature in the evidence for Radagaisus’ Gothic force of 405 (Olympiodorus fr 9.) and Theoderic the Amal’s Ostrogoths (see Chapter 5), as well as in later Visigothic laws. Moreover, the Historia Augusta’s vivid account of third-century mass Gothic migratory bands, complete with families and slaves, may well be based on fourth-century events (Historia Augusta, Claudius 6. 6, 8.2; cf. Chapter 3 above), and I strongly suspect it was those of lower status that the hard-pressed Tervingi were selling into Roman slavery in return for food on the banks of the Danube: Ammianus 31.4.11.

21 On Carpo-Dacai, see Zosimus 4.34.6. On Cernjachov continuity, see Kazanski (1991).

22 For the Carpi, see Chapter 3 above. On the Sarmatian move, see Anonymous Valesianus 6.31.

23 For Goths in the fourth century, see Chapter 2. The point about information is also applicable to the minority under Athanaric who moved into Sarmatian territory: this is what the Tervingi as a whole had tried in 332, only to be frustrated by Roman counteraction (see previous note).

24 Noel Lenski (2002), 182ff., 325f. seeks to locate the reason for Valens’ aggression towards Persia in the Goths’ arrival, and thoughts of the extra recruits he could muster from them. I find the argument unconvincing, and remain confident that the Gothic crisis left Valens with very little room for manoeuvre: see Heather (1991), 128ff.

25 Kulikowski (2007), 123ff. implies that the Tervingi and Greuthungi came to the Danube and requested asylum on separate occasions, so that Valens had sequential decisions to make, but this is not what Ammianus’ account suggests (31.4.12–13; 31.5.2–3).

26 Ammianus 31.10; cf. more general frontier studies such as Whittaker (1994).

27 Ammianus 31.5.3–4. This might possibly be Roman paranoia; I don’t think it is.

28 For example, the Goths of Sueridas and Colias (Ammianus 31.6.1); perhaps also the Alamannic unit under Hortarius (Ammianus 29.4.7).

29 I suspect, but am unable to prove, that this would have been particularly true of indigenous groups who merely paid some tribute to the Goths and were otherwise left substantially alone. For a similar range of relationships between the Huns and their different subjects, see Chapter 5.

30 For full references, see PLRE 2, 934.

31 For Vandals in Raetia, see Claudian, Gothic War 278–81, 363–5, 400–4, 414–29. On the identity of the Sueves, see most recently Goffart (2006), 82–3, who adopts the most plausible Marcomanni/Quadi approach. The Rhine crossing is generally dated 31 December 406 on the basis of Prosper, Chronicle AP 379; for the argument that the chronicler might have meant 31 December 405, see Kulikowski (2000a), 328–9. Following the counterargument of Birley (2005), 455–60, however, Kulikowski (2007), 217 n. 37 appears less sure.

32 For Uldin, see Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 9.25.1–7; Codex Theodosianus 5.6.3. On Burgundians, see Demougeot (1979), 432; 491–3.

33 On Olympiodorus, see, above all, Matthews (1970), with the further thoughts of Blockley (1981), (1983).

34 For Vandal losses, see Gregory of Tours 2.29. The 1:5 ratio was customarily employed, e.g. by Schmidt (1933), 286, 293. For Vandal/Alanic numbers, see Procopius, Wars 3.5.18–19; Victor of Vita, History of the Persecution 1.2. For Burgundian numbers, see Orosius 7.32.11. On Radagaisus’ following, see note 30 above.

35 Jerome, Chronicle 2389 (= 371 AD).

36 On the ‘distributio’ and its significance, see Jones (1964), Appendix III. Jones’s argument is unaffected by Kulikowski (2000b) since it works from the comparison of two well-dated sections of the Notitia: the eastern field army of c.395, and its western counterpart of c.420. For the thirty ‘numeri’, see Zosimus 5.26.4. For the 12,000 followers of Radagaisus, see Olympiodorus fr. 9.

37 Victor of Vita, History of the Persecution 1.2. I therefore take a more optimistic view of Victor than does Goffart (1980), Appendix A.

38 Halsall (2007), 206, for example, has Radagaisus leading ‘a large force’, characterizing the Rhine crossers as a ‘huge force’ (p. 211). It is really only Drinkwater (2007), especially 323–4, who thinks that warbands will adequately explain the action.

39 Zosimus 5.26.3 has Radagaisus engaged in widespread recruitment prior to attacking Italy (although I remain slightly worried that he is here confusing Radagaisus and the Rhine crossing). Codex Theodosianus 5.6.3 makes clear that Uldin’s following was a mixture of Huns and Sciri, and therefore a new, post-376 alliance.

40 On Radagaisus’ followers: Zosimus 5.35.5–6. On Alans in Gaul: Paulinus of Pella, Eucharisticon 377–9. On Vandals and Alans in North Africa: Victor of Vita, History of the Persecution 1.2. For Burgundians, see notes 34 and 35 above, together, of course, with the fact that this group were able to preserve their east German dialect throughout these moves: see Chapter 3 above. No one doubts Ammianus’ report that the Goths of 376 also came with women and children in tow (31.3–4), so the basic principle that Germanic and Alanic armed forces might have moved with their dependants seems well enough established. Against this, the assertions of Drinkwater (1998), especially 273, that it is commonsense that only warriors took part in the action are underwhelming. Cf. Drinkwater (2007), 323–4.

41 Both points – i.e. the Middle Danubian origins of the crisis, and the subsequent appearance there of the Huns – were first argued by Heather (1995a), and are now been generally accepted: see for example Goffart (2006), chapter 5; Halsall (2007), 206ff. The crucial passage of Claudian which has been misunderstood to refer to Huns on the Danube is Against Rufinus ii.26ff. (especially 36ff.)

42 Heather (1995a).

43 Goffart (2006), chapter 5, especially 75–8 (Huns appear in Middle Danube shortly after the crisis); 78–80 (Radagaisus); 94–5 (summarizing the knock-on effect among the expectations of other groups of the fact that the Goths had survived their arrival on Roman soil with their coherence more or less intact).

44 Halsall (2007), 195–212; cf. Halsall (2005), particularly on the disruptive effects of ending subsidies.

45 On Tribigild, see Heather (1988); Synesius, De Regno 19–21.

46 The first practical help from the east consisted of 4,000 soldiers who arrived in Ravenna in 409/10: Zosimus 6.8.

47 For slaves, see Orosius 7.37.13ff.

48 Either Constantine III or Flavius Constantius has usually been considered responsible for the transfer: see Chastagnol (1973); cf. Kulikowski (2000a). Halsall (2007), 209 raises doubts, but offers no specific evidence in their support.

49 On Constantine III, see Zosimus 6.1, which specifically identifies British, Gallic and Spanish military forces as sufficiently united behind him to drive the Vandals, Alans and Suevi into Spain, and to take the usurper to the brink of Empire: see Matthews (1975), 312ff. On the general role of subsidies in Roman diplomacy, see Heather (2001).

50 The relevant sources are, above all, Ammianus 17.12–13; Anonymous Valesianus 6.31–2. For a recent discussion of the Vandals in the fourth century, see Goffart (2006), 82–7, who convincingly concludes that the evidence places them in Silesia and on the Upper Tisza.

51 For Vandals in Raetia, see note 31 above. For their fourth-century placement, see previous note.

52 For fourth-century Goths, see for example Heather (1991), chapter 3. For Alans, see Goffart (2006), 89–90, with Ammianus 31.3.1, who records that the western-most group of Alans in c.375 were called ‘The Don People’ (Tanaites).

53 For the Alans in 377, see Ammianus 31.8.4ff., with Heather (1991), 144–5 and Appendix B; and in 378, see Ammianus 31.11.16. For their drafting into the Roman army, see Zosimus 4.35.2.

54 The identity of Uldin’s followers emerges from Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 9.25.1–7 and Codex Theodosianus 5.6.3.

55 Ammianus 17.12–13 (Constantius’ arrangements in 358); 19.11.1–3 (the return of the Limigantes in 359).

56 On the differences between the cyclical movements inherent in a nomad economy and ‘real’ migration, see pp. 208–12).

57 Ammianus 31.4.13; I take it these are the Sarmatians defeated by Theodosius prior to his elevation: Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.5; Panegyrici Latini 12(2).12.9–10.

58 The nomadic character of the Alans’ economy makes one expect a priori that they had a different social structure from agricultural Germani such as the Vandals or Goths, and this is strongly implied, if in a rather general way, by Ammianus 31.2.25.

59 On the Sciri, see Codex Theodosianus 5.6.3. The contrasting fates of the ‘better’ among Radagaisus’ following who were drafted into the Roman army, versus the many others sold into slavery, might suggest that the latter had had little choice over whether to participate in the action.

60 On Uldin’s force, see Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 9.25.1–7; and Codex Theodosianus 5.6.3. Radagaisus: Olympiodorus fr. 9 for the ‘best’, as against Orosius 7.37.13ff., who records the miserable fate of the mass of the rank and file sold into slavery. ‘Best’ translates Olympiodorus’ optimates, which has sometimes been translated as ‘nobles’, but to reckon so many nobles is absurd, so the word can only make sense as a reference to the higher-grade caste of warriors: see Chapter 2 above. The elites of both the Rhine crossers and the Burgundians, neither of whom of course were faced with as powerful and immediate a Roman counterattack as Radagaisus or Uldin, showed no obviously similar propensity to abandon the migrant mass.

61 The only group for whom any case can be made for an invitation is the Tervingi, by Valens, in 376, but in my view even here Valens had no real choice: see p. 169 above.

62 Cf. Heather (1991), chapter 5, and Appendix B. I don’t believe that the Emperor Gratian made a separate peace agreement with the Greuthungi in the summer of 380. That this adjustment in traditional Roman policy affected only these particular Goths is well understood: see Stallknecht (1969). Kulikowski (2002) and Halsall (2007), 180ff. have recently tried to argue that nothing out of the ordinary was granted in 382, but the case does not stand up to scrutiny: see Heather (forthcoming).

63 It may well be, then, that local Roman landowners cut a deal with the invaders to prevent less organized and hence inherently more damaging assaults upon their property. Cf. Hydatius, Chronicle 41[49]: the settlement saw particular groups of invaders settle in particular provinces, so it is possible that the Spanish provincial councils were responsible for the Roman provincial side of the negotiations.

64 See for example Kulikowski (2002); Halsall (2007), chapters 7–8.

65 Claudian, De Bell. Get. 166ff., 610ff. (dating to 402); Synesius, De Regno 19–21 (dating to 399), with Heather (1988). Neither Kulikowski (2002) nor Halsall (2007), 189–94 offers any explanation of the fundamental distortion they suppose these authors to be incorporating.

66 Zosimus 5.5.4. Privileging the short, non-contemporary and confused Zosimus over the more contemporary sources is the basic approach adopted (even if leading to slightly different interpretations of Alaric’s career) in Liebeschuetz (1992); Kulikowski (2002); Halsall (2007), 191–4. Amongst other problems, Zosimus conflates Stilicho’s two campaigns against Alaric (in 395 and 397) and wipes out ten years of the history of Alaric’s Goths in making the join between his two main sources here: Eunapius and Olympiodorus (at Zosimus 5.26.1: see Heather (1991), 210). To say that Zosimus had no real grasp of Alaric’s career, therefore, is an understatement.

67 The activities of Gainas are well covered, if certainly with hostility, in Synesius, De Providentia; cf. Cameron and Long (1993).

68 To my mind, this is why Liebeschuetz (1992) cannot be correct in viewing Alaric as leading no more than a regiment or two of Gothic auxiliaries in 395. Halsall (2007), 192–3 tries to wriggle round this problem by continuing to deny the overlap with the Goths of 382 while accepting that Alaric’s armed following must have been large, mostly Gothic and from the Balkans. Having accepted these points, he is in fact most of the way to the conclusion that Alaric led the 382 Goths in revolt. He resists this conclusion because he doesn’t believe there was a peace deal in 382 which licensed Gothic autonomy, but see the next note.

69 Themistius, Orations 16.211. Continuing Gothic autonomy up to and beyond c.390 is signalled, beyond Themistius, in sources both sympathetic to Theodosius and his treaty such as Pacatus, Panegryici Latini 12.(2).22.3–5 (where the Goths are one of a series of foreign peoples serving Theodosius), and hostile to them: Synesius, De Regno 19–21, with the commentary of Heather (1988). Halsall (2007), 180–4 oddly argues that there is no evidence that any continued Gothic autonomy was licensed in 382; he appears not to have read the closing words of Themistius’ speech closely enough. Cf. Kulikowski (2002).

70 For Roman policies towards leaders, see Heather (2001). Neither the original leaderships (Athanaric, the dynasty of Ermenaric) nor their immediate successors (Fritigern, Alatheus and Saphrax) survived the struggles of 376–82: for more detail, see Heather (1991), 188–92.

71 Fritigern: Ammianus 31.12.8–9, with Heather (1991), 175–6, 179–80. The best example of the post-382 jockeying is provided by the quarrel between Fravitta and Eriulph. Both led factions and both held different views over the proper ordering of Gotho-Roman relations: see Eunapius fr. 59, dated by the summary of it at Zosimus 4.56. For further discussion, see Heather (1991), 190–1. That Theodosius should have held such a banquet undermines the contention of Halsall (2007), 188–9 that Alaric couldn’t have been the leader of the Goths of 382 in revolt, because there is no evidence that their sociopolitical hierarchies had continued in place after that date (Halsall does not discuss the incident). For Sarus and Sergeric in more detail, see Heather (1991), 197–8. Neither Kulikowski (2002) nor Halsall (2007) bothers to discuss its potential significance. In my view, extracting Roman recognition of his leadership was also precisely the significance of the generalship that Alaric periodically demanded of compliant Roman regimes – probably along with the financial package for his followers that came with it. But note that the generalship was an optional extra that he was willing to drop to make a deal: see Heather (1991), chapter 6.

72 Kulikowski (2002) – largely followed by Halsall (2007), 187–9 – denies large-scale Gothic military service in the years between the 382 treaty and Alaric’s revolt in 395, but this involves too much special pleading to be convincing. Panegryrici Latini 12.(2)32.3–5 strongly implies that the main Gothic contingent was recruited only for the campaign against Maximus (especially Pacatus’ explicit comment that it would have been dangerous to leave the Goths behind), while Eunapius fr. 55 and Zosimus 4.45.3 note Maximus’ attempts to undermine the recruited Goths’ loyalties, which again implies that this was something unusual. A range of sources note the participation of large numbers of Goths in the campaign against Eugenius (Zosimus 4.58; John of Antioch fr. 187; Orosius 7.37.19), and Theodosius’ banquet for the Gothic leaders (see note 71 above) was held precisely when Theodosius was mulling over his answer to Eugenius’ envoys (Zosimus 4.56). In my view, the banquet was probably a first move towards securing Gothic participation.

73 For Maximus’ revolt, see Eunapius fr. 55; Zosimus 4.45.3, 48–9. Alaric of course led the revolt after the Eugenius campaign. The arguments of Kulikowski (2002) and Halsall (2007), 187–93 comment neither on the Maximus revolt nor on the significance suggested by the exact chronology of the banquet quarrel.

74 Orosius 7.35.19 (casualties confirmed at Zosimus 4.58). Neither Kulikowski (2002) nor Halsall (2007), 187–93 discusses this backdrop to the Gothic revolt.

75 In recent times, we have seen one successful example of this kind of diplomatic strategy in the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and one so far unsuccessful example in the Oslo Accords on the Middle East.

76 Zosimus 5.5.5ff.

77 Themistius, Orations 16.211.c–d.

78 Whether this made any practical difference to Alaric’s position in Illyricum in the short term is unclear; having been commanding general there, he was perhaps in a position to retain control of the levers of power.

79 For this argument in more detail, see Heather (forthcoming).

80 See in more detail Heather (1991), chapter 6.

81 Fravittas, Sarus and Modares: PLRE 1, 605; 372–3. On the 402 battle, see Claudian, VI cons. Hon. 229ff.; cf. Cameron (1970), 186–7.

82 It disappeared to the extent that of the sources that discuss the events of 376, only Ammianus knew there were originally two separate groups of Goths. In my view, both Greuthungi and Tervingi were settled under the treaty of 382 and Alaric’s revolt in 395 involved and definitively united both. An alternative view sees the unification happening when Alaric summoned his brother-in-law Athaulf from Pannonia in 408: Zosimus 5.37.1ff.

83 Zosimus 5.35.5–6. Pace Kulikowski (2002), it is hard to see who this large body of barbarian soldiery in Roman service was, if not mainly the 12,000 followers of Radagaisus drafted by Stilicho: Olympiodorus fr. 9.

84 Heather (1991), 151ff. looks to unravel Zosimus’ confusions.

85 Gothic subgroups were destroyed by Frigeidus (Ammianus 31.9), Sebastianus (Ammianus 31.11) and Modares (Zosimus 4.25), and there is no reason to think this a comprehensive list. On this process in general, see Heather (1991), 213–14, 223–4, 314ff.

86 Zosimus 5.45.3; cf. Liebeschuetz (1990), 75ff.; Kulikowski (2002).

87 Exactly how much larger this Gothic force was involves a huge amount of guesswork, but if it is right to calculate the military manpower of fourth-century Gothic units at around 10,000, then the Visigoths who formed around Alaric could certainly field at least twice this number of soldiers, and possibly between three and four times as many.

88 Victor of Vita, History of the Persecutions 1.2.

89 Hydatius, Chronicle 77 [86].

90 On the mid-410s: Hydatius, Chronicle 59–60 [67–8]; on the 420s: ibid. 69 [77]; on the 440s and 460s: Heather (2005), 289ff. and 390ff.

91 Suevi: Hydatius, Chronicle 63 [71]. Alans: see the convenient listings of Bachrach (1973).

5. HUNS ON THE RUN

1 Jordanes, Getica 50.261–2.

2 Uldin’s Huns and Sciri: Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 9.5; Codex Theodosianus 5.6.3. Huns’ Gothic subjects in 427: Theophanes AM 5931; cf. Procopius, Wars 3.2.39–40, with Croke (1977). The date could be either 421 or 427. The best general survey of Attila’s subject peoples is Pohl (1980).

3 See Maenchen-Helfen (1973), chapters 8–9, who also notes that leaders like Attila could easily have had ‘proper’ Hunnic names as well as Germanic nicknames; Attila means ‘little father’ in Germanic.

4 Ammianus 31.2.1–2; Zosimus 4.20.3–5 (cf. Eunapius fr. 42); Jordanes, Getica 24.121–2.

5 Ammianus 31.2.3ff.

6 The Alanic digression: Ammianus 31.2; the Saracen digression: Ammianus 14.4. In treating this material, the approach of Maenchen-Helfen (1945) was much more critical than that of Thompson (1995), even though it was Maenchen-Helfen who noticed the meat being placed under saddles. For further comment, and recent bibliography, see G. Kelly (2008), chapter 2.

7 For some orientation on nomadism, particularly of the Eurasian-steppe variety, see Cribb (1991); Khazanov (1984); Krader (1963); Sinor (1977), (1990).

8 Bury (1928).

9 Avars: Pohl (1988). Magyars: Bakony (1999).

10 For general accounts, see Thompson (1995); Maenchen-Helfen (1973); cf. Heather (1995a) on relations with Aetius.

11 Attila’s more or less complete indifference to additional territorial gains emerges with striking clarity from the surviving fragments of Priscus’ history.

12 Huns up to 376: Ammianus 31.3. Huns and Alans in 377: Ammianus 31.8.4ff. Huns and Carpo-Dacians: Zosimus 4.35.6.

13 ‘Improvised leaders’: Ammianus 31.2.7. Jordanes does place a Hunnic king called Balamber in this era, but these are really events of c.450 and Balamber is in fact the Gothic king Valamer: see Heather (1989), and p. 234 above.

14 Uldin: Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 9.5, with further comment and full references in Heather (1995a). Analogous phenomena occurred in the Viking era, when leaders thrown up in the first generation of small-scale expansion were quickly subdued as larger numbers under more important leaders joined in the flow: see Chapter 9.

15 Olympiodorus fr. 19; cf. Priscus fr. 11.2, p. 259 (on the Akatziri).

16 On the Huns’ bow, see Heather (2005), 154–8, with further references.

17 For some calculations based on grazing room on the Great Hungarian Plain, see Lindner (1981). On the great raid of 395, see Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 51–9.

18 On nomad devolution in general, see the literature cited in note 7 above.

19 See Heather (2005), 325ff., with full references.

20 Procopius, Wars 8.5 seems to preserve by an indirect route the story originally told by the contemporary Eunapius, which was cast after Herodotus 5.9 (on the Sigynnae).

21 On the third-century Heruli, see Chapter 3. Sciri: Zosimus 4.35.6. Rugi: Tacitus, Germania 43. On likely placements within the Middle Danubian region, see Pohl (1980).

22 We will return to the Amal-led contingent in more detail. Bigelis: Jordanes, Romana 336. For the third group under Dengizich’s control, see Priscus fr. 49.

23 Dengizich: PLRE 2, 354–5. Hernac: Jordanes, Getica 50.266, with PLRE 2, 400–1. Hormidac: PLRE 2, 571. Bigelis: see previous note.

24 Jordanes, Getica 50.264. Pohl (1980) suggests – in a compromise – that the Amal-led Goths may have moved at this point only from Transylvania. Much ink has been spilled on the relationship between the surviving Gothic history of Jordanes and the Gothic history of one Cassiodorus, which we know to have been written down at Theoderic’s court in Italy. In my view, the textual evidence indeed suggests that Jordanes worked using Cassiodorus’ text (as he claims) and I find the various conspiracy theories that have been offered against this unconvincing: see Heather (1991), chapter 2; Heather (1993). The archaeological evidence for such a late Gothic move to the Middle Danube is indecisive. Kazanski (1991) has placed the end of the Cernjachov culture as late as c.450, but this is not the usual view, and the argument is essentially circular since it is based on Jordanes’ report that there were still Goths east of the Carpathians at this date.

25 Odovacar: PLRE 2, 791–3. On the Balkan adventures of the Amal-led Goths, see Heather (1991), part 3.

26 For full references, see PLRE 2, 457 and 484–5.

27 The Lombards should strictly be called Langobards. The narrative source is Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards 1.19. For modern commentary, see e.g. Christie (1995); Jarnut (2003); Pohl and Erhart (2005).

28 Procopius, Wars 6.14–15. Cf. Pohl (1980): the archaeological evidence suggests that the Gepids were slowly expanding south into Transylvania at this point.

29 An earlier exception would be the Goths rescued from Hunnic domination in 427: see note 2 above. These may also be the same as the Thracian Goths, as we shall shortly see. The Gepids too engaged in expansion within the region: see previous note.

30 ‘He was a Greek trader . . .’: Priscus fr. 11.2.422–35. Edeco: PLRE 2, 385–6.

31 You can tell how people were dressed by where they wore their safety pins, which is all that tends to survive of clothing in most graves. Possible reasons for archaeological invisibility can range from the dramatic (where bodies are left exposed to the elements and wild animals) to the prosaic (cremation followed by scattering of ashes), or the generation of customs where bodies are buried without any chronologically identificatory gravegoods (something which often makes medieval cemeteries undatable in northern Europe once populations convert to Christianity). The horizons of the Hunnic Middle Danube are differentiated from one another by slight changes in the manner in which broadly similar sets of gravegoods were decorated. In chronological order (and there are overlaps between them), the sequence starts with the Villafontana horizon, succeeded in turn by those of Untersiebenbrunn and Domolospuszta/Bacsordas. For introductions to this material, see Bierbrauer (1980), (1989); Kazanski (1991); Tejral (1999). There are excellent illustrations in Wolfram (1985).

32 Many of the Germanic groups of central Europe had practised cremation in the first to the third century, but inhumation was already spreading more widely before the arrival of the Huns.

33 Historical sources do occasionally supply enough information, however, which can be used in conjunction with the archaeological evidence approximately to identify some particular groups.

34 See most recently Halsall (2007), 474–5; for a similar view of the Avar Empire, see Pohl (1988), with Pohl (2003).

35 Priscus fr. 14.

36 Priscus fr. 11.2, p. 259. See Chapter 4 for the Tervingi and Greuthungi; cf. the junior status and grimmer treatment handed out to the Sciri after Uldin’s defeat: see above, note 2.

37 For references, see note 2 above; and see p. 248.

38 Priscus fr. 2, p. 225.

39 Priscus fr. 2, p. 227.

40 Priscus fr. 2, p. 227.

41 Priscus fr. 49.

42 The Romans provided Attila with a succession of secretaries, and a prisoner called Rusticius wrote the odd letter (Priscus fr. 14, p. 289). This governmental machine could keep lists of renegade princes who had fled to the Romans, and could keep track of the supplies required from subject groups, but little more. Akatziri: Priscus fr. 11.2, p. 259. Goths: Priscus fr. 49.

43 Jordanes, Getica 48.246–51, with Heather (1989), (1996), 113–17, 125–6.

44 Gepids: Jordanes, Getica 50.260–1.

45 Franks: Priscus: fr. 20.3. Akatziri: see note 42 above. Of the subject groups in between, the most dominated were apparently the Goths who appear in Priscus fr. 49, part of which is quoted above; the least dominated were the Gepids, who led the revolt against Attila’s sons (see previous note). In between were the Pannonian Goths of Valamer: see note 43 above.

46 Miracles of St Demetrius II.5.

47 See e.g. Agadshanow (1994).

48 For further discussion, see Heather (2005), 324ff., with references.

49 As we have seen, modern anthropological evidence indicates that the most you will sometimes find in such circumstances is that a very few particular items have significance for signalling group identity, but that does not mean that the group identity is in any sense unreal: above, p. 26, after, in particular, Hodder (1982).

50 While Attila could extract annual subsidies measured in thousands of kilos of gold, the most that even a successful Hunnic successor group like the Amal-led Goths could manage was three hundred: Priscus fr. 37.

51 Jordanes, Getica 50.265–6. Jordanes himself came from this Balkan military milieu, and there is every reason to suppose this catalogue correct. When exactly in the 450s or 460s these settlements occurred is not clear: that of Hernac is firmly dated to the later 460s, however, and it may be that they all belong to the post-465 meltdown of Hunnic power that also saw moves into Roman territory by Bigelis and Hormidac. Hernac’s willingness to have his power base broken up might explain why he was treated more favourably than Dengizich (see note 23 above).

52 Jordanes, Getica 53.272; cf. Agathias 2.13.1ff.

53 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards 2.26ff.; cf. Jarnut (2003). It is a consistent theme both within Paul’s narrative and some of the other early Lombard texts that victory led to the inclusion of warriors in the group, but not always on terms of equality: see e.g. Origo Gentis Langobardorum 2 (as aldii: ‘half-free’); History of the Lombards 1.20, 1.27, 5.29.

54 Goths: Heather (1996), Appendix 1. Lombards: ibid., and see previous note. See also Chapter 2 above.

55 Lombards: see e.g. Jarnut (2003), who argues that kingship among the Lombards may have been a temporary phenomenon restricted to the leading of expeditions. Goths: Heather (1989), (1996), chapters 8–9.

56 For the Rugi joining Theoderic in 487: John of Antioch fr. 214.7; on their still being identifiable in 541: Procopius, Wars 7.2.1ff. (they had swapped sides twice during the Gothic conquest of Italy). Heruli: Procopius, Wars 6.14–15.

57 The account of the Heruli is doubted by Goffart (1988), 84ff.; that of the Rugi by Halsall (1999). See Chapter 1 above for general comments on modern understandings of group identity.

58 The Gundilas papyrus (translated by him as Appendix 1) is central to Amory (1997). But see also Heather (1996), chapter 9, and Appendix 1, (2003).

59 Malchus fr. 20, p. 446.215ff. (the 6,000 men), p. 440.83ff. (non-combatants and baggage). Cf. Jordanes, Getica 55.281–2 (Theoderic had earlier also used 6,000 men in the expedition that proved his manhood following his return from being a hostage in Constantinople). For further commentary, see Heather (1991), chapter 7.

60 See Amory (1997); but see also, in addition to Procopius, Wars 5.1.6ff., Ennodius, Panegyric on Theoderic 26–7 and Life of Epiphanius 118–19 (cf. 111–-12).

61 The east Romans captured 2,000 wagons in a surprise attack (Malchus fr. 20), but there is nothing to suggest that this was the total baggage train. The Goths were offered ‘unoccupied’ land, which strongly implies that they were to do their own farming, as do all the negotiations between Theoderic and Constantinopolitan representatives: Malchus fr. 18.3, p. 430.5ff.; fr. 20, p. 438.55ff., p. 446.199ff.; cf. Heather (1991), 244ff.

62 For fuller discussion and complete references, see Heather (1991), 259–63; for Bigelis, see note 22 above.

63 For pay and rations for 13,000, and 910 kilos of gold per annum, see Malchus fr. 18.4, p. 434.12ff. and fr. 2, p. 408.22ff. For full discussion and references, see Heather (1991), 253–6.

64 For Strabo’s death, and Recitach’s assassination, see John of Antioch fr. 211.4 and fr. 214.3. For Theoderic’s forces in Italy, see Hannestad (1960). For full discussion, see Heather (1991), 300–3.

65 For references, see notes 22 and 23 above.

66 On Herule numbers in 549: Procopius, Wars 7.34.42–3. It is generally tempting to think that the Heruli were smaller than the Amal-led Goths because the latter are portrayed as so victorious in the post-Attilan competition on the Middle Danubian plain. Our only source for this, however, is Jordanes, and it may be that Theoderic’s following only acquired superpower status when he added the Thracian Goths to his following.

67 The migration topos entirely suffuses Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards: the brothers Ibor and Agio lead the first move from Scandinavia, Agilmund the second into Bohemia, Godo takes them into Rugiland, Tato fights the Heruli, and Wacho leads the annexation of part of Pannonia. For modern secondary comment, see the works cited in note 27 above.

68 See especially Jarnut (2003), with references, and for the thought – as note 55 above – that early Lombard kings may fundamentally have been expedition leaders; cf. Christie (1995), 14–20.

69 See Curta (2001), 190–204, with his figure 18.

70 On various occasions, groups of Ostrogoths, Heruli, Huns, Rugi, and Lombards all fall into this category of mass migration. Lombard migration may well have taken the form of an initial flow that had to reorganize itself in mass form when it was necessary to fight the Heruli head-on. In this, it resembles the third-century Goths: see Chapter 3.

71 Vidimer: Jordanes, Getica 56.283–4. Procopius, Wars 1.8.3 explicitly names Bessas and Godigisclus among the Thracian Goths who didn’t follow Theoderic; see Heather (1991), 302 for some other contenders.

72 The Amal-led Goths were receiving 136 kilos of gold per annum in the 460s (Priscus fr. 37), while the Thracian foederati pulled in 910 (see note 63 above). On Theoderic and the wealth of Italy, see Heather (1995b).

73 For Hun-generated wealth, see note 31 above. It is possible, however, given their seemingly non-centralized political structures, that the further spread of Lombard groups south of the Danube into old Roman Pannonia may have again taken the form of a variegated flow rather than a single directed movement.

74 Life of Severinus 6.6.

75 For references, see note 56 above. Alternatively, it may be , given Theoderic’s subsequent success, that they had no real choice in the matter.

76 For markets, see Priscus fr. 46. For other references, see note 23 above.

77 On Theoderic’s spell as a hostage, and its ending, see Heather (1991), 264–5. On his mention of Italy in 479, see Malchus fr. 20.

78 Rodulf of the Rani: Jordanes, Getica 3.24.

79 For the route of the 473 trek: Jordanes, Getica 56.285–6.

6. FRANKS AND ANGLO-SAXONS: ELITE TRANSFER OR VÖLKERWANDERUNG?

1 Campbell (1982), chapter 2.

2 The old maximalist tradition runs from scholars such as Freeman (1888) to Stenton (1971). It never went unchallenged, but scholars such as Higham (1992) and Halsall (2007), especially 357–68, are representative of the more substantial minimizing tradition of recent years. Recent scholars thinking in terms of large-scale migration include Campbell (1982), Härke (1992), Welch (1992). Hills (2003) is representative of an ultra-minimalist position adopted by some younger archaeologists. A good introduction to the variety of opinion is Ward Perkins (2000).

3 See Woolf (2003).

4 H. R. Loyn, quoted in P. Sawyer (1978). The best introduction to late Roman Britain remains Esmonde-Cleary (1989).

5 For an overview of Anglo-Saxon settlement and the development of place names, see Hooke (1998).

6 See Heather (1994).

7 Esmonde-Cleary (1989) is very balanced on the end of Roman Britain, as is Halsall (2007), 79–81, 357ff. For an introduction to the literature on systems collapse, see amongst others Faulkner (2000); Jones (1996); Higham (1992). Dark (2002) stands against this position.

8 One recent example is Halsall (2007), 519ff., with references to some of the alternatives.

9 For an introduction to such materials, see Dumville (1977).

10 Campbell (1982), chapter 2 provides a clear introduction to the Chronicle.

11 For useful introductions to this material, see Campbell (1982), chapter 2; Arnold (1997); Welch (1992).

12 This much is accepted even by such a general anti-migrationist as Halsall (1995b), (2007), 357ff.

13 See e.g. Arnold (1997), 21ff.

14 Ine’s Law 24.2 (cf. 23.3); cf. Arnold (1997), 26ff., with discussion of Warperton.

15 Compare, for example, Weale et al. (2002) with Thomas et al. (2006). The sample was of men whose pre-Industrial Revolution ancestors can be shown to have been living in the same area as the modern descendant.

16 One other line of thought has therefore taken a more indirect route, attempting to identify and analyse so-called ‘epi-genetic’ features of the skeletal remains unearthed from the inhumation cemeteries of the fifth to seventh centuries. Such factors reflect the impact of inherited genes rather than diet or environmental factors. The work was able to establish that the element of the population buried with weapons was noticeably taller than those buried without. The argument continues as to whether the height differences should be explained genetically – i.e. as a sign that the weapons-bearers were an intrusive population – or by something else, such as differences in diet, and no firm conclusions have yet emerged: see Härke (1989), (1990).

17 For 446 AD, see Bede, Ecclesiastical History 2.14; 5.23, 24 (after Gildas, Ruin of Britain 20). For 450 AD, see The Greater Chronicle, year of the world 4410; cf. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (449 AD) for the arrival of the Kentish dynastic founders, Hengist and Horsa.

18 Everything is reasonably clear up to about 409, when Zosimus 6.5 records a British revolt. Controversy really begins with Zosimus 6.10, which is traditionally interpreted as Honorius telling the British provincials to look after their own defence, although the text is corrupt. For an introduction to these events and the historiography, see Salway (2001).

19 Gildas, Ruin of Britain 23–6.

20 On the Saxon attacks in c.410, see Gallic Chronicle of 452 (though this chronicle does not always date events to individual years). For the first datable remains, see Welch (1992), chapter 8. The appendix to Halsall (2007) attempts to extend the generally accepted sequence still further, arguing that Gildas’ unnamed tyrant, who issued the invitation, usually thought of as a post-Roman figure, was in fact the usurping Emperor Maximus (383–7), and that it was Maximus who brought the first Saxon mercenaries to Britain. This is not an impossible reading, but neither is it the most obvious, so the jury is still out. The further arguments which Halsall erects on the back of this first hypothesis are unconvincing: see notes 44 and 46 below.

21 Gildas’ report that Roman Britain’s final appeal to the central imperial authorities came when Aetius was (or had been) consul for the third time (446 or after) might provide some further confirmation that the 440s were a period of particular disaster. The British leader on the Loire was Riotamus: see PLRE 2, 945.

22 See e.g. Campbell (1982), chapter 2; Higham (1994); Halsall (2007), Appendix.

23 See Dumville (1977).

24 Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.42; cf. Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards 2.6ff.

25 Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.15 (Angles, Saxons and Jutes); 5.9 (the others).

26 Higham (1992), 180–1.

27 Gregory of Tours, Histories 5.26, 10.9; Procopius, Wars 8.20.8–10; cf. especially Woolf (2003).

28 Famously, the supposed Gothic migration from Scandinavia is also said to have taken place in three ships: Jordanes, Getica 1.25, 17.95.

29 See Chapter 4 above.

30 For Norse DNA evidence, see Chapter 9. For language change, see p. 296 above.

31 Gildas, Ruin of Britain 23–6.

32 On the Saxon attack on Gaul: Ammianus 28.5. For introductions to the ‘Saxon Shore’, see Johnston (1977); Rudkin (1986).

33 On coastal inundation, see the excellent discussion of Halsall (2007), 383ff. On Frankish pressure: Gregory of Tours, Histories 4.10, 14.

34 Carausius: PLRE 1, 180. On parallel phenomena in the Viking period, see Chapter 9.

35 Gildas, Ruin of Britain 20. The archaeological evidence for Pictish and especially Scottish (= Irish) intrusion into western Britain is irrefutable, even if there is little in the way of historical evidence. A good recent account is Charles-Edwards (2003), Introduction and chapter 1.

36 See Woolf (2003), 345f.

37 On the nautical evidence, see Jones (1996), though his discussion includes neither a consideration of Roman ships nor the extended nature of the Anglo-Saxon migration flow. For Goths and the Black Sea, and Vandals and North Africa, see above Chapter 4.

38 For further exploration of these issues, see e.g. Dark (2002); Woolf (2003).

39 See e.g. Higham (1992); Halsall (1995a), (2007), 357ff.

40 An excellent general survey is Hooke (1998).

41 Relevant general surveys include Hooke (1998); Williams (1991). An excellent case study is Baxter (2007), chapter 7. On the demotion of the peasantry, see Faith (1997), chapter 8.

42 For introductions to this issue, see Hooke (1997); Powlesland (1997).

43 See Esmonde-Cleary (1989), 144–54; cf. Loseby (2000) and Halsall (2007), 358f., both with references, on attempts to generate a substantial post-Roman urbanism.

44 On the peasants’ revolt, see e.g. Jones (1996); cf. Halsall (2007), 360ff.

45 Constantius, Life of St Germanus 13–18, 25–7. For the Romance-speaking elite, see note 3 above. The famous Llandaff charters may provide further confirmation of essential sub-Roman continuity, although this has been disputed: see Davies (1978).

46 ‘Is simply to dispose . . .’: Halsall (1995), 61. This ‘before’ and ‘after’ approach to migration is quite common. For another example, see the comments of Higham in Hines (1997), 179, where a reinterpretation of a set of remains – by Hines (1984) – is praised as ‘more complex’ because it ejected migration from its usual role in their discussion. See pp. 160 and 192 for two instances where the determination to minimize the importance of migration has led scholars, including Halsall again, to make methodologically problematic choices in their handling of the evidence.

47 There are many parallel examples, but for a recent overview of the decline of Roman structures in the Balkans, see Heather (2007).

48 See the review of the literature in Woolf (2007), 123ff., which draws on, amongst others, Denison (1993) and Hall (1983), which have effectively countered the attempts of Preussler (1956) and Proussa (1990) to detect deeper Celtic influences on Old English. On later medieval cases of language change, see Bartlett (1993), 111ff.

49 See further Chapter 2 above.

50 This emerges with huge clarity from all the literary sources – everything from critiques of individual kings in historical narratives to the value systems underlying heroic poetry. Introductions to the mix of land and cash expected over the course of an individual’s lifetime are provided by Charles-Edwards (1989); Campbell (2000), chapter 10.

51 For a general introduction to the pre-Viking great powers, see Campbell (1982), chapters 3–4.

52 See Hooke (1998), chapter 3; Powlesland (1997); Esmonde-Cleary (1989).

53 For weapons burials, see Härke (1989), (1990). For continental parallels, see Chapter 2 above.

54 Ward Perkins (2000).

55 See e.g. Kapelle (1979).

56 Woolf (2007), 127ff.

57 Even the land-grabbing that followed the Norman Conquest was not under William’s control, despite his relatively great authority, and the need for clarity as to who now held what was one of the reasons for the great survey that underlay the Doomsday Book:Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 1085 AD. I would imagine that the land-grabbing process of the fifth and sixth centuries was infinitely more chaotic, given that central authority among the incoming Anglo-Saxons was so much weaker than among the eleventh-century Normans, and that the land-grabbing followed piecemeal in the wake of many small victories rather than a single decisive one like the battle of Hastings.

58 This is also the conclusion of Woolf (2007), as, of course, of all of those writing in the tradition that does not seek to minimize the importance of Anglo-Saxon migration.

59 Julian and the Franks: Ammianus 17.8.3–5. This is an isolated incident, however, and it is therefore impossible to say whether the Franks had the same kind of functioning confederative structure as the Alamanni, although it is certainly possible. For introductions to early Frankish history and archaeology, see Zollner (1970); Perin (1987); James (1988); Ament (1996); Reichmann (1996); R. Kaiser (1997).

60 For materials and commentary on Childeric’s grave, see Perin and Kazanski (1996); Halsall (2001).

61 On Childeric’s career, see PLRE 2, 285–6, with referencess. The ‘Roman’ Clovis has been argued for by Halsall (2001), (2007), 269–71, 303–6. On Gundobad, see PLRE 2, 524–5.

62 James (1988) started the controversy, and it has drawn counter-arguments from Perin (1996); MacGeorge (2002).

63 Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.40–2.

64 On the dating controversies surrounding Clovis’ conversion, see Shanzer and Wood (2002), with more general commentary on his career in Wood (1985); Halsall (2001).

65 On the parallel rise of Theoderic and the Amal family, see Chapter 5.

66 See Halsall (2007), 346f. On the rise of Marseilles, see Loseby (1992), (1998).

67 For a general introduction, see Halsall (2007), 347ff. Halsall (1995a) looks at the re-emergence of the landed basis of real aristocracy in northern Gaul in the seventh century.

68 On the inscriptions at Trier, see Handley (2001), (2003). On Remigius, see Castellanos (2000). On the broader cultural changes, specifically on language, see Haubrichs (1996). On the disruption to ecclesiastical structures, especially bishoprics, across northern France, see Theuws and Hiddinck (1996), 66f.

69 The most recent general surveys are Perin and Feffer (1987), vol. 2; Wieczorek et al. (1997).

70 For introductions to rural settlement, see Van Ossel (1992); Van Ossel and Ouzoulias (2000); Lewitt (1991).

71 Werner (1950); Böhme (1974). The grander of these Frankish officers met with in historical sources are Fraomarius, Erocus, Silvanus, Mallobaudes, Bauto and Arbogast.

72 Halsall (2007), 152–61, with references; the argument was first made in Halsall (1992). Reichmann (1996), 61–4 discusses the funerary habits of Frankish groups before the rise of the Merovingians.

73 On ‘tutulus’ brooches, see Halsall (2007), 157–9; cf. Böhme (1974). Furthermore, as Halsall observes, even if it were established that the brooches signified Germanic origin, the appearance of weapons would still remain to be explained, since this would then become a ‘new’ habit adopted on Roman soil.

74 See Chapter 5, and p. 271 above.

75 On the Armorican revolt: Zosimus 6.5. On the 410s: Exsuperantius, PLRE 2, 448. On the subsequent history, see MacGeorge (2002).

76 Slightly different views of the phenomenon of Bagaudae have been adopted by Van Dam (1985), 16–20, 25f.; Drinkwater (1989), (1992); Minor (1996), all of whom nevertheless step back from the old Marxist, class-warfare analysis to think instead in terms of local self-help in the face of Roman central control’s fragmentation.

77 For policies towards Alamannic overkings, see Chapter 2.

78 For general surveys, see note 69 above.

79 The historiography of the study is discussed by James (1988).

80 Pirling (1966) and Pirling and Siepen (2003) summarize the ongoing investigations.

81 James (1988), 25–8 surveys the tradition, which runs through Werner (1935); Bohner (1958); Perin (1980). Frénouville was the work of Buchet: see James (1988), 110f. For a useful overview, see Perin (1987), 138ff.

82 See p. 311 above.

83 For the ‘social-stress’ interpretation, see Halsall (2007), 350ff.

84 For the traditional argument, see e.g. Perin (1996) or Wieczorek (1996); for its critique, see Halsall (2007), 269f.

85 For references, see note 69 above.

86 For the ending of cremation in England, see e.g. Welch (1992).

87 For an excellent recent survey, see Haubrichs (1996). For the earlier emergence of structured estates, see Halsall (1995a).

88 I will return to this broader issue in the following chapter.

89 Ammianus 17.8.3–5.

90 See Holt (1987).

7. A NEW EUROPE

1 The radical wing on identity and the supposed migration topos is led by Amory (1996), and Kulikowski (2002), (2007), but the germanophone tradition had long been thinking in terms of very fluid group identities: see Wenskus (1961); Wolfram (1988). The idea that the fall of the western Empire was a surprisingly peaceful process is particularly associated with Goffart (1980), (1981), (2006). In a different combination of these trends, Halsall (2007) sees the Empire coming apart from the edges because of its own internal divisions, particularly that between east and west, with barbarian invasion as consequence rather than cause. In various combinations, these ideas have been exercising a huge influence over the scholarship of the last twenty years or so, on which see the excellent Ward Perkins (2005).

2 We have already encountered these examples in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. The idea that the western Empire was actually going to end really only dawned on much of the Roman west after the defeated attempt to conquer North Africa in 468: see Heather (2005),chapter 9.

3 Heather (2005), 375–84.

4 See Chapter 4 above.

5 See Halsall (2007), chapter 7, with Chapter 4 above.

6 By my reckoning, the eleven campaigns comprise: Ad Salices (377); Hadrianople (378); the Macedonian defeat of Theodosius (381); Frigidus (393); the Macedonian campaign (395); Epirus (397); Verona and Pollentia (402); the defeat of Radagaisus (406); the sack of Rome (409/10); the assault of Flavius Constantius (413/15); and the savaging of the Vandals (416–18).

7 See Chapter 5.

8 The same was broadly true, with different date ranges, of the smaller migrant’ groups the Suevi and Burgundians. A third stage, where the migrantsí new states engaged in competition with one another, was also carried forward largely by violence, and occasionally generated further migration, such as that of the Visigoths to Spain – see Heather (1996), chapter 9 – but that is beyond the limits of the story being explored here.

9 For further discussion of this model, see Heather (1995). I should note that this account of how the Empire unravelled does not significantly differ from that, for example, of Goffart (1981), from the point at which barbarian groups were already on Roman soil.

10 See Jones (1964), vol. 3, Appendix III.

11 For more detailed discussion, see Heather (2005), chapter 6.

12 For lowland Britain, see Chapter 6.

13 In the 430s, the Burgundians first suffered a heavy military defeat at the hands of the Huns, and were then resettled on Roman soil: for an introduction, see Favrod (1997).

14 On the creation of these new and larger groups, see pp. 189ff.

15 See Chapter 5 above.

16 On the developing understanding of group identity, see Chapter 1 above.

17 It is well documented that the Goths’ motivation for moving in 376 was political and negative. In my view, the same can be deduced with a high degree of probability for the migrants of 405–8, although the lack of explicit evidence means that other views of causation are possible (see above Chapter 5). These other views have no effect on my account of the amount of migration under way in the middle of the first decade of the fifth century.

18 There is no evidence for the Sueves, but the fact that so many other groups moved with women and children must make it a reasonable probability.

19 See Chapter 6.

20 See Chapter 4 note 20 above for the suggestion that the Historia Augusta’s description of migrant Goths with large numbers of slaves, which ostensibly relates to the third-century migrations, actually relates to events after 376.

21 The distinction – but simultaneous intersection – between local Roman life and the structures of the state is often missed, but is a deeply important historical phenomenon. Just to give one example, the effects of wrenching the Church out of its Roman context show up vividly in the highly fragmented western Christendom examined in Brown (1996) and Markus (1997).

22 Goffart (1980) made the initial case, responding to the some of the critiques in Goffart (2006), chapter 6, which are well summarized, with much extra value besides, by Halsall (2007), 422–47.

23 Among Theoderic’s Ostrogoths in Italy, who are better documented than most other intrusive groups, there is good evidence for the existence of intermediate leaders who stood in between the king and their own personal followings among the rank and file. These leaders would presumably have been responsible for distributions of booty and property which affected their own men. See Heather (1995a).

24 Victor of Vita, History of the Persecution 1.13, with Moderan (2002).

25 For an outline of this view, together with the settlement evidence, see Heather (1996), chapter 8. It should be noted in passing that Goffart (2006), chapter 6 has commented that there is no evidence of public rather than private land ever being recycled to barbarians. However, this ignores Novels of Valentinian 34, which records that the Roman state precisely compensated displaced landowners from Proconsularis with incomes from publicly owned land.

26 On the Burgundian settlement, see Wood (1990); cf. Halsall (2007), 438ff. on the Visigothic material.

27 For the conflict in Spain, see p. 204 above. For the conquest of North Africa, see Heather (2005), chapter 6.

28 For Ostrogoths, see Chapter 5 above. Wood (1990) gives some thought to the trauma suffered by the Burgundians.

29 To this extent, we are seeing here an extension of third-century patterns, but with the added negative stimulus imparted by the Huns (see Chapter 3).

30 Or, at least, the capacity to create large enough forces, combined with the ability to exploit further movement: see p. 189ff.

31 For the Ostrogoths and the Franks, see pp. 248 and 309 respectively.

32 As we have seen, Priscus’ evidence makes it entirely clear that Attila’s chief aim in attacking the Roman Empire was to siphon off some of its wealth.

33 ‘You [Anastasius] are the fairest . . .’: Cassiodorus, Variae 1.1., trans. Hodgkin (1886); cf. more generally Heather (1996), chapter 8, with full references.

34 See Chapter 2, but note that the third-century migrations had partly collapsed the outer periphery into the inner zone.

35 On Theudebert in particular, see Collins (1983); cf., more generally on the growth of Merovingian power, Wood (1994), chapters 3–4.

36 Justinian’s decision to attack in the west was a highly contingent one: see Brown (1971). On the collapse of Theoderic’s quasi-imperial edifice, see Heather (1996), 248ff., with Wood (1994), chapters 3–4 on Frankish expansion.

37 As Rome’s capacity to conquer most of the known world on the back of its Mediterranean assets makes clear.

38 See Wood (1994), chapters 4 and 10.

39 In my view, this process can broadly be characterized as its transformation from an outright conquest state to something more like a community of provincial communities, built on consent: see Heather (2005), chapters 1 and 3.

40 For a useful outline narrative, see Wood (1994), chapters 13 and 15.

41 For more detailed discussion, especially on the nature of Charles Martel’s rule and the strategies used to cement his control, see Wood (1994), chapter 16; Fouracre (2000).

42 Famously, seizing the crown involved an appeal to the Pope, Zacharias, who replied that kingship should reside in the hands of a man wielding real power, not in a figurehead. Less famously, but probably more important at the time, the change of dynasty was also sanctioned by a major Frankish assembly. For a good account, see McKitterick (1983).

43 On all this, see most recently Collins (1998).

44 For an excellent introduction, see Dunbabin (2000).

45 For useful introductions to the Ottonian Empire, see Leyser (1989) and Reuter (1991).

46 See Reuter (1985), (1990).

47 The phenomenon of culture collapse, with its more precise chronology, was identified by Kazimierz Godlowski: see e.g. Godlowski (1970), (1980), (1983). One anomaly within the overall pattern is the so-called ‘Olsztyn group’. Established in Mazovia on the south-east shores of the Baltic east of the Vistula, and beyond the long-standing limits of Germanic domination, the material culture of this group is characterized by the presence of some of the traditional Germanic items and also a fair quantity of Mediterranean imports, both of which date this group firmly to the sixth century. What remains unclear, of course, is whether the remains were deposited by a group of newly arrived Germanic immigrants to the area, or else represent some locals (perhaps Baltic-speakers) who adopted a new kind of material culture. Either way, the group was relatively short-lived, since no Olsztyn remains can be dated to the seventh century: see Barford (2001), 33, with references.

48 See e.g. Koch and Koch (1996); Wieczorek (1996); Hummer (1998).

49 Those Saxons who were never completely conquered by the Merovingians, although brought under Frankish hegemony, insulated the Scandinavian world from any explicit Frankish interference.

50 For primary references, see note 47 above, taken further by Parczewski (1993), 120ff., (1997).

51 Historical sources also provide a possible analogy to explain the Olsztyn group. As we have seen (above, Chapter 5), one fragment of the Heruli, defeated by the Lombards in 508, moved north from the Middle Danube region, eventually establishing themselves in Scandinavia. It is perfectly conceivable, therefore, that other Germanic-speakers, taking a similar option, might have ended up further east.

52 See e.g. Urbanczyk (1997b), (2005).

53 The case of Frankish migrants into northern France also deserves comment, though it is unclear whether these came from the areas that suffered from culture collapse, so I have omitted them from this thought experiment.

54 See above Chapter 4

55 See Batty (2007), 39–42. For Greater Poland, which fell within the areas of the Przeworsk and Wielbark culture collapse, an extensive field-walking and surveying project prompts the parallel conclusion that its population density after culture collapse was still around 1 person per square kilometre: see Barford (2001), 89–91 (with references). This again suggests that the departure of half a million people might well be significant, but, representing a maximum one-third of the population, would not have generally emptied the landscape, while many of the more southern areas affected are likely to have had larger populations.

56 See pp. 64ff above.

57 See Chapter 8 above.

58 For a good recent account, see Kennedy (2007).

59 Why the long-established habit of limited warfare between the two empires should have given way to such a mutually destructive conflict thus becomes a central question.

60 This emerges very clearly from Sartre (1982).

61 For useful introductions, see Whittow (1996); Haldon (1990).

62 The great expansion of the tenth century came when the Abbasid Caliphate had fragmented as a political entity, and itself fell apart when the Seljuks restored a measure of Islamic unity in the eleventh.

63 For an introduction, see Kennedy (2004).

64 Not at least since the second century, when formal relations between Vandals and Empire are recorded during the Marcomannic war: see Chapter 2 above.

8. THE CREATION OF SLAVIC EUROPE

1 These remains were originally labelled ‘Prague’ by Borkovsky, who first identified them in what is now the Czech Republic in a study of 1940. On the change of name, see note 9.

2 Especially since much of the third zone of Europe, beyond Rome’s outer periphery, had been inhabited by people living this kind of life. Hence it is unsafe to assume the kind of exclusive, one-to-one association between ‘the’ Slavs and Korchak remains that would have been posited in the old world of culture history (see Chapter 1).

3 The map is after Barford (2001), 326. The collapse of the Iron Curtain has made it possible to discuss these matters with much greater candour. For good introductions in English to the politicized history of Slavic studies, see e.g. Barford (2001), especially the introduction and chapter 13; Curta (2001), chapter 1.

4 Kostrzewski (1969) provides a good summary of his position, drawn up at the end of his highly eventful life. Having studied with Kossinna from 1910, he spent the Second World War in hiding from the Gestapo since his visions of an early, utterly Slavic Poland were considered unacceptable.

5 Shchukin (1975), (1977). In Poland, the work of Godlowski on the Przeworsk system and early Slavic cultures was crucial; its results are most easily accessible to English-speakers through Godlowski (1970). Thanks to the work of him and his pupils, the Wielbark and Przeworsk systems have come to be understood as thoroughly dominated by Germanic-speakers, with earlier archaeological ‘proofs’ that the latter comprised just a very few migrants from southern Scandinavia being overturned. Godlowski was also responsible for demonstrating how huge an archaeological upheaval separated the Germanic-dominated Poland of the Roman period from the Slavic-dominated Poland of the early Middle Ages.

6 Procopius, Wars 8.40.5 mentions that attacks began in the time of Justin. Slavic raids of different kinds feature regularly in Procopius’ narrative of Justinian’s reign: Curta (2001), chapter 3 offers a good recent analysis.

7 See Barford (2001), 41f.; Curta (2001), 228–46.

8 Jordanes, Getica 5.34–5; cf. Tacitus, Germania 46.2 (on the Venedi) and 46.4 (on what lay beyond). For further references to the Venedi, see Pliny, Natural History 4.97; Ptolemy, Geography 3.5.1 and 7.

9 The ‘tree argument’ was first made by the Polish botanist Rostafinski in 1908: Curta (2001), 7–8. Rusanova published entirely in Russian; for discussion of her work with full references, see Curta (2001), 230ff.

10 See Curta (1999), (2001), especially 39–43 (Jordanes); 230ff. (Rusanova); chapters 3 and 6 (the Slavs’ dynamic transformation via contact with eastern Rome).

11 Godlowski (1983); Parczewski (1993), (1997: an English summary); Kazanski (1999), chapter 2; cf. Barford (2001), 41ff. (who remains open-minded).

12 Jordanes, Getica 48.247 (Boz and the Antae), with Heather (1989) establishing the chronology (see p. 234 above); 50.265–6 (Hunnic and other settlements on the Danube: see p. 223 above).

13 Dolukhnaov (1996) is good on the background of the long-term development of the simple farming cultures of eastern Europe.

14 For useful introductions to the linguistic evidence, see Birnbaum (1993); Nichols (1998).

15 Procopius, Wars 7.29.1–3 (547 AD); 7.38 (548 AD); 7.40 (550 AD). Procopius elsewhere reports that the raids were annual: Secret History 18.20; cf. Curta (2001), 75–89.

16 Turris: Procopius, Wars 7.14.32–5. On forts more generally, see Curta (2001), 150ff.

17 On the Avars, see e.g. Pohl (1988), (2003); Whitby (1988); with Daim (2003) for an introduction in English to the archaeological materials of the Avar Empire.

18 See Whitby (1988), especially 156ff.

19 On the Persian war, see Chapter 7 above. On the disasters of the 610s: John of Nikiu, Chronicle 109; Miracles of St Demetrius I.12, 13–15; II.1, 2. The siege of Constantinople is recounted in Chronicon PaschaleAD a. 626.

20 Miracles of St Demetrius II.4, 5. Miracle II.4 names the Runchine, Strymon and Sagoudatae Slavs as attacking Thessalonica at this point; Miracle II.1 adds the names of the Baiounitae and Buzetae. For the transplanting, see Theophanes, Chronicle AM 6180 (687/8 AD). Justinian later tried to use them to fight the Arabs, but they changed sides at the crucial moment in the battle of Sebastopol in 692: Theophanes, ChronicleAM 6184 (691/2 AD), where the figure of 30,000 appears. For archaeological materials from the north and west Balkans, see Kazanski (1999), 85–6, 137; Barford (2001), 58–62, 67ff.

21 The seven Slavic tribes: Theophanes, ChronicleAM 6171 (678/9 AD). For the developing archaeological picture, see Kazanski (1999), 138; Barford (2001), 62ff., with references. For an introduction to the Bulgars, see Gyuzelev (1979).

22 Miracles of St Demetrius II.4, with De Administrando Imperio 49–50 on Patras. For the archaeology, see Kazanski (1999), 85f., 137; Barford (2001), 67f.; and in particular the correctly critical account of Curta (2001), 233–4, responding in part to overly enthusiastic past attempts to use these materials to ‘prove’ the Chronicle of Monemvasia’s account of an early and massive Slavicization of the Peloponnese: see e.g. Charanis (1950).

23 De Administrando Imperio 30 and 31 (respectively Croat and Byzantine versions of the arrival of the Croats); 32 (the Serbs). Samo: Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48; cf. 4.72 (on the Bulgars). For further comment, see Pohl (2003). Scholarly opinion divides on how much credence to give the De Administrando’s account.

24 For further comment, see Barford (2001), 73–5; Curta (2001), 64–6, with references. An Iranian origin to some of the names recorded of Antae leaders has also been argued for, but the etymologies continue to be contested.

25 For references, see note 21 above.

26 The Geographer’s information underlies all accounts of ninth-century Slavic central Europe, and discussion of the preceding centuries is always framed with this outcome in mind. Ninth-century Carolingian diplomatic manoeuvring concentrated on groups within this area: the Elbe Slavs, the Bohemians, and the Moravians.

27 For the tenth century, see Chapter 10. For the Roman era, see Map 1.

28 512 AD: Procopius, Wars 6.15.1–2. Hildegesius: Procopius, Wars 7.35.16–22; cf. Curta (2001), 82, with full references to other secondary literature, on Slovakia as his likely recruiting ground. Samo: Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48, 68.

29 The literature is enormous, but for recent general accounts see Brachmann (1997); Parczewski (1997); Kazanski (1999), 83–96; Barford (2001), 39–44; Brather (2001). These draw on and update such earlier accounts as Donat and Fischer (1994); Szydlowski (1980); Brachmann (1978); Herrmann (1968)

30 On the new wheel-turned potteries, see Barford (2001), 63ff., 76–9, 104–12; Brather (2001); cf. Brather (1996). For the older view of a second migration, see Brachmann (1978), with references.

31 For a general discussion, see Godlowski (1980), (1983), with pp. 371ff above. The departure of the Lombards for Italy in 568 greatly changed the complexion of archaeological patterns in the Middle Danube region.

32 Barford (2001), 53–4, 65–6, with references.

33 For the basic information, see Kobylinski (1997); Barford (2001), 65–7, 76–7. For an introduction to older views, see Herrmann (1983). Sukow-Dziedzice burial customs are not known; they must have have consisted of some archaeologically invisible rite such as surface disposal or cremation of the body without any additional, identifying objects.

34 See Kobylinski (1997).

35 For references, see note 33 above.

36 For useful introductions, see Franklin & Shepard (1996), 71ff.; Goehrke (1992), 34–43.

37 For the linguistic evidence, see note 14 above.

38 For the evidence, see Goehrke (1992), 14–19; Parczewski (1993); Kazanski (1999), 96–120; Barford (2001), 55–6, 82–5, 96–8. The term ‘Slavic-dominated’ is a carefully chosen formulation to remind the reader that the old assumptions of culture-historical interpretation may be as misleading in the Slavic era as in its Germanic predecessor: see Chapter 1 above.

39 For an outline and further information, see Goehrke (1992), 20–33; Barford (2001), 85–9, 96–9.

40 The different possible answers are nicely defined by two recent books on early Slavic history. Kazanski (1999), especially 120–42, argues that overall similarities in lifestyle between the Prague-Korchak, Penkovka, and Kolochin cultures suggests that if the first two were Slavic, then so was the third. In his view, much of the East European Plain, the territory covered by the Kolochin culture, was already Slavic-speaking in c.500 AD (cf. Map 16). Korchak/Penkovka expansion from the seventh century onwards represented a political but not a linguistic revolution. Barford (2001) would identify the generation of Prague–Korchak itself as a moment of primary Slavicization, when Balts and Slavs really came to distinguish themselves from one another. For him, therefore, the spread north and east of Prague-Korchak in the seventh century, followed by the generation of the Luka Raikovetskaia, Volyntsevo, and Romny-Borshevo traditions, represents not just a political revolution, but the moment when Slavs first came to dominate the landscape, albeit while absorbing much of the indigenous population into their new social structures.

41 The mixed group of 1,600 Huns, Antae and Sclavenes: Procopius, Wars 5.27.1; the 3,000 Slavs: Procopius, Wars 7.38. Hildegesius: Procopius, Wars 7.35.16–22. The 5,000 Slavs at Thessalonica: Miracles of St Demetrius I.12.

42 Possibly also consistent with some kind of ‘wave of advance’ model is the fact that the same names seem to have been used by different Slavic groups who found themselves in very different places at the end of the migration process. The usual explanation adopted for this phenomenon is that originally unified groups split into fragments, which moved in different directions as Slavic migration progressed. Such a process might also explain why Prague-Korchak, Penkovka, and even some Kolochin materials have been found intermixed with one another in the Balkans (see note 40 above). The problem remains, however, that the best-documented examples of multiply appearing names refer to Serbs and Croats, who appear to have been military specialists (see pp. 424–5 above), rather than the small conservative type of social grouping that carried Korchak culture in its complete form across the European landscape.

43 Strategicon of Maurice 11.4. Given the relatively small size of the groups in which they operated, this preference presumably reflected a desire for additional protection, rather than an inherent love of difficult terrain. On the IndoEuropean wave of advance, see Renfrew (1987).

44 For references, see notes 20 and 22 above. The political context also provides good reasons why the Balkan settlements would have been undertaken by larger units. In the case of the Peloponnese, likewise, the named Slavic groups were distinct from a local Greek-speaking population, so, once again, the named units would appear to have been properly Slavic, as opposed to the result of any reorganization among native and immigrant populations.

45 Musocius: Theophylact 6.8.13–6.9.15. Ardagastes: Theophylact 1.7.5, 6.7.1–5, 6.9.1–6. Perigastes: Theophylact 7.4.8 ff. Dabritas: Menander fr.21. The quarrel over the prisoners: Theophylact 6.11.4–21. On the sociopolitical transformation of the Slavs nearest the east Roman frontier, see Curta (2001), especially chapter 7. To keep matters in proportion, a total group population of c.10,000 individuals could not have fielded more than one or two thousand fighting men, and was much smaller – by as much as a factor of ten – than some of the migrant groups attested among the Germani of the Hunnic era (see Chapter 4).

46 For references, see notes 23 and 24 above; for the 5,000 ‘elite’ Slavs at Thessalonica, see note 41 above.

47 For general references, see note 39 above. For Novotroistkoe, see Liapushkin (1958).

48 Maurice, Strategicon 11.4.

49 For Bohemia, see Godja (1988); cf., more generally, Kolendo (1997). For pollen studies, see Brachmann (1978), 31–2; Herrmann (1983), 87–9. Discontinuity is also the theme of Henning (1991). On Germanic culture collapse, see also pp. 371ff.

50 Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48. On agriculture and its expansion, see Barford (2001), chapter 8, (2005), with full references. Really good information on population expansion is limited to only a few areas, but the field-walking and surveying project in Greater Poland has established that population densities increased from less than 1 person per square kilometre in c.500 AD to 3 per square kilometre by 900 AD, to 7 per square kilometre by 1200 AD: see Barford (2001), 89–91, with references. Indications from agricultural technology tell the same story in qualitative terms. For example, ploughs only came into use at all in the more northerly reaches of the Russian forest zone with the spread of Slavic dominance there in the second half of the first millennium: see Levaskova (1994).

51 For references, see note 33 above.

52 See Halsall (2007), 383ff.

53 On the Chronicle of Monemvasia, see Charanis (1950). For Patras and Ragusa, see De Administrando Imperio 49–50; cf. (on the Salona evacuation) Whitby (1988), 189–90, with references.

54 See Chapter 4 above.

55 Urbanczyk (1997b), (2005). There is no explicit historical evidence to support this view of an exploited Germanic peasantry, but, as a kind of parallel, highly exploited Roman peasantry certainly sometimes sought refuge in (perhaps relative) tax havens beyond the frontier. One aspect of the Emperor Constantius’ activities north of the Danube in 358, as we have seen, was to ‘liberate’ peasantry who had cleared off north of the frontier: see Chapter 3.

56 Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48; cf. Urbanczyk (2002).

57 This might also explain how Slavs came to take over some Germanic river and place names, the island of Rügen and Silesia, for example, seemingly named after the Rugi and the Siling Vandals respectively.

58 See Henning (1991), correcting and exposing the political bias of the DDR era in Herrman (1984), (1985), 33ff.

59 Topirus: Procopius, Wars 7.39. The events of 594: Theophylact, 7.2.1–10.

60 This provides an alternative explanation – and a much more convincing one – to the ideologically generated nationalist models of ‘submerged’ Slavs living under the rule of just a small Germanic-speaking elite.

61 See Chapter 10.

62 For an excellent overview, see Barford (2001), chapters 3–8.

63 ‘When [Vinitharius] attacked . . .’: Jordanes, Getica 48.247, with note 12 above.

64 Chronicon Paschale (626 AD); cf. the more general accounts of Avar–Slav relations in Whitby (1988), 80ff.; Curta (2001), 90ff.

65 Fredegar, Chronicle 4.48.

66 The Mogilany group predates the arrival of the Avars, but they may have given added momentum to the generation of the Sukow-Dziedzice system, although, as we have seen, the internal chronology is as yet too unclear to allow too much emphasis to be given to this point: for references, see note 33 above.

67 For useful introductions to the history and archaeology of the Avar Empire, see Pohl (2003); Daim (2003).

68 See p. 203 above.

69 On Dulcinea, see Curta (2006), 56–7.

70 The Slavs’ dugouts: Chronicon Paschale (626 AD); Miracles of St Demetrius II.1.

71 Buko (2005), chapter 3.

9. VIKING DIASPORAS

1 ‘From Hernar in Norway one should keep sailing west to reach Hvarf in Greenland and then you are sailing north of Shetland, so that it can only be seen if visibility is very good; but south of the Faroes, so that the sea appears halfway up their mountain slopes; but so far south of Iceland that one only becomes aware of birds and whales from it’: from the fourteenth-century Hauksbok, quoted in Bill (1997), 198.

2 There is a strong tendency from a British perspective to distinguish two ages of major Viking invasion: one in the ninth century, and another right at the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh. The latter, however, was substantially different in character, being organized by a centralized Danish monarchy and involving little in the way of actual migration; it will therefore be considered in Chapter 10.

3 On the logistics of sailing these northern waters, see Crawford (1987), chapter 1.

4 There is an almost infinite bibliography on the Viking raids in the west, but, between them, Nelson (1997), Keynes (1997) and O Corrain (1997) provide an excellent introduction, usefully supplemented by the appropriate chapters in Forte et al. (2005) and Loyn (1995).

5 See Crawford (1987), chapter 4 (place names); 136ff. (types of settlement); cf. Ritchie (1993). Hints of what must have been happening in the north emerge from the action unfolding in Ireland (see following note).

6 See for example the Chronicle of Ireland for the years 807, 811, 812 and 813; the record of attacks becomes pretty much annual from 821, suggesting that the assault on Ireland intensified just a little before that on England and the continent. The Chronicle of Ireland (848 AD) calls the Viking leader Tomrair a tanaise rig, in Irish terms an heir apparent or second in command to a king (Charles-Edwards (2006), vol. 2, 11). He may well have been an ‘earl’ (Old Norse, Jarl), therefore, rather than a ‘king’: see further below. The action in England and on the continent is well covered in Nelson (1997); Keynes (1997).

7 For further detail, see Nelson (1997); Keynes (1997); Coupland (1995), 190–7.

8 See O Corrain (1997), with the very helpful commentary of Charles-Edwards (2006) in the notes to his translation of the Chronicle of Ireland. On the two kings, see the ground-breaking work of Smyth (1977). Something more of the actual death of Reginharius is reported in the Translatio of St Germanus: see Nelson (1997).

9 For useful summaries, see Coupland (1995), 197–201; Keynes (1997). The narrative of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is itself excellent (in early medieval terms!) for these years.

10 On the nature of the Great Armies, see especially Brooks (1979); cf. Smyth (1977). The switching of manpower back and forth between England and the continent can be followed in more detail in Nelson (1997) and Keynes (1997).

11 Studies of Alfred’s reforms abound, but Brooks (1979) is an extremely helpful introduction. It can be supplemented in greater detail by e.g. Smyth (1995); Abels (1998). Many of the relevant texts are conveniently collected and translated in Keynes and Lapidge (1983).

12 For further detail, see Nelson (1997); O Corrain (1997).

13 For Brittany, see J. Smith (1992), 196–200; Searle (1988), 29–33. For (somewhat) contrasting introductions to the history of Normandy, see Bates (1982); Searle (1988), especially chapters 5 and 8.

14 For Orkney, see Crawford (1987), 51ff., with Rafnsson (1997) on Iceland and the Atlantic diaspora.

15 For a broad summary, see O Corrain (1997); for a much more detailed, indeed slightly controversial treatment, see Smyth (1979).

16 Various materials have come down to us in excerpts made in the Middle Ages from Ibn Rusteh – see Wiet (1957) – Ibn Jaqub – see Miquel (1966) – and Ibn Fadlan – see Canard (1973); cf. Melnikova (1996), 52–4.

17 For the ‘rapids’, see De Administrando Imperio, chapter 9. For trade treaties, see Russian Primary Chronicle (911 and 944 AD). For an introduction to the debate, with full sources, see Franklin and Shepard (1996), 27–50; Melnikova (1996), 47–9; Duczko (2004), 3ff.

18 Ibn Fadlan also makes the Rus sound like Nordic stereotypes: tall and fair, with reddish complexions.

19 Russian Primary Chronicle (860–2 AD). For the textual tradition, see the introduction to the translation of Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor (1953), with the further thoughts of Franklin and Shepard (1996), 27ff.; Melnikova (1996), chapters 7–8.

20 Noonan (1997) provides an excellent introduction; the comprehensive treatment is now Duczko (2004).

21 Ibn Jaqub, Relation (see note 16).

22 Life of St Anskar 30. On Ottar, see Lund (1984); cf. Melnikova (1996), 49–52.

23 As we shall see in Chapter 10, there is good reason to suppose that many of the slaves were also being acquired from indigenous intermediaries.

24 Ibn Jaqub, Relation (see note 16). For the winter circuit of the Rus in the first half of the tenth century, see De Administrando Imperio 9.

25 Russian Primary Chronicle (911 and 944 AD); for detailed comment, see Franklin and Shepard (1996), 106ff. and 118ff.: comparison shows, amongst other things, an increase in the numbers of Rus trading with Constantinople.

26 De Administrando Imperio 9.

27 For an excellent introduction, see Noonan (1997).

28 On the archaeological evidence for this earliest phase of Scandinavian activity in northern Russia, see Duczko (2004), chapter 2. For the comparison between Constantinople and the Caliphates as potential markets, see Chapter 7.

29 Swedish Vikings: Annals of St BertinAD a 839. (It must be questioned whether this was the first time that the Dnieper route was actually tried.) The death of Sviatoslav: Russian Primary Chronicle (972 AD).

30 The relevant boats will presumably have been Slavic ‘monoxyla’, hollowed from single tree trunks, however, rather than the longships so prominently deployed in the west.

31 On the Abaskos attack and its aftermath, see Franklin and Shepard (1996), 50ff.; Duczko (2004), chapter 1.

32 On the anarchy at Samarra, see Kennedy (2004).

33 On these coin flows, see Noonan (1997).

34 On the archaeological evidence for Scandinavian settlers from this era, see Franklin and Shepard (1996), 91ff.; Duczko (2004), chapters. 3–5.

35 See Franklin and Shepard (1996), chapter 3; Melnikova (1996), 54–60; Duczko (2004), chapter 6.

36 See Likhachev (1970); Melnikova (1996), 105–9.

37 Quoted in O Corrain (1997), 94.

38 See Sawyer (1962).

39 Chronicle of IrelandAD a. 848.

40 Healfdan: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (878 AD). The argument for the scale of the Great Armies was made in full by Brooks (1979); cf. Smyth (1977) on their structure, with the identifications of Olaf and Ingvar. (The data has since been accepted by Sawyer.) On the continent, likewise, when the Franks won their great victory at the Dyle, they killed two Viking kings and captured sixteen royal standards.

41 Settlement entries: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (876, 877 and 880 AD). Estimates based on Doomsday Book suggest that the total population of England in 1086 was perhaps a million and a half, and the settlements did not affect the whole country.

42 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (896 AD).

43 See Vince (2001); Leahy and Paterson (2001); cf. the more general studies of Hart (1992); and for a good survey of the place-name evidence, with full references, see Fellows-Jenson (2001).

44 See O Corrain (1997), (1998); Smyth (1979).

45 For a useful introduction, see Ritchie (1993), 25–7.

46 Chronicle of Ireland (856, 857, 858 AD); cf. O Corrain (1998), 326–7; Charles-Edwards (2006), vol. 2, 4–5.

47 For the DNA evidence, see Helgason et al. (2000), (2001), (2003); Goodacre et al. (2005).

48 For a useful introduction, see Rafnsson (1997).

49 The Great Army: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (892 AD). For the DNA evidence, see note 47. As we have seen in the case of the Anglo-Saxon evidence (Chapter 6), there is a substantial margin for error in reading modern proportions as a direct reflection of those in the past.

50 See note 28 above.

51 And to suggest that the Norse had in fact arrived here before any Slavic immigrants: see note 34 above.

52 For references, see note 35 above.

53 Such commemorative runestones were put up in far larger numbers in the late Viking period: see B. Sawyer (1991).

54 See Wormald (1982).

55 For introductions to post-Viking history in England and Scotland respectively, see Campbell (1982); Broun et al. (1998). Davies (1990), chapter 4 tackles the same issue for Wales.

56 For references, see notes 13 and 14 above.

57 See e.g. P. Sawyer (1982), (1997a); Sawyer and Sawyer (1993), chapter 2, with references.

58 On the dirhems, see Noonan (1997), 145 (and cf. the comments of Arab travellers on the astonishing silver wealth of Rus merchants: see note 16 above). On Francia, see Nelson (1997), 37.

59 For the background of the Roman period, see Chapter 2.

60 For useful introductions, see Crawford (1987), chapter 1; Bill (1997); Rafnsson (1997).

61 See Melnikova (1996), 3–18 (for the mixture of practical information, amidst the learned and biblical material, in medieval Scandinavian geography), and 31–44 (for a brilliantly evocative account of the main Russian river routes and their interconnections).

62 The Anglo-Saxon expansion into England nevertheless bears some comparison: see Chapter 6.

63 Asser Saxe: Aarhus runestone no. 6; cf. Roesdahl (1991), 58. Sodalitates: Annals of St Bertin (862 AD); cf. Nelson (1997), 36.

64 For Asser Saxe, see previous note. On ship types, see Bill (1997). For monoxyla, see note 26 above; cf. Melnikova (1996), 33. Because of the rapids, shallows and sandbanks of the River Volkhov, ships had to be changed for rivercraft precisely at Ladoga.

65 For a useful introduction, see Bill (1997).

66 For an excellent recent survey, see Wickham (2005), 680–90, 809–11, with full references to the excavations, most of which have happened within the last scholarly generation.

67 ‘Emporia’ were centres of movable wealth, so it is at least possible that initial accident turned into eventual design here; that would certainly be my best guess.

68 See Wormald (1982). For an introduction to this ‘first’ Danish state, see Roesdahl (1982), especially chapters 5 and 8; Hedeager (1992); Lund (1995), 202–12.

69 Anoundas: Life of St Anskar 19. Reginharius: see note 8 above.

70 This phenomenon has generated the concept of ‘New Medievalism’ in international-relations theory, a conceptualization of the fact that Third World states in particular find that they have in practice no monopoly of power or authority within their notional territorial space. For an introduction to these debates, see Friedrichs (2004), chapter 7.

10. THE FIRST EUROPEAN UNION

1 Thietmar, Chronicle 4.45–6.

2 The classic treatment in English of all three of these kingdoms remains Dvornik (1949); cf. Dvornik (1956). The available literature is now immense, and the references below are largely restricted to those written in western European languages, in which most of the main players in the Slavic world have anyway always tended (and now increasingly tend) to write, at least at regular intervals. Important supplements to Dvornik are provided, firstly, by useful general works such as Barford (2001); Curta (2006); and, secondly, by collections of papers dealing with a range of Slavic states: Manteuffel and Gieysztor (1968); Settimane (1983); Brachmann (1995); Urbancyzk (1997a), (2001); Curta (2005); Garipzanov et al. (2008). Then, thirdly, there are the studies devoted to individual kingdoms, as follows. Poland: Manteuffel (1982); Urbancyzk (2004). Bohemia: Wegener (1959); Graus and Ludat (1967); Turek (1974); Sasse (1982); Prinz (1984); Godja (1988), (1991). Moravia: Dittrich (1962); Bosl (1966); Graus and Dostál (1966); Poulik et al. (1986); Bowlus (1995); M. Eggers (1995). These works provide the basis of my understanding of state formation in eastern Europe in the late first millennium; I will only footnote very specific points in the rest of this chapter, but this literature will always be implicit.

3 Dvornik was well aware of this point, although he did not treat Denmark in the same detail as his Slavic kingdoms. Papers relevant to Scandinavian state formation appear in some of the secondary sources listed in the previous note. In addition, the following studies, from an immense literature, of the early Danish state’s emergence from the Viking period, are particularly useful: Randsborg (1980); Roesdahl (1982); Hedeager (1992); Sawyer and Sawyer (1993); Rumble (1994); Lund (1997).

4 Dvornik treated the history of the first Rus state in some detail (see note 2 above, with the supplementary works detailed there). For further information, see e.g. Kaiser and Marker (1994); Franklin and Shepard (1996); Melnikova (1996); Duczko (2004); cf., on legal structures, D. Kaiser (1980), (1992).

5 The first homegrown historian of the Danish state, Saxo Grammaticus, worked about seventy-five years later than his Slavic counterparts.

6 For an introduction to the new cultural patterns of the Carolingian era and beyond, see McKitterick (1989), (1994).

7 For a useful commentary on Thietmar’s Chronicle, see Schröder (1977). Dvornik was immensely interested in the conversion of these states to Christianity: with the works cited in note 2 above, see especially Dvornik (1969). Many of the studies cited in notes 2–4 deal with Slavic conversion, but useful additional information and analysis can be found in e.g. Wolfram (1979), (1995); Kantor (1990); Urbancyzk (1997b); Wood (2001).

8 In addition to the studies cited in note 3 above, there are several useful papers in Scragg (1991) and Cooper (1993), especially those of Sawyer (1993) and Lund (1993). See, too, in Rumble (1994), the papers of Sawyer (1994) and Lund (1994). The rehabilitation of the reputation of Aethelred – see e.g. Keynes (1987) – only emphasizes the military capacity of the Danish monarchy.

9 On the fortifications of Dux Rastiz of Moravia: Annals of Fulda 869 (cf. ibid 855). For Slavic and Danish fortifications, see notes 2–4 above, but particularly helpful are Kurnatowska (1997a); Dulinicz (1997); Petrov (2005). For the Alamanni, see Chapter 2. Admittedly, the political unity of the Tervingi collapsed when their leader induced them to build fortifications, but only when they were simultaneously faced with Hunnic assault: Ammianus 31.3.8, and see Chapter 4 above.

10 See Ibn Fadlan, Relation, with Thietmar, Chronicle 4.46 (quoted on p. 515). Polish forces in 1003: Thietmar, Chronicle 5.36–7. For other sources of revenue, see pp. 563ff above.

11 One Byzantine source reports that the Rus force assisting Basil II numbered 6,000 men: Franklin and Shepard (1996), 161–3. Territorial contingents: Russian Primary Chronicle (1015 AD, 1068 AD). Retinues appear regularly in the Bohemian sources translated by Kantor (1990).

12 Encomium of Queen Emma II.4. Lund (1986), (1993) argues firmly for a solely mercenary army, but the descriptions in the Encomium sound more like a mixed force, and it is worth noting that the much less powerful earls of Orkney had imposed carefully defined military obligations on their populations from an early date: Crawford (1987), 86–91. I think it is in the nature of the Danish state, as with its Slavic peers, that there are likely to have been substantial differences between separate parts of the kingdom: see pp. 526ff above.

13 On the Tithe Church, see Franklin and Shephard (1996), 164–5. For other references, see notes 2–4 above, with Kurnatowska (1997a); Shepard (2005); Font (2005).

14 For Danish transport infrastructure, see Randsborg (1980), 75ff.; Roesdahl (1982), chapter 3.

15 For an introduction, see Dvornik (1949), 105–10, with Appendix 5, though the details of the territories it defines are much disputed.

16 On Moravia and Bohemia, see Jirecek (1867) and Friedrich (1907) for some of the texts, with Kantor (1983), (1990) for commentary. On Russia, see D. Kaiser (1980), (1992).

17 The pattern does not apply to Moravia, however, whose capacity to operate as state centre was destroyed by the rise of Magyar power in the 890s, after which it became one of the territories to be swapped.

18 For a more detailed narrative in English, see Dvornik (1949). Randsborg (1980), 75ff. is excellent on the principles on itineration. For Bohemian documents, see note 16 above. For excellent commentaries on the Polish information, see Lowmianski (1960); Gorecki (1992).

19 Russian Primary Chronicle (945–55 AD).

20 See e.g. Roesdahl (1982), 147–55. One-quarter of the buildings in Fyrkat were residential, for instance, and one-third for storage.

21 Sobibor would later die in Prague in 1004 fighting the expelled Premyslid Jaromir, having returned to Prague with a Polish army: Thietmar, Chronicle 6.12. For a general account, see Urbanczyk (1997c).

22 Annals of Fulda (845, 872, 895 AD), with secondary references as note 2 above.

23 For commentaries, see Wolfram (1995); cf. the different geographical reconstructions of Bowlus (1995); M. Eggers (1995). Wherever it is placed, however, the basic political process stays the same.

24 The traditional picture was of 30 small ‘tribes’ in the seventh century, eventually evolving into 8 greater ones, according to Marxist principles, in the ninth. This was mostly guesswork based on extrapolation from the Anonymous Bavarian Geographer, which didn’t cover lands beyond the Oder (see Chapter 8), and by analogy with Bohemia: cf. Barford (2001), chapter 12. The pattern may not be so far from the historical reality, except that we must reckon with a much more violent finale: see especially Kurnatowska (1997a); Dulinicz (1994), (1997).

25 On the emergence of the Rus state, see Franklin and Shepard (1996), chapter 3.

26 Russian Primary Chronicle (974 AD: Sveinald); 978 AD: Rogvolod/Ragnvaldr and Tury; 993 AD: the concubines).

27 For fuller discussion of the Jelling dynasty, see references in note 3 above. On the fate of the ninth-century state, see p. 511 above.

28 On the kings associated with the ninth-century Great Armies, see Chapter 9. For more detail on tenth-century patterns, see the literature cited in note 3 above.

29 For general references, see previous note. For the ‘mark’ in Denmark, see Lund (1984), 21–2; cf. Lund (1997).

30 See Chapter 8 above, with Curta (2001), chapter 7.

31 Miesco: Ibn Jaqub. Bohemia: Annals of Fulda (845 AD), with the texts translated in Kantor (1990). Moravia: Annals of Fulda (894 AD). Russia: Ibn Fadlan, Relation ; Russian Primary Chronicle (945–6 AD). The fourth-century Germani: see Chapter 2 above. The sixth-century Slavs: Curta (2001), chapter 7.

32 For further discussion, see Chapter 8, and Chapter 1 (on the early Germanic world).

33 For fuller discussions, see the literature cited in notes 2–4 above. On the Germanic world, see pp. 64ff above.

34 For post-Avar leaders, see the literature cited in note 23 above. Wiztrach and his son ruled their own civitas in Bohemia: see Annals of Fulda (857 AD). On Moravia, see the studies cited in note 2 above. For excellent introductions to the changing patterns of hillforts, see Godja (1991), chapter 3; Kurnatowska (1997a), with full references. Nothing similar has been found in the early Slavic world to the Runder Berg and other Herrenhöfe of the leaders of the fourth-century Alamanni: see Chapter 2.

35 See, in particular, Roesdahl (1982); Hedeager (1992); Sawyer and Sawyer (1993).

36 For pollen, see Donat (1983); cf. Barford (2001), 153–9, both with full references.

37 In addition to the literature cited in note 2 above, see most recently, on agricultural expansion, Henning (2005); Barford (2005). These studies show that full manorialization followed rather than preceded state formation (as Marxist orthodoxy required). Agricultural expansion did, however, take other forms between the sixth and tenth centuries.

38 For the reasons we have previously encountered, the availability of food is one of the most basic limiting factors on possible population sizes.

39 For similar processes among the Germani, see Chapter 2.

40 Hedeby: Royal Frankish Annals (808 AD), with Roesdahl (1982), 70–6. Prague: Ibn Rusteh. Kiev: De Administrando Imperio, chapter 9; cf. Thietmar, Chronicle 8.2. Poland’s participation in these networks is clear from the silver dirham distribution map: seeMap 16.

41 Russian Primary Chronicle (911 and 945 AD). As far back as 808, Godfrid had moved the merchants to Hedeby because he wanted the toll revenue: see previous note.

42 For literature on the destruction of tribal castles, see note 24 above. On Vladimir’s transfers, see Russian Primary Chronicle (1000 AD). On service villages and the organization of the heartlands of Bohemia and Poland, see respectively Godja (1991), chapters 3–4; Kurnatowska (1997a).

43 Oleg’s army: Russian Primary Chronicle (880–2 AD). Sviatoslav: Russian Primary Chronicle (971–2 AD). For Vladimir, see previous note, with general commentary in Franklin and Shepard (1996), chapter 4.

44 For an introduction, see Bartlett (1993), chapter 5. A top estimate is that some 200,000 German peasants were eventually attracted east of the Elbe by the excellent terms on offer.

45 On Carolingian expansion and its structural importance, see Reuter (1985), (1990).

46 On the feuds, see Leyser (1989). On the burgwards, see Reuter (1991).

47 For an introduction to the Elbe Slavs, and a convenient collection of the relevant materials, see Lübke (1984–88), with Lübke (1994), (1997) for further analysis.

48 Dvornik (1949) provides a useful narrative. For the Northern Crusades, see e.g. Christiansen (1980).

49 Gero: Widukind of Corvey 2.20, with Heather (1997) more generally on the Abodrites. Zwentibald: Annals of Fulda (870–2 AD).

50 On the Christianization of Moravia, see the references in note 2. Werinhar’s mutilation: Annals of Fulda (882 AD). Violence and plunder are regular features in all the warfare of this period, as recorded in Thietmar’s Chronicle, the Russian Primary Chronicle, Adam of Bremen’s History of the Bishops of Hamburg and Helmold’s Chronicle of the Slavs, the two latter both having much to report on the plunderings and wars between the Empire and the Elbe Slavs.

51 On Saxon military evolution, see Leyser (1982), essays 1 and 2. For the Capitulary of Thionville, see Boretius (1883), 44.7.

52 Miracles of St Demetrius II.5; cf. the swift appearance of powerful leaders such as Liudewit: for references, see note 23 above.

53 For further discussion, and references, see Chapter 9.

54 On the slave raids of the Rus and Western Slavs: Ibn Jaqub; cf. McCormick (2001), on the general importance of these new connections.

55 Ibn Fadlan, Relation ; cf. Russian Primary Chronicle (993 AD), on Vladimir. If the trade was essentially in women, the Rus presumably had to carry their own boats round the Dnieper rapids, but this may just be the literature of shock. Certainly the western slave trades – overland and by sea – involved males as well as females; cf. Verlinden (1955), the source of the map in question.

56 For introductory references, see note 7 above. The same tendency of trying to avoid taking your Christianity from a near imperial neighbour is also visible in the case of the Bulgarians, who did the same, trying to avoid a Byzantine connection: see e.g. Browning (1975), for an introduction. The Bulgarians equally failed to avoid the imperial connection, but, like the Poles, were eventually granted their own archbishop.

57 The availability of Bede’s extraordinary narrative and a host of other sources from the early conversion period in England means that the Anglo-Saxon case study has often been a vehicle for exploring these ideas. For an excellent introduction, see Mayr Harting (1972); cf. Mayr-Harting (1994) for a comparison with Bulgaria.

58 There is little sign that conversion to Christianity changed the nature of immediate political competition in the Slavic context, any more than it did in the Anglo-Saxon, on which see the wonderful paper of Wormald (1978). On the administrative front, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was brought to Christianity in 681, when Wessex conquered the Isle of Wight, but the beginnings of an administrative system that was working convincingly via literacy are, to my mind, visible only two or three generations later, and it is really only in the ninth and tenth centuries that the evidence multiplies.

59 Carolingian imperial rule had established tithing as a norm from the later eighth century: see McKitterick (1977). This made the later Slavic conversions different examples, like that of the Anglo-Saxons, where religious taxation was not yet so firmly established.

60 For the Tervingi, see Chapter 2. For the 983 revolt, see Reuter (1991); Lübke (1994), commenting particularly on the narrative of Thietmar, Chronicle 3.17ff. The Russian Primary Chronicle is the basic source of information on the Russian case, upon which Shepard (2005), with full references to the earlier literature, provides an excellent recent treatment.

61 Vladimir: Russian Primary Chronicle (978–80 AD); with Shepard (2005) for commentary. For the Elbe Slavs, see the references in note 47 above.

62 For an introduction to the concept of ‘peer polity interaction’, and some case studies, see Renfrew and Cherry (1986).

63 For a detailed discussion of coin flows, see Noonan (1997), (1998).

64 For comparative case studies, both ancient and modern, see Gottmann (1980); Rowlands et al. (1987); Bilde et al. (1993); Champion (1995). It is extremely important, however, to factor in a generalized concept of agency: cf. Wilson (2008).

11. THE END OF MIGRATION AND THE BIRTH OF EUROPE

1 Annals of Fulda (900 AD).

2 See Faith (1997) on the extent to which the Normans rewrote the rules by which peasant life was governed.

3 See in particular Chapters 6 and 9.

4 As we saw in Chapter 6, the 50–75 per cent spread of possibly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Y chromosomes recorded in samples of the modern English population can be accounted for by an invading group that was anywhere between 50–75 per cent of the fifth-/sixth-century population, or only 10 per cent if you give them even a marginal breeding advantage.

5 These key cases reported by Ammianus and Procopius are explored in detail in Chapters 4 and 5.

6 In these cases, the evidence is currently not good that the groups actually crossed the frontier, but reliable contemporaries describe at least their subsequent moves, to Spain and North Africa respectively, and to join Alaric, in precisely such terms.

7 The Gothic and Lombard migration flows are discussed in Chapters 3 and 5.

8 The ideas set out here, and through earlier chapters, are discussed in more detail in Heather (2008a).

9 For Anglo-Saxon return migration, see Chapter 6 above.

10 Autumn 376, although this has been challenged, is also the likeliest time for the move of the Gothic Tervingi: see Heather (2005), 153.

11 This presumably limited the amount of fundamental social (as opposed to political) change that was generated by the flows of new wealth into Scandinavia, since the wealth was bound initially to fall largely into the hands of those who where already reasonably wealthy.

12 And possibly also by non-militarized slaves: see Chapter 4 above.

13 Of course, Jordanes’ migration topos gave more than an excuse to do so: see Chapter 3.

14 The one successor state not founded by a new coalition created on the march was that of the Burgundians, but there is a crucial lack of narrative evidence to help us understand fifth-century Burgundian history, which was certainly traumatic.

15 Hunnic imperial history confirms the point, since the huge supraregional power created by Attila and his predecessors was entirely dependent upon large-scale flows of Mediterranean wealth for its continued existence: see Chapter 5.

16 Just one surviving vignette illustrates Gotho-Slav interaction: Jordanes, Getica 48.247, with p. 234 above.

17 The sources suggest, however, that some Slavic groups had already developed a considerable degree of political and military organization on the back of the new wealth flows of the sixth century: see Chapter 8.

18 Bartlett (1993), especially chapters 2 and 5, provides an excellent introduction to these new patterns.

19 Tacitus, Germania 46.4.