PETER S. WELLS
The Rhine-Danube frontier, which, with a few alterations over time, formed the boundary between the Roman Empire and the unconquered lands to the east and north for over four hundred years, was established by Julius Caesar’s Gallic campaigns in the 50sB.C., Tiberius and Drusus’s conquest of southern Bavaria in 15 B.C., and conquests of the middle and lower Danube lands during the first and early second centuries A.D. Throughout these four centuries, interactions between the peoples of the Roman provinces and communities on the other side of the frontiers were frequent, mostly in the form of trade and exchange, but also in military confrontations. Roman texts inform us about the names the Romans used to designate the transfrontier peoples and about major battles in which Roman armies engaged (Burns 2003). The archaeological evidence enables us to examine the character of the societies beyond the frontier and the ways in which those peoples responded to their interactions with the Roman world.
ESTABLISHING THE FRONTIERS
Throughout the Bronze and Iron ages, there is abundant evidence for the movement of people and circulation of goods between the Mediterranean world and temperate Europe. During the second and first centuries B.C., commerce between Italy and lands to the north intensified, and the large numbers of Roman amphorae, bronze wine vessels, coins, and other imports in the north enable us to plot the chronology and geography of those interactions. Toward the end of the second century B.C., Roman military forces engaged several groups of armed intruders north of the Alps, among whom the Cimbri and the Teutones are the most familiar (Wells 1999).
When Julius Caesar began his campaigns against the Gauls in 58 B.C., this event was not a radical departure from earlier interactions between Rome and peoples they considered barbarians to the north, but it is much better documented than earlier interactions, thanks to Caesar’s commentaries. As his account makes clear, the Gauls offered stiff resistance to the Roman legions. Only Caesar’s skill at playing one group off against another brought Roman success. Had the Gallic peoples faced the Roman intruders as a unified force, it is likely that the Gauls would have prevailed. Through the archaeological evidence we know that the Iron Age Gauls (and their contemporaries in other parts of Europe) had weapons that were as effective as those of Rome (Ulbert 1976), though they lacked siege weaponry such as catapults. The long iron swords, lances, spears, helmets, and shields crafted by Late Iron Age smiths were of high technological quality (Pleiner 1993).
Caesar’s commentaries inform us about Roman ideas concerning the people he called Germans. Caesar states several times that the Rhine formed the border between Gauls and Germans, and that German society was much smaller in scale and of less complexity than that of the Gauls. Yet he had respect for German military prowess and he employed German cavalry troops.
There is no evidence that Caesar or any other Roman was aware of the effects that Roman military adventures in Gaul were having on the peoples east of the Rhine (even though Caesar had made forays across the Rhine in 55 and 53 B.C.), but the archaeology shows that important changes were taking place there. Though Caesar emphasizes the differences between the peoples he calls Gauls west of the Rhine and those he calls Germans east of the river, the archaeology shows that these peoples were not very different (Wells 1999: 99–121). The character of settlements, domestic architecture, pottery, metalwork, coinage, and other aspects of material culture, shows that groups on the two sides of the river were in close contact (Collis 1995). The peoples east of the Rhine (Caesar’s “Germans”) were much affected by the Roman military activities across the river. The archaeology shows a new emphasis on militarism, reflected in the adoption of a new burial ritual—the placement of sets of weapons in graves—around the middle of the first century B.C., when Caesar was engaged in Gaul. Communities began outfitting many men’s graves with iron swords, spears, and shields, as for example in the large cemeteries at Grossromstedt and Harsefeld (Schultze 1986).
After Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C., during the decades of civil war, Rome apparently made no significant effort to conquer further eastward beyond the Rhine. Roman texts mention raids from east of the Rhine into Gaul but do not provide much detail about them (Kunow 1987). During the years 16–13 B.C., Augustus spent time in the Rhineland, establishing military bases along the west bank of the river at sites that include the modern cities of Nijmegen, Xanten, Cologne, Bonn, Mainz, and Strasbourg. In 15 B.C., Augustus’s generals Tiberius and Drusus led their legions into what is now southern Bavaria, between the upper Danube and the Alps, and conquered that region in a single season’s campaign.
From 12 B.C. until A.D. 9, Augustus’s generals led forays across the Rhine toward the Elbe, especially from the bases at Xanten and Mainz, with the apparent aim of establishing a new province between the Rhine and the Elbe. This policy led to the establishing of military bases on the Lippe River east of the Rhine, one of which at Haltern has been most thoroughly investigated archaeologically (Asskamp and Wiechers 1996). Recent archaeological research at Waldgirmes, north of Frankfurt, reveals the remains of a planned administrative center for the new province (Becker and Rasbach 2003). This two-decade-long policy was brought to a sudden end with the disastrous defeat in A.D. 9 in what Tacitus called the Teutoburg Forest, now identified as a site at Kalkriese, north of Osnabrück in northern Germany, where native warriors led by a man the Roman writers called Arminius virtually annihilated three legions (XVII, XVIII, and XIX) and associated troops under the command of Varus, Augustus’s governor of the Rhineland (Wells 2003). Except for some punitive raids undertaken by Germanicus between A.D. 15 and 17, this defeat ended Roman designs on expanding eastward beyond the middle and lower Rhine. The last major Roman conquest beyond the Rhine was of the land between the upper Rhine and the upper Danube, the agri decumates, in the latter half of the first century A.D.
On the lower Danube, historical sources document a series of conflicts between Roman forces and the group known as Dacians, before Roman military victories in the early decades of the first century A.D. quieted the situation temporarily. More incursions during the 60s and 70s A.D. led to an increase in the number of legions on the Danube. But throughout the latter decades of the first century tensions persisted. Trajan’s campaigns in 101/102 and 105/106 were successful for Rome, resulting in the establishment of the province Dacia north of the Danube.
THE TRANSFRONTIER PEOPLES
Roman written sources, from Caesar through Tacitus to Ammianus Marcellinus and Saint Jerome, generally portray the peoples across the frontiers as “barbarians”—peoples whose ways of life were very different from that of Romans and who were in many respects the antithesis of what cultivated Romans admired (Timpe 1996, Ferris 2000). All of these texts need to be read with the understanding that they represent people whom the Roman writers did not understand and against whom the Roman military was fighting. The archaeology of these groups, deriving as it does from the people themselves, shows them in a different light.
We know the names of the various transfrontier peoples, such as Marcomanni, Quadi, Cherusci, Alamanni, Franks, Burgundians, Goths, Gepids, Alans, Huns, Avars, and Slavs, from the surviving texts by Roman writers. We do not know what these peoples called themselves, if they had any sense of common identity at all. Our knowledge of specific confrontations with Roman armies is exclusively through the eyes of Roman commentators. The texts tell us very little about any other aspects of life among the transfrontier peoples except their warfare. The archaeological evidence enables us to learn much about those societies, and to place the military aspects into a broader cultural context. The archaeological evidence of graves that contain weapons often supports Roman texts that describe weaponry and fighting techniques of peoples beyond the frontiers.
I shall treat the transfrontier peoples in two main groupings. One consists of peoples east of the Rhine and north of the upper Danube, as far east as modern Hungary. These were referred to as Germans by Caesar, Tacitus, and later writers. Among the names that commonly appear in the Roman texts are Frisii, Marcomanni, Quadi, Sugambri, Chauki, Cherusci, Chatti, and, from the third century on, Alamanni, Franks, Burgundians, Saxons, and Suebi. The second major geographical grouping consists of peoples north of the middle and lower Danube, from Hungary to the Black Sea. Among names that Roman writers associate with peoples in this part of Europe are Sarmatians, Dacians, Gepids, Goths, Alans, Huns, Avars, and Slavs.
TRANSFRONTIER PEOPLES EAST OF THE RHINE AND NORTH OF THE UPPER DANUBE
At the time of Caesar and at the beginning of the first century A.D., the peoples east of the Rhine whom Caesar called Germans lived in farmsteads and small villages, many of which have been investigated archaeologically. Their economy was based on cultivation of cereals, mainly wheat, barley, and rye, along with several garden crops such as peas and lentils. They raised cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses. Communities made their own pottery, tools of wood and bone, and wool and linen clothing. Iron metallurgy was well developed, and many villages smelted ore and forged the tools and weapons they needed. Most communities produced surplus goods that they exchanged for other materials, such as bronze ornaments and glass beads. Burial practice in most regions was commonly by cremation, with cremated remains in a ceramic urn buried in the ground, often with a few simple objects such as items of jewelry. Ritual sites such as Oberdorla in Thuringia (Dušek 2002) show that, in contrast to Caesar’s remarks, these peoples had elaborate religious practices, some involving complex structures and rituals that included making deposits of tools, weapons, and ornaments in ponds and rivers (Ilkjaer 2003). The “bog bodies” of northern Europe date largely to the final century B.C. and the first three centuries A.D. and, whatever else they show (interpretation is complex and disputed), they indicate an enormous social investment in ritual practice (Chamberlain and Pearson 2001).
All communities were linked into networks along which both social relations and goods circulated. We can trace the outlines of these networks through the distributions of trade items that archaeologists recover through excavation, such as bronze ornaments (the copper and tin to make bronze had to be imported) and amber (brought in from the Baltic coast). There also existed overarching political structures, linking village communities over considerable distances. The numerous wooden trackways built across boggy ground from the beginning of the Iron Age on attest to the ability of leaders to marshal labor efforts of hundreds of workers for regional infrastructure projects, and early weapon deposits, such as that at Hjortspring in southern Denmark (Randsborg 1995), show the organizing of military forces of considerable complexity as early as the mid-fourth century B.C. This kind of far-flung political organization, and the networks along which information traveled, help us to understand how local military forces often were able to defeat the Roman legions.
Until the end of the final century B.C., there is relatively little evidence for social differentiation among the peoples east of the Rhine. Lavish burials are rare. But this situation changed when interactions with the Roman world intensified. From the middle of the first century A.D. on, wealthy burials, containing weapons, Roman luxury objects, and ornaments of precious metal offer a view to an emerging military elite that gained its status largely through relations with the Roman army. These relations could be friendly, in the case of client kings along the frontiers or auxiliary officers commanding auxiliary troops on the Roman side of the frontier. Or they could be hostile, as warriors gained status, power, and wealth through leading their troops against Roman provinces and military forces.
At the cemetery of Putensen near Hamburg, Grave 150 is likely that of a man who served as an auxiliary officer with the Roman army (Roggenbuck 1983). When he died, in the middle decades of the first century A.D., he was buried with objects that marked his status as a warrior—an iron sword in an iron scabbard, a shield, a lance head, and a knife. Horse harness ornaments and three pairs of spurs suggest he rode with the cavalry. A pair of Roman bronze casseroles and two drinking horns represent a feasting set. Six silver fibulae and a silver pin indicate special status. For the following four centuries, similar burial outfits characterize military leaders among the transfrontier peoples, and they reflect specific traditions in weaponry and fighting tactics of Rome’s enemies.
The set of weapons in Putensen 150 (and many others like it) enable us to understand such outcomes as the success of Arminius’s attack on the Roman legions. The lightly armed and highly mobile native warriors were able to surprise and quickly defeat the heavily armed legionaries (see above figure 11.2). In burials less richly outfitted than Putensen 150, lances are the most common weapons, together with shields (Adler 1993). In the early Roman period, both one-sided and two-sided swords were in use. Battle axes occur occasionally in graves.
Along with graves, the great weapon deposits of northern Germany, Denmark, and southern Sweden provide rich information about armaments and military organization (Jensen, Jørgensen, and Hansen 2003). About thirty such deposits have been identified, all apparently made in the course of ritual activities that celebrated the defeat of an enemy. Analyses of the find at Illerup have documented deposition events that occurred about A.D. 200 (Ilkjaer 1997). There archaeologists recovered 225 swords, 1,410 lances and spears, and several hundred shields. On the basis of the material from which shield bosses were made, archaeologists have identified a three-tier hierarchy of military rank. Six bosses were made of silver, another six (some bronze, some iron) were covered with gold foil, these twelve representing high officers. Thirty bosses were bronze, the equipment of lower-status officers. More than 350 shield bosses were made of iron, representing the equipment of the rank-and-file soldiers. Twelve sets of horse harness gear attest to a small equestrian component. A high proportion of the swords at Illerup and other deposits were of Roman manufacture, often with factory stamps at the upper end of the blade. One explanation of this phenomenon is that many soldiers from Denmark served as auxiliary troops with the Roman armies, often under the command of their local Germanic leaders, and brought home with them the weapons that they had used during their service. Another is that the swords were captured from Roman soldiers, as the northern warriors fought against them on the side of Rome’s enemies along the frontiers.
LATER CONFRONTATIONS AND CHANGE ON THE RHINE AND UPPER DANUBE FRONTIERS
Several conflicts along the frontiers between the mid-second and fifth centuries played major roles in Roman thinking about the transfrontier peoples and influenced Roman military tactics. The Marcomannic Wars (A.D. 166–180) were a well-documented series of conflicts on the upper and middle Danube. According to textual accounts, a series of peoples, of whom the Marcomanni and Quadi were the most prominent, attacked points along the frontier from Regensburg eastward, in some cases penetrating far into Roman territory. The invaders were able to destroy a number of Roman military bases as well as civilian settlements. Roman forces launched counteroffenses from Carnuntum, near Vienna in Austria, and other sites, and many frontier bases, such as Regensburg, were strengthened at this time.
According to the historical tradition based on textual sources, the limes fell to the invading Alamanni during the years 259–260, and following that event, Rome reconfigured its frontier lines at the upper Rhine and the upper Danube, where they had been before the conquest of the agri decumates. But a research project headed by H.-P. Kuhnen (1992) found no archaeological trace of violent incursions associated with that event. Instead, the evidence suggests that the political change happened primarily as the result of the gradual adoption by inhabitants of the region of material culture and lifestyles of the peoples beyond the frontier.
In 357 the Emperor Julian led his army to victory over a group of Alamanni at Strasbourg, an event that Ammianus Marcellinus described as a major accomplishment in the subduing of Germanic warrior bands, but which many modern historians regard as less significant (Heather 2006). According to Ammianus’s account, the Roman army of some thirteen thousand men defeated thirty-five thousand enemy fighters.
During the late Roman period, from the mid-third to the mid-fifth century, increasing similarities can be seen between the weapons used by Roman troops along the frontiers and by warriors on the other side of the boundary (Garbsch 1976). Many swords wielded by Germanic soldiers beyond the frontier were made in shapes similar to that of the Roman short sword (gladius). One-edged swords went out of favor. In the late Roman period, Germanic armies began to employ archers, apparently in response to the Roman archers they faced. In part this increasing uniformity resulted from each side adopting military practices from the other, in order to compete effectively on the field of battle. But service by Germanic soldiers in the auxiliary forces of the Roman army also played a part. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish “Roman” from “Germanic” soldiers during the final decades of the Roman period. The complexities are especially well illustrated in the cemeteries of the late third and fourth centuries along the Danube at Regensburg and Straubing. In the cemetery at Straubing-Azlburg I, for example, some late third-century graves contain typical provincial Roman grave goods, such as oil lamps, glass vessels, and ceramic urns, while others have in them objects characteristic of practices beyond the frontier, such as iron knives and strike-a-lights. This pattern of “Roman style” graves and “transfrontier barbarian” graves side by side continued in the cemeteries of this region throughout the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries (Prammer 1989).
TRANSFRONTIER PEOPLES: NORTH OF THE MIDDLE AND LOWER DANUBE
In the early Roman period, peoples known to the Romans as Sarmatians and Dacians were among the Empire’s principal opponents on the middle and lower Danube. While the Dacians were understood as indigenous and pursued a way of life not unlike the Germanic groups to the west, the Sarmatians were believed to have migrated into Europe from the steppe lands of western Asia, like their predecessors the Scythians. Until the second half of the second century, they lived in small communities with little indication of broader political organization. The economy of Sarmatian communities was based on the raising of livestock, and their way of life retained a nomadic character (Sulimirski 1970). Craft production in a variety of materials is well documented, and imported ornaments and other objects attest to interactions with neighboring peoples. Before the middle of the second century, Sarmatian society seems to have been essentially egalitarian in character. But much changed in the latter half of that century (Eggers 2004; Ioniṭă2004b).
While in the earlier period leadership of communities seems to have been in the hands of a local chief, in the later period a king was recognized. Between the late second and fourth centuries, Sarmatian groups moved gradually westward, partly in search of new pastures for their livestock and partly in response to the movement of new peoples coming in from the east, including some linked with the Goths. A group of Sarmatians known as the Iazyges, based on the middle Danube in the plain of modern Hungary, are mentioned as participants in the Marcomannic Wars.
Sarmatian fighting techniques were based on mounted warfare. Roman armies in the middle and lower Danube regions had to contend with these horse-riding warriors wearing battle armor and fighting with lances and long swords (Bishop and Coulston 2006: 205–6). These tactics and armaments influenced both Roman and Gothic military practices during the third and fourth centuries.
The importance of warfare among these people is apparent in the men’s graves, which often included swords and daggers, and sometimes arrowheads. Harness equipment was sometimes present. Women’s graves were often more richly outfitted than men’s and included metal fibulae, bracelets, and earrings; amber, glass, and stone beads; bronze mirrors; and pottery, glass, or metal vessels.
In the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, the groups with whom Rome fought most consistently and most significantly in the middle and lower Danube frontier regions were known to them as Goths, Huns, Avars, and Slavs. The Goths are considered of Germanic origin, the others are associated with central Asian peoples. Throughout the Roman period, the transfrontier regions along the Danube are characterized archaeologically by great diversity and change. Links eastward, with peoples associated with horseback riding and cavalry warfare are common. In this complex region, it is very difficult to draw clear connections between the written sources and the material evidence.
The archaeological manifestation of peoples commonly associated with the Goths is known as the Sântana-de-Mureş-Černjachov Culture, named after cemeteries in Transylvania (Romania) and Ukraine, respectively (Ioniṭă 2004a). Many settlement sites have been identified, but little excavation has taken place on them. Fireplaces, ovens, and storage pits indicate a way of life and economy similar to those of the Germanic groups east of the Rhine. Kilns for firing pottery and workshop debris from metalsmithing, bone carving, and the making of glass ornaments represent industrial activities of these communities.
Both inhumation and cremation were practiced in the cemeteries, with inhumation predominating in the later periods. Common grave goods include pairs of fibulae (especially in women’s burials) and other personal ornaments, toilet items, and pottery vessels that held food and beverages. In contrast to the Sarmatian cemeteries, in Gothic culture weapons were rarely placed in graves. Wealthy burials, sometimes housed in elaborate wooden chambers, contained such luxuries as Roman-made ceramic, glass, and bronze vessels; silver ornaments; and gold neck, arm, and finger rings. Roman coins were brought into these transfrontier regions in large numbers and are found individually and in hoards, but rarely in graves. Other imports from the Roman world included wine and olive oil, brought in ceramic amphorae.
The Goths were one of Rome’s most formidable enemies during the later Roman period (Kulikowski 2007). Like the peoples known as Alamanni and Franks along the Rhine and upper Danube, the Goths seem to have been comprised of a variety of groups who joined together in a confederation on the lower Danube. At the same time that the Marcomannic Wars took place on the upper Danube, groups on the middle and lower Danube also made incursions across the river into Roman territory. While the textual sources portray these invasions as separate events involving different peoples—Marcomanni, Quadi, Goths, and others (the battle of Adrianople in 378 was particularly well remembered, as recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus)—the archaeological evidence suggests that all were part of a single phenomenon reflecting large-scale political and social changes brought about through interaction with the Roman Empire.
Texts mention the appearance in Europe of the Huns at the end of the fourth century, and they present Roman forces with many challenges throughout the first half of the fifth century (Heather 2006). Their military tactics emphasized light weapons and rapid movement, and they were famous for both their horsemanship and their archery. Written sources note that their warriors shot arrows from a distance, then rode into battle with either bow and arrow or sword to engage at closer range. Graves associated with the Hunnic settlement of the middle Danube region are distinguished by bows, bronze cauldrons, and the practice of cranial deformation, accomplished by tightly wrapping babies’ heads with cloth bands.
In the sixth century Slavs and Avars are mentioned on the middle and lower Danube. Like other groups cited above, the people known as Slavs are thought to have been made up of diverse groups from eastern and northern Europe. Their settlements were small and comprised of plain wooden houses. Pottery and metal tools tended to be quite simple in character. Unlike many of the groups mentioned above, ornaments and objects imported from outside are rare on sites associated with Slavs. The name Avar was given to horse-keeping nomadic peoples who arrived in the Hungarian Plain in the early part of the sixth century. Avar burials are characterized by numerous ornaments from the bridles of horses, along with bows, stirrups, lances, and ornate belt buckles. The important role of horseback riding and bow-and-arrow combat is characteristic of many of these peoples who migrated from western Asia and eastern Europe and settled in the Danubian lands.
FRONTIER-WIDE PATTERNS: NETWORKS OF INTERACTION
While the Roman written sources distinguish different peoples by name and location, and the archaeology shows regional variation in material culture, burial evidence shows that warrior elites throughout the transfrontier regions shared values and practices. These patterns indicate both common cultural traditions and maintenance of contacts among these enemies of Rome. Common to the rich burials in the transfrontier regions are sets of weapons (swords, spears and lances, shields, ornate fittings for weapon belts), horse-riding equipment (harness fittings, saddles), feasting equipment (both Roman imports and local vessels), and gold and silver ornaments (by the fifth century with garnet inset into gold). Well-documented examples of these practices include graves at Marwedel on the Elbe around A.D. 125 (Laux 1992), Łęg Piekarski in Poland around A.D. 150 (Wielowiejski 1989), Mušov in Moravia around A.D. 175 (Peška and Tejral 2002), Gommern in northeastern Germany around A.D. 300 (Becker 1993), Beroun-Závodí in Bohemia around A.D. 380 (Tejral 1999: 239–41), Kemathen in northern Bavaria around A.D. 415 (Keller and Rieder 1992), Szirmabesenyö in Hungary around 425 (Tejral 1999: 257), and Apahida in Romania around A.D. 475 (Horedt and Protase 1972). The continuity through time and space of specific burial practices reflected in these and hundreds of other rich graves of the transfrontier zone shows a degree of contact and communication among its enemies that Rome did not comprehend.
NEW CENTERS IN THE NORTH
Many thousands of Roman imports, including bronze vessels, fine pottery and glassware, and coins, arrived in northern and northeastern Europe between the first and fifth centuries A.D., attesting to intensive commercial interactions between transfrontier peoples and the Roman provinces (Hansen 1995). New centers of economic and political activity emerged among groups that interacted with the Roman world, such as at Gudme on the Danish island of Fyn (Nielsen, Randsborg, and Thrane 1994), Uppåkra in southern Sweden (Larsson 2002), and Jakuszowice in southern Poland (Godłowski 1995). At these and other places, larger and more complex communities developed than had existed in pre-Roman times, and the association of Roman objects at these places indicates a strong Roman component to the changes. The larger-scale political organization apparent at these centers is directly related to changes in patterns of military activity. They emerged as central places of political, economic, and ritual importance in the third and fourth centuries, the same time that Roman authors first write of the great “confederations” of peoples beyond the frontiers. The results of archaeological studies of these centers indicate that these peoples were much more highly organized politically and economically than the Roman texts suggest.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adler, W. 1993. Studien zur germanischen Bewaffnung. Bonn.
Asskamp, R., and R. Wiechers. 1996. Westfälisches Römermuseum Haltern. Münster.
Becker, A., and G. Rasbach. 2003. “Die spätaugusteische Stadtgründung in Lahnau-Waldgirmes.” Germania 81: 147–99.
Becker, M. 1993. “Die römischen Fundstücke aus dem germanischen ‘Fürstengrab’ der spätrömischen Kaiserzeit bei Gommern, Lkr. Burg.” Germania 71: 405–17.
Bishop, M. C., and J. C. N. Coulston. 2006. Roman military equipment from the Punic wars to the fall of Rome. 2d ed. Oxford.
Burns, T. S. 2003. Rome and the barbarians, 100B.C.–A.D. 400. Baltimore.
Chamberlain, A. T., and M. P. Pearson. 2001. Earthly remains: The history and science of preserved human bodies. New York.
Collis, J. 1995. “The first towns,” in M. Green (ed.), The Celtic world. London, 159–75.
Dušek, S. 2002. “Oberdorla.” Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 21: 466–76.
Eggers, M. 2004. “Sarmaten: Historisches.” Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 26: 503–8.
Ferris, I. M. 2000. Enemies of Rome: Barbarians through Roman eyes. Thrupp.
Fischer, T., G. Precht, and J. Tejral (eds.). 1999. Germanen beiderseits des spätantiken Limes. Cologne.
Garbsch, J. 1976. “Bewaffnung der Römer in der jüng. Kaiserzeit.” Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 2: 421–3.
Godłowski, K. 1995. “Das ‘Fürstengrab’ des 5. Jhs. und der ‘Fürstensitz’ in Jakuszowice in Südpolen,” in F. Vallet and M. Kazanski (eds.), La noblesse romaine et les chefs barbares du IIIe au VIIe siècle. Paris, 155–79.
Hansen, U. L. 1995. Himlingøje—Seeland—Europa: Ein Gräberfeld der jüngeren römischen Kaiserzeit auf Seeland, seine Bedeutung und internationalen Beziehungen. Copenhagen.
Heather, P. 2006. The fall of the Roman empire. Oxford.
Horedt, K., and D. Protase. 1972. “Das zweite Fürstengrab von Apahida (Siebenbürgen).” Germania 50: 174–220.
Ilkjaer, J. 1997. “Gegner und Verbündete in Nordeuropa während des 1. bis 4. Jahrhunderts,” in A. N. Jørgensen and B. L. Clausen (eds.), Military aspects of Scandinavian society in a European perspective, A.D. 1–1300. Copenhagen, 55–63.
———. 2003. “Danish war booty sacrifices,” in Jørgensen, Storgaard, and Thomsen 2003: 44–65.
Ioniṭă, I. 2004a. “Sântana-de-Mureş-Černjachov-Kultur.” Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 26: 445–55.
———. 2004b. “Sarmaten: Archäologisches.” Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 26: 508–12.
Jensen, X. P., L. Jørgensen, and U. L. Hansen. 2003. “The Germanic army: Warriors, soldiers and officers,” in Jørgensen, Storgaard, and Thomsen 2003: 310–29.
Jørgensen, L., B. Storgaard, and L. G. Thomsen (eds.). 2003. Spoils of victory: The north in the shadow of the Roman empire. Copenhagen.
Keller, E., and K. H. Rieder. 1992. “Eine germanische Kriegerbestattung des frühen 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. aus Kemathen.” Das archäologische Jahr in Bayern 1991: 132–7.
Kuhnen, H.-P. (ed.). 1992. Gestürmt-Geräumt-Vergessen? Der Limesfall und das Ende der Römerherrschaft in Südwestdeutschland. Stuttgart.
Kulikowski, M. 2007. Rome’s Gothic wars from the third century to Alaric. Cambridge.
Kunow, J. 1987. “Die Militärgeschichte Niedergermaniens,” in H. G. Hor (ed.), Die Römer in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Stuttgart, 27–109.
Larsson, L. 2002. “Uppåkra: Research on a central place,” in B. Hårdh and L. Larsson (eds.), Central places in the migration and Merovingian periods. Stockholm, 19–30.
Laux, F. 1992. “Überlegungen zu den germanischen Fürstengräbern bei Marwedel, Gde. Hitzacker, Kr. Lücknow-Dannenberg.” Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 73: 315–76.
Nielsen, P. O., K. Randsborg, and H. Thrane (eds.). 1994. The archaeology of Gudme and Lundeborg. Copenhagen.
Peška, J., and J. Tejral (eds.). 2002. Das germanische Königsgrab von Mušov in Mähren. 3 vols. Mainz.
Pleiner, R. 1993. The Celtic sword. Oxford.
Prammer, J. 1989. Das römische Straubing. Munich.
Randsborg, K. 1995. Hjortspring: Warfare and sacrifice in early Europe. Aarhus.
Roggenbuck, P. 1983. “Das Grab 150 von Putensen, Kr. Harburg.” Hammaburg 6: 133–41.
Schultze, E. 1986. “Zur Verbreitung von Waffenbeigaben bei den germanischen Stämmen um den Beginn unserer Zeitrechnung.” Jahrbuch der Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg 1986: 93–117.
Schuster, M. (ed.). 1996. Die Begegnung mit dem Fremden. Stuttgart.
Sulimirski, T. 1970. The Sarmatians. London.
Tejral, J. 1999. “Die spätantiken militarischen Eliten beiderseits der norisch-pannonischen Grenze aus der Sicht der Grabfunde,” in Fischer, Precht, and Tejral, 217–91.
Timpe, D. 1996. “Rom und die Barbaren des Nordens,” in Schuster, 34–50.
Ulbert, G. 1976. “Bewaffnung der Zeit nach Chr. Geb.” Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 2: 416–21.
Wells, P. S. 1999. The barbarians speak: How the conquered peoples shaped Roman Europe. Princeton.
———. 2003. The battle that stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the slaughter of the legions in the Teutoburg forest. New York.
Wielowiejski, J. 1989. “Die römerzeitlichen Silbergefässe in Polen.” Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 70: 191–241.