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The Making of the Slavs - Florin Curta
Cambridge University Press
0521802024 - The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube
Region, c. 500-700
Florin Curta
Excerpt
More information
INTRODUCTION
Mein Freund, das ist Asien! Es sollte mich wundern, es sollte mich hц ch- lichst wundern, wenn da nicht Wendisch-Slawisch-Sarmatisches im Spiele gewesen wд re.
(Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg)
To many, Eastern Europe is nearly synonymous with Slavic Europe.
The equation is certainly not new.
To Hegel, the “East of Europe” was the house of the “great Sclavonic nation,” a body of peoples which “has not appeared as an independent element in the series of phases that Reason has assumed in the World”.1
If necessary, Europe may be divided into western and eastern zones along a number of lines, according to numerous criteria.
Historians, however, often work with more than one set of criteria.
The debate about the nature of Eastern Europe sprang up in Western historiography in the days of the Cold War, but despite Oskar Halecki’s efforts explicitly to address the question of a specific chronology and history of Eastern Europe, many preferred to write the history of Slavic
Europe, rather than that of Eastern Europe.2
Today, scholarly interest in Eastern Europe focuses especially on the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries, the period of nationalism.
The medieval history of the area is given comparatively less attention, which often amounts to slightly more than total neglect.
For most students in medieval studies, Eastern Europe is marginal and East European topics simply exotica.
One reason for this historiographical reticence may be the uneasiness to treat the medieval history of the Slavs as (Western) European history.
Like Settembrini, the Italian humanist of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, many still point to the ambiguity of those Slavs, whom the eighteenth- century philosophes already viewed as “Oriental” barbarians.3
When Slavs come up in works on the medieval history of Europe, they are usually the marginalized, the victims, or the stubborn pagans.
In a recent and brilliant book on the “making of Europe,” the Slavs, like the Irish, appear only as the object of conquest and colonization, which shaped medieval Europe.
Like many others in more recent times, the episodic role of the Slavs in the history of Europe is restricted to that of victims of the “occid- entation,” the shift towards the ways and norms of Romano-Germanic civilization.4
The conceptual division of Europe leaves the Slavs out of the main “core” of European history, though not too far from its advancing frontiers of “progress” and “civilization.”
Who were those enigmatic Slavs?
What made them so diffcult to represent by the traditional means of Western historiography? If Europe itself was “made” by its conquerors and settlers, who made the Slavs? What were the historical conditions in which this ethnic name was first used and for what purpose?
How was a Slavic ethnicity formed and under what circumstances did the Slavs come into being?
Above all, this book aims to answer some of these questions.
What binds together its many individual arguments is an attempt to explore the nature and construction of the Slavic ethnic identity in the light of the current anthropolog- ical research on ethnicity.
Two kinds of sources are considered for this approach: written and archaeological.
This book is in fact a combined product of archaeological experience, mostly gained during field work in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and Germany, and work with written sources, particularly with those in Greek.
I have conducted exhaustive research on most of the topics surveyed in those chapters which deal with the archaeological evidence.
Field work in Sighiёsoara (1986-91) and Tв rgёsor (1986-88) greatly contributed to the stance taken in this book.
A study on the Romanian archaeological literature on the subject and two studies of “Slavic” bow fibulae were published separately.5
A third line of research grew out of a project developed for the American Numismatic Society Summer Seminar in New York (1995).6
With this variety of sources, I was able to observe the history of the area during the sixth and seventh centuries from a diversity of viewpoints.
Defining this area proved, however, more difficult. Instead of the traditional approach, that of opposing the barbarian Slavs to the civilization of the early Byzantine Empire, I preferred to look at the Danube limes as a complex interface.
Understanding transformation on the Danube frontier required under- standing of almost everything happening both north and south of that frontier.
Geographically, the scope of inquiry is limited to the area comprised between the Carpathian basin, to the west, and the Middle
Dnieper region, to the east.
To the south, the entire Balkan peninsula is taken into consideration in the discussion of the sixth-century Danube limes and of the Slavic migration.
The northern limit was the most difficult to establish, because of both the lack of written sources and a very complicated network of dissemination of “Slavic” brooch patterns, which required familiarity with the archaeological material of sixth- and seventh-century cemeteries in Mazuria.
The lens of my research, however, was set both south and east of the Carpathian mountains, in the Lower Danube region, an area now divided between Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine.
My intention with this book is to fashion a plausible synthesis out of quite heterogeneous materials.
Its conclusion is in sharp contradiction with most other works on this topic and may appear therefore as argu- mentative, if not outright revisionist.
Instead of a great flood of Slavs coming out of the Pripet marshes, I envisage a form of group identity, which could arguably be called ethnicity and emerged in response to Justinian’s implementation of a building project on the Danube frontier and in the Balkans.
The Slavs, in other words, did not come from the north, but became Slavs only in contact with the Roman frontier.
Contemporary sources mentioning Sclavenes and Antes, probably in an attempt to make sense of the process of group identification taking place north of the Danube limes, stressed the role of “kings” and chiefs, which may have played an important role in this process.
The first chapter presents the Forschungsstand.
The historiography of the subject is vast and its survey shows why and how a particular approach to the history of the early Slavs was favored by linguistically minded his- torians and archaeologists.
This chapter also explores the impact on the historical research of the “politics of culture,” in particular of those used for the construction of nations as “imagined communities.”
The historiography of the early Slavs is also the story of how the academic discourse used the past to shape the national present.
The chapter is also intended to familiarize the reader with the anthropological model of ethnicity. The relation between material culture and ethnicity is examined, with a particular emphasis on the notion of style.
Cambridge University Press
0521802024 - The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube
Region, c. 500-700
Florin Curta
Excerpt
More information
INTRODUCTION
Mein Freund, das ist Asien! Es sollte mich wundern, es sollte mich hц ch- lichst wundern, wenn da nicht Wendisch-Slawisch-Sarmatisches im Spiele gewesen wд re.
(Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg)
To many, Eastern Europe is nearly synonymous with Slavic Europe.
The equation is certainly not new.
To Hegel, the “East of Europe” was the house of the “great Sclavonic nation,” a body of peoples which “has not appeared as an independent element in the series of phases that Reason has assumed in the World”.1
If necessary, Europe may be divided into western and eastern zones along a number of lines, according to numerous criteria.
Historians, however, often work with more than one set of criteria.
The debate about the nature of Eastern Europe sprang up in Western historiography in the days of the Cold War, but despite Oskar Halecki’s efforts explicitly to address the question of a specific chronology and history of Eastern Europe, many preferred to write the history of Slavic
Europe, rather than that of Eastern Europe.2
Today, scholarly interest in Eastern Europe focuses especially on the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries, the period of nationalism.
The medieval history of the area is given comparatively less attention, which often amounts to slightly more than total neglect.
For most students in medieval studies, Eastern Europe is marginal and East European topics simply exotica.
One reason for this historiographical reticence may be the uneasiness to treat the medieval history of the Slavs as (Western) European history.
Like Settembrini, the Italian humanist of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, many still point to the ambiguity of those Slavs, whom the eighteenth- century philosophes already viewed as “Oriental” barbarians.3
When Slavs come up in works on the medieval history of Europe, they are usually the marginalized, the victims, or the stubborn pagans.
In a recent and brilliant book on the “making of Europe,” the Slavs, like the Irish, appear only as the object of conquest and colonization, which shaped medieval Europe.
Like many others in more recent times, the episodic role of the Slavs in the history of Europe is restricted to that of victims of the “occid- entation,” the shift towards the ways and norms of Romano-Germanic civilization.4
The conceptual division of Europe leaves the Slavs out of the main “core” of European history, though not too far from its advancing frontiers of “progress” and “civilization.”
Who were those enigmatic Slavs?
What made them so diffcult to represent by the traditional means of Western historiography? If Europe itself was “made” by its conquerors and settlers, who made the Slavs? What were the historical conditions in which this ethnic name was first used and for what purpose?
How was a Slavic ethnicity formed and under what circumstances did the Slavs come into being?
Above all, this book aims to answer some of these questions.
What binds together its many individual arguments is an attempt to explore the nature and construction of the Slavic ethnic identity in the light of the current anthropolog- ical research on ethnicity.
Two kinds of sources are considered for this approach: written and archaeological.
This book is in fact a combined product of archaeological experience, mostly gained during field work in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and Germany, and work with written sources, particularly with those in Greek.
I have conducted exhaustive research on most of the topics surveyed in those chapters which deal with the archaeological evidence.
Field work in Sighiёsoara (1986-91) and Tв rgёsor (1986-88) greatly contributed to the stance taken in this book.
A study on the Romanian archaeological literature on the subject and two studies of “Slavic” bow fibulae were published separately.5
A third line of research grew out of a project developed for the American Numismatic Society Summer Seminar in New York (1995).6
With this variety of sources, I was able to observe the history of the area during the sixth and seventh centuries from a diversity of viewpoints.
Defining this area proved, however, more difficult. Instead of the traditional approach, that of opposing the barbarian Slavs to the civilization of the early Byzantine Empire, I preferred to look at the Danube limes as a complex interface.
Understanding transformation on the Danube frontier required under- standing of almost everything happening both north and south of that frontier.
Geographically, the scope of inquiry is limited to the area comprised between the Carpathian basin, to the west, and the Middle
Dnieper region, to the east.
To the south, the entire Balkan peninsula is taken into consideration in the discussion of the sixth-century Danube limes and of the Slavic migration.
The northern limit was the most difficult to establish, because of both the lack of written sources and a very complicated network of dissemination of “Slavic” brooch patterns, which required familiarity with the archaeological material of sixth- and seventh-century cemeteries in Mazuria.
The lens of my research, however, was set both south and east of the Carpathian mountains, in the Lower Danube region, an area now divided between Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine.
My intention with this book is to fashion a plausible synthesis out of quite heterogeneous materials.
Its conclusion is in sharp contradiction with most other works on this topic and may appear therefore as argu- mentative, if not outright revisionist.
Instead of a great flood of Slavs coming out of the Pripet marshes, I envisage a form of group identity, which could arguably be called ethnicity and emerged in response to Justinian’s implementation of a building project on the Danube frontier and in the Balkans.
The Slavs, in other words, did not come from the north, but became Slavs only in contact with the Roman frontier.
Contemporary sources mentioning Sclavenes and Antes, probably in an attempt to make sense of the process of group identification taking place north of the Danube limes, stressed the role of “kings” and chiefs, which may have played an important role in this process.
The first chapter presents the Forschungsstand.
The historiography of the subject is vast and its survey shows why and how a particular approach to the history of the early Slavs was favored by linguistically minded his- torians and archaeologists.
This chapter also explores the impact on the historical research of the “politics of culture,” in particular of those used for the construction of nations as “imagined communities.”
The historiography of the early Slavs is also the story of how the academic discourse used the past to shape the national present.
The chapter is also intended to familiarize the reader with the anthropological model of ethnicity. The relation between material culture and ethnicity is examined, with a particular emphasis on the notion of style.
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