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THE SLAVICIZATION OF EUROPE
Where linguistic evidence can give us very little help, however, is with chronology. We know the Slavic language family emerged relatively recently, but what does that mean? Some experts argue that the split with Baltic-speakers began only in the middle of the first millennium AD, at the precise moment when Slavic-speakers begin to appear in our sources. Others would place it much earlier – by maybe even a thousand or more years. This difference of opinion matters when it comes to trying to understand the Slavicization of Europe which unfolded after c.500 AD. If we should be envisaging very few Slavic-speakers at that date because the linguistic split was just beginning, so that Europe’s Slavic-speakers may have amounted to no more than the Sclavenes and Antae of Korchak and Penkovka fame, then the broad Slavic domination of Europe achieved by c.900 AD has to be accounted for from an extremely restricted demographic base. If, on the contrary, the Slavic linguistic family had emerged much earlier, the Sclavenes and Antae might only be two particular subgroups from within a far larger Slavic-speaking population. At this point, there is no way to be certain, but most of the experts would place the emergence of the Slavic language family much further back in time than the mid-first millennium AD, and it does make much better sense of the broader evidence for Slavic expansion to suppose that Slavic-speakers were not just restricted to Moldavia and Wallachia at that point.14 Nonetheless, it is worth keeping in mind both possibilities when trying to comprehend the explosion of Slavic dominance along its three main trajectories: south into the Balkans, west and north to the Elbe and Baltic, and east and north to the Volga and the fringes of the Arctic tundra.
The Balkans
For Slavic expansion into the Balkans, there is a relatively full selection of broadly contemporary east Roman and Byzantine historical sources. Until recent archaeological materials came online, they provided much the earliest body of information of any quality about early Slavic history. As a result, and this always happens when too many clever people have been studying a limited amount of information for too long, the subject area came to resemble a famous chess match, each intellectual gambit with its well-rehearsed counter. We have no need, fortunately, to become entangled in these set-pieces, since the broader outlines of Slavic expansion into the Balkans are clear enough.
As we have just seen, Slavic raiding into the Balkans increased in scope and ambition towards the middle of the sixth century. In 547/8, a large raiding party spread south-west from the Danube through Illyricum as far south as the major Adriatic port of Epidamnos (Dyrrhachium). Procopius reports that these raiders captured many strongholds, a phenomenon not previously witnessed. The success encouraged further attacks. The next year, three thousand Slavs crossed the Danube and advanced on the River Hebrus. There they defeated some local Roman forces and captured the fairly major settlement of Topirus, by luring the city’s garrison into an ambush. Some thirteen thousand male inhabitants are said to have been killed in the subsequent sack, with many women and children taken prisoner. The year 550 then saw an unprecedentedly large force move south past Naissus, with the highly ambitious aim of capturing Thessalonica, the heavily fortified regional capital of the western Balkans. Eventually the raiders turned aside, moving through the mountains into Dalmatia and scattering in front of the major Roman army that was on its way north through the Balkans to complete the conquest of Ostrogothic Italy. When the army had passed, the raiders doubled back to the western Balkans, defeating a second, improvised Roman force at Hadrianople. Following this victory, the raiders spread to within a day’s march of the imperial capital of Constantinople itself.15
There is no good evidence, though, that any of these Slavs were actually settling on a permanent or semi-permanent basis inside the imperial frontier at this point. The Antae were granted the old Roman fortress of Turris by treaty in 540, but this was north of the Danube and the whole point of the arrangement was to block further raiding on the part of the Sclavenes. Some Slavic place names, perhaps, figure in lists Procopius supplies of Balkan forts repaired or built by the Emperor Justinian (527–65), but, if so, the fact they are attached to forts might suggest that they were the outcome of authorized settlements of Slavic recruits into the Roman army rather than any proper migration as such. In any case, Slavs were not operating in sufficient force in these years to attempt a formal conquest of any part of the Balkans, or to capture major centres such as Thessalonica.16 The overall situation was radically transformed from about 570, however, by the rise of the Avar Empire.
The Avars figure so strongly in what follows that they require some introduction. They were the next major wave of originally nomadic horse warriors, after the Huns, to sweep off the Great Eurasian Steppe and build an empire in central Europe. Thankfully we know rather more about them than about the Huns. The Avars spoke a Turkic language and had previously starred as the dominant force behind a major nomadic confederation on the fringes of China. In the earlier sixth century they had lost this position to a rival force, the so-called Western Turks, and arrived on the outskirts of Europe as political refugees, announcing themselves with an embassy that appeared at Justinian’s court in 558. The Emperor saw them as a new pawn in the great diplomatic game of divide and rule by which he sought to prevent really serious trouble in his north-eastern approaches. This, however, proved hopelessly over-optimistic. Not content with the role assigned them, the Avars quickly created an imperial power block of real menace. Attaching Bulgar nomads to their train, by 570 they had relocated to the Great Hungarian Plain, the old stomping ground of Attila, where they added Gepids to a growing list of conquered subject peoples. Their arrival also prompted the Lombards to leave for safer Italian domains on the other side of the Alps.17 If all this wasn’t enough, the arrival of the Avars also marks a watershed in Slavic history.
Like many of their Middle and Lower Danubian neighbours, the Slavs of the Carpathian region found themselves targets of aggressive Avar ambition. The Antae seem to have suffered particularly at their hands in a punishing campaign of 604, which destroyed their political independence. On one level, the rise of the Avars meant that some Slavic groups now sought to move south of the Danube permanently, to escape their domination. In this area, massive Avar attacks on the east Roman Empire, particularly widespread in the 570s and 580s and again in the 610s, also provided such Slavic groups with much greater opportunity to pursue these ambitions free from Roman counterattack. At the same time, the Constantinopolitan authorities were having to defend their eastern territories in Syria, Palestine and Egypt against Persian and then Arab assault. The latter were a much richer source of tax revenues than the war-torn Balkans and always received – naturally enough – a higher priority.
The new era announced itself in the 580s. The Emperor Maurice (582–602) was embroiled in a major war with the Persian Empire in the Near East, which sucked most mobile Roman forces away from the Balkans and allowed the Avars to launch a series of severe and wide-ranging attacks in Thrace. At the same time, Sclavenes mounted successive highly destructive campaigns in Thrace and Illyricum, the first really threatening assault upon Thessalonica, regional capital of Illyricum, occurring in 586. In the same year, ‘the fifth year of the Emperor Maurice’, one of the famous texts, the Chronicle of Monemvasia, even reports that Slavs took over all the Peloponnese except for an eastern coastal strip that remained in east Roman hands. According to the Chronicle, this caused a mass evacuation of ‘all the Greeks’ from the captured zones: the citizens of Patras went to Rhegia in Calabria (southern Italy), those of Argos to the island of Urok, the Corinthians to Aegina, the Spartans to both Sicily and to Monemvasia itself, a rocky, defensible peninsula in the southern Peloponnese.
The terminal Slavicization of the Peloponnese, however, did not happen so early. The Chronicle of Monemvasia is a late text and, although preserving some authentic information, it kaleidoscopes the process of Slavic settlement. In the 590s, with the Persian War successfully won, Maurice was able to counterattack in the Balkans. Diplomatically, he paid the Antae to attack the raiding Sclavenes, while his armies inflicted major defeats on the main Avar host in 593–5 and again from 599. In 602, his forces were even operating north of the Lower Danube, mounting a series of pre-emptive strikes which destroyed some whole Slavic groups. Letters of Pope Gregory I from the same period demonstrate that Church structures were restored in Illyricum generally, and in the Peloponnese in particular. While they certainly occurred, therefore, initial Slavic settlements of the 580s were swallowed up by Maurice’s counterattacks.18
But this wasn’t the end of the story. From 604, repeating the pattern of the 580s, Maurice’s successors Phocas and Heraclius found themselves embroiled in a war with Persia, which by the early 610s was going diabolically badly, with control lost of pretty much the whole of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Every military resource available had to be turned eastwards, opening the way to further Avar and Slav attacks on an unprecedented scale. In 614, disaster struck. Thessalonica avoided capture by a whisker. Salona, on the other hand, the largest Roman centre on the Dalmatian coast, fell into Avar and Slav hands, along with many of the Empire’s key cities in the northern Balkans, such as Naissus and Serdica. The action then spread as far south as the Peloponnese, when – amongst other things – Slavic raiders took to coastal waters in vast flotillas of dugout canoes. Constantinople itself eventually came under threat in a week-long Avar siege in 626. Alongside this military assault, Slavic settlement was gathering momentum.19
Heraclius eventually won his war with Persia, but was immediately faced with the rise of militant Arab Islam. In contrast to the 590s, there was no opportunity this time to repair any of the damage done to the fabric of Roman life in the Balkans. Consequently, the disasters of 614 marked the definitive collapse of the Danube frontier of the old east Roman Empire, and paved the way for Slavic settlement across most of the Balkans: all the way from the Dobrudja in the north-east to the Peloponnese in the south-west. It is impossible to reconstruct a detailed narrative of this settlement process, but a series of vignettes, provided by various sources, leave us in no doubt as to its scale. In Macedonia in the northern Balkans, the Miracles of St Demetrius shows that large-scale Slavic settlement in the region of the Strymon River around Thessalonica was well established by the mid-seventh century. From one of its episodes it emerges that several Slavic groups were settled in the vicinity of the city by about 670, a point confirmed by later events. In the late 680s, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II was able, if temporarily, to take the offensive in Macedonia, subduing the Slavic tribes of the region and restoring central imperial control. As part of the process he transferred reportedly as many as thirty thousand Slavs to Asia Minor. The reports also find some archaeological reflection. Seventh-century Macedonia and adjacent areas to the north did not see the spread of fully formed Korchak-type cultural systems across their landscapes, but many isolated discoveries of Korchak materials have been made in cemeteries and find-spots across Serbia and Croatia – Bakar Muntjac, Osijek, Stinjevac, Vinkovci.20
Further east, in Thrace, Slavic settlement is equally well attested. When the first Bulgar state was established north of the Haemus Mountains in c.680, seven Slavic tribes already inhabited the region. They were resettled in an arc in the uplands around what became the Bulgar heartlands on the Danubian plain. Here the pattern of archaeological remains is different from that in Macedonia. Isolated Slavic ceramics, mixed with indigenous materials, have been discovered in sixth-century levels in cemeteries and rural zones around some of the fortresses of the frontier region, particularly Durostorum and Bononia. But excavations in northern Bulgaria have also uncovered sites such as Popina, where Korchak-type materials appear with no admixture of foreign imports. This and related sites used to be dated to the sixth century, but have now been shown to be later, postdating the definitive collapse of the Danube frontier in 614, which clearly marked the beginning of full-scale Slavic settlement in this part of the Balkans too. In archaeological as well as historical terms, the situation was then transformed by the arrival of the originally nomadic and Turkic-speaking Bulgars, but these further developments sat on the back of an earlier, large-scale Slavic settlement.21
Literary and archaeological evidence also attests to a substantial Slavic presence further south, right in the heart of what is now Greece and the Peloponnese. The Miracles of St Demetrius mention in passing more Slavs, the Belegezitae, established near Thessaly and Demetrias. Later texts specifically mention other Slavs in the Peloponnese, not least the Milingas and Ezeritae in the vicinity of Patras, who in the early ninth century revolted against the tribute payments imposed upon them by a (slightly) resurgent Byzantine state. The archaeological echoes of this Slavic presence more closely resembled those of Macedonia in the north-west Balkans than those in Thrace in the north-east. Just a few, relatively isolated, finds of Korchak materials have been made, with no sign that the immigrant Slavs imported with them a complete material-cultural system. And some of the materials that used to be attributed to them probably had other origins anyway. A cemetery at Olympia, for instance, turned up twelve armed cremation burials of individuals interred in Korchak-type funerary urns. These are in all probability east Roman soldiers, if perhaps of Slavic origin, rather than independent immigrant Slavs. More convincing Slavic ceramics have been found at Argos, Messina and Demetrius, and Greece as a whole, like the rest of the Balkans, has thrown up a selection of the ‘fingered’ style of fibula brooch which was often, but not exclusively, sported by Slavs in the early medieval period. There are other possible explanations for this relative lack of Slavic materials. Above all, the first classical archaeologists, who were completely uninterested in medieval remains, ravaged most of the major Greek sites in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and simply threw anything post-classical away. Nonetheless, it does appear that, again, the advance of Slavic groups into Greece proper did not generate entire Korchak-type material-cultural systems.22
By the mid-seventh century, Slavic settlement was already affecting more or less the entire Balkans, but this is perhaps not yet the full story. According to one source, the north-west Balkans saw a further distinct wave of Slavic settlement. The De Administrando Imperio of Constantine Porphyryogenitus records that a first wave of undifferentiated Slavs originally settled in the lands now largely divided between Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia as Avar subjects, at the time when Avar rule was establishing itself in central Europe (from c.560 onwards). They were followed somewhat later, but still in the time of Heraclius (610–41), by two, more-organized, Slavic groupings – the Serbs and Croats – who arrived from the north to expel most of the Avars from that region (causing the others to submit) and establish their own rule instead, over Serbia and Dalmatia respectively. In the case of the Croats, the De Administrando preserves two versions of the story, one obviously Byzantine, the other Croat. These vary – as you might predict – on whether the Croats were invited to the Balkans or acted on their own initiative, and whether or not they promised to acknowledge Byzantine overlordship as a condition of settlement.
The stories are famous, but it is difficult to know what to make of them. Serb and Croat nationalists have long cherished them as the origin stories of their ‘peoples’, arriving as fully formed units in the Balkans landscape. The problems they pose, however, are obvious. By virtue of being unique, they lack corroboration. They also occur in a comparatively late source, the De Administrando being a mid-tenth-century text, and their telling has a distinctly legendary tone: the Croats are led south by a family of five brothers. Not surprisingly, they have often been rejected outright. On the other hand, tenth-century Arab sources confirm the existence of other Serbs and Croats north of the Carpathians at that point, and there is nothing inherently impossible in the general action outlined. If it is accepted that they possess a kernel of truth, the stories suggest that some more organized Slavic groups asserted their independence from Avar rule by moving south into the Balkans and establishing some kind of a relationship with the Byzantine state before the death of Heraclius. Indeed, the northern Serbs (or Sorbs) themselves threw off Avar domination – if perhaps temporarily – in alliance with an ex-Frankish merchant, Samo, in about 630; that is, precisely in the reign of Heraclius. This was, in fact, a moment of general crisis for the Avar Empire following its huge defeat at the siege of Constantinople in 626, and the consequent loss of prestige for its ruling Khagan. Substantial numbers of its Bulgar subjects also escaped Avar domination by fleeing into Italy at this point, so that the idea that other Slavic groups were doing the same, either with or without a Byzantine invitation, is perfectly plausible.23
But if this much is plausible, the seventh-century Serbs and Croats were not whole peoples responsible for the complete repopulation of these parts of the Balkans. As we have seen, the better-documented instances of first-millennium migration have never thrown up a case of total demographic replacement: some indigenous population elements always survive. And there is in fact a possible extra twist to this story. The group names ‘Serb’ and ‘Croat’, together with some of the personal names reported of their leaders, might derive from Iranian rather than from the Slavic language group. It has been suggested, therefore, that both groups may have originally been dominated by cores of Iranian nomads.24 This is not inherently impossible. It could have come about, for instance, by Slavic groups established in the northern Black Sea region becoming part of a military confederation dominated by Iranian nomads. There is not the slightest shred of narrative evidence to support such a view, but this is how nomads like the Huns tended to operate on the fringes of Europe. That the Serbs and Croats asserted their independence at Avar expense in the reign of Heraclius, perhaps around 630 when their Empire was in crisis, and that the Byzantines used them as part of a broader strategy for limiting Avar power in the Balkans, all seems likely enough. Whether we should envisage them as already entirely Slavic at this point, or as a structured confederation with distinct groups of Iranian-speaking nomads at their cores, is entirely unclear. It is also unclear whether their arrival represented a further major wave of Slavic immigration into the north-western Balkans, or whether they functioned essentially as an organizing element for Slavic groups already present there but formerly subject to Avar domination. If the latter, this would make them not unlike the Bulgars of the eastern Balkans.25
Central Europe
Slavic expansion into central Europe between the Elbe and the Vistula was equally thorough. The key proof text is a short and unpretentious document of staggering historical importance: the so-called Anonymous Bavarian Geographer. Dating from the 820s, it was written by an anonymous geographer working somewhere in Bavaria. It surveys and names the Frankish Empire’s neighbours between the Rivers Elbe and Oder, and even attempts to give some indication of their relative power, each unit being given a rating in terms of the numbers of ‘cities’ (civitates) that it comprised (Map 18). What these cities may have looked like is a point we will return to in Chapter 1. The central point is that all of these units have Slavic names. We know from other sources that some Slavic-speakers had even penetrated west of the Elbe at certain points before the rise of the Carolingians, but these immigrants were never numerous enough in these regions to challenge the dominance of Germanic-speaking Saxons and Thuringians. TheAnonymous gives out pretty much at the River Oder, and knowledge of areas still further to the east, between the Oder and the Vistula, was perhaps not yet common in Carolingian Europe of the early ninth century.26
A fuller picture of the extent of Slavic domination in central Europe had to wait until the Ottonian era of the tenth century, when the third of the Frankish imperial dynasties stretched its tendrils of dominion eastwards from the Elbe. In 962, a nascent Polish state suddenly appears in the historical record, providing unimpeachable evidence of Slavic domination of its territories between the Oder and the Vistula as well, with Arab sources confirming the point. From the mid-tenth century at the latest, then, all of north-central Europe between the Elbe and the Vistula was now the domain of Slavic-speakers. Indeed, the fact that historical documentation for lands east of the Oder is available only for the tenth century surely shouldn’t be taken to mean that Poland was Slavicized later than Bohemia or Moravia. What we’re looking at are the dates when interaction between these lands and western European imperial power gathered momentum, not the moment when they first came to be occupied by Slavs. The overall revolution in north-central Europe effected by Slavic expansion is plain to see. In the first half of the millennium, all this territory between the Elbe and the Vistula had been dominated by Germanic-speakers.27
But if Carolingian and Arab sources between them document the total Slavicization of central Europe by c.900 AD, they provide little insight into the chronology or nature of the historical processes responsible for it. With the end of the western Empire in 476, historical light on north-central Europe – fitful at best, in the Roman period – is pretty much extinguished for the next three hundred years. All that the written sources preserve are a few vignettes that shed a little light on spreading Slavic domination through the uplands of central Europe: the extension of the Carpathians westwards to meet the Alps. The first refers to events of the year 512, when, as we saw in Chapter 5, the unfortunate Heruli began their long march to Scandinavia. According to Procopius, they first passed ‘through the land of the Slavs’. Most likely the Heruli left the Middle Danube by the valley of the River Morava, the main natural route north out of the Great Hungarian Plain. If so, Slavs were already then established in what is now Slovakia. This conclusion is supported by a second incident, of 543. In that year, a Lombard prince named Hildegesius attacked east Roman forces with six thousand warriors, most of whom were again Slavs. Since the Lombards were still living at that point in the Middle Danube, before the arrival of the Avars, it seems probable that he recruited his Slavs from the edges of that region – the Morava valley again, or somewhere nearby. Our third marker dates to the end of the sixth century, when Bavarian militias had to fight off Slavic attacks in both 593 and 595. So within half a century of the Hildegesius incident, Slavic groups are documented another 250 kilometres to the west, on the fringes of Bavaria.
A similar vision of the western extent of Slavic expansion by the early seventh century is provided by one of the most famous episodes in early Slavic history, the adventures of Samo, our Frankish merchant turned Slavic prince. In the course of his colourful life, which involved – amongst other feats – siring twenty-two sons and fifteen daughters by his twelve Slavic wives, it emerges that by 630 the Slavic Sorbs were established on the borderlands of Thuringia.28 This would suggest that they were entrenched somewhere in the southern Elbe region. They had by this date, according to the Frankish chronicler Fredegar, a ‘long-standing relationship’ with their Thuringian neighbours, which would date the Sorbs’ occupation of these lands to c.600 at the latest. From these few references it is possible to get some sense of a westward Slavic penetration through central Europe, working roughly along the line of the northern hinterlands of the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps in the course of the sixth century (Map 18). But this is all the sources give us, and there is nothing here about the northern lowlands or the shores of the Baltic.
The archaeological evidence, such as it is, broadly confirms the picture. As we have seen, Korchak-type material assemblages probably first emerged in the outer arc of the Carpathians in the later fifth century, but then spread over a much wider area. To the west, they diffused right around the outskirts of the Carpathians and on through the central European uplands as far west as Bohemia and adjacent areas of the southern Elbe region. An additional cluster of Korchak remains has also been excavated further to the north-west, in Mecklenburg and Lusatia (Map 18). The archaeological pattern here is rather different from that of most of the Balkans. Instead of a few isolated finds of Korchak ceramics or the odd burial, the central European uplands have thrown up entire Korchak cultural complexes. Not just stray Korchak items, but an entire Korchak way of life – including agricultural production methods and patterns of social connection – came to be reproduced in these areas.
When they were first identified, the Korchak materials of Bohemia and Moravia were dated to the mid-fifth century. But it is now clear that Korchak remains in Bohemia date to no earlier than the second half of the sixth. Brzezno is the oldest Korchak site identified so far, and its remains date from no earlier than c.550. This is entirely in line with the new dating evidence from Moravia, a little further east, where, again, Korchak materials have now been shown to have appeared no sooner than c.550 at the absolute earliest. Dendrochronology has also provided precise dates for the Korchak sites in the Elbe–Saale region, west of Bohemia. Here, too, they have extended the received chronology. The Elbe–Saale remains used to be allocated to the late fifth century or the early sixth; their earliest materials have now been dated to no earlier than the 660s.29
The geographical spread of Korchak materials across south-central Europe thus amplifies the picture of Slavic expansion suggested by the stray historical references. The new chronologies have also put paid to older theories that an initial Slavic penetration into the Elbe region in the later fifth or sixth centuries was followed by a second wave of migration in the seventh. This hypothesis had in mind a potential parallel with the Serbs and Croats and the Balkans. It was based, however, on the appearance of brand-new types of pottery in the Elbe region, which were finished on a slow wheel rather than entirely hand-formed. The geographical spread of the subtypes of this pottery broadly coincides with the main tribal confederations known from the Carolingian and Ottonian eras (Map 18): the Wilzi (Feldberg pottery), the Lausitzi (Tornow pottery) and the Sorbs (Leipzig pottery). It used therefore to be thought that the appearance of the new pottery types marked the arrival in the region of these tribal groups. Dendrochronology has shown, however, that the sites containing these wheel-turned pottery types date not from the late sixth and the seventh century, but from the later eighth and ninth. By this date, Carolingian narrative coverage of the region is more than full enough to rule out the possibility of any further large-scale migration. The new pottery types therefore represent the spread of new ceramic technologies among Slavs already indigenous to the Elbe region. The later dating also makes much better sense of the fact that some of the pottery resembles eighth-century Carolingian ceramics, by which they were clearly influenced.30
From all these materials, therefore, a clear enough picture emerges of a ribbon of Slavic settlement extending westwards from the northern hinterland of the Carpathian Mountains as far as the northern reaches of Slovakia in or around 500 AD. About fifty years later, a Korchak-type material culture penetrated south into the river valleys around the Middle Danube, and pushed on westwards to Bohemia. Another fifty years further on, and Slavic groups were both threatening the fringes of Bavaria and establishing themselves in the Elbe–Saale region.
So far so good; but we have not yet got to the heart of the Slavic takeover of central Europe. As we have seen, ninth- and tenth-century sources demonstrate that in this era Slavic-speakers dominated the entire North European Plain between the Elbe and the Vistula as far north as the Baltic. But this is a much bigger area than that encompassed by our ‘thin’ ribbon of Korchak sites along the central European uplands and part of the way up the Elbe, and the historical evidence only comes on stream after Slavs were well established here. So what do the archaeological materials reveal of the process of Slavicization in north-central Europe?
A first stage seems to be reflected in the so-called Mogilany group of sites from the Cracow region of south-eastern Poland. They are probably best viewed as a local variant of the Korchak-type sites found in nearby areas of the Carpathians, which they strongly resemble. Mogilany sites produce a range of similar handmade ceramics, and are marked by the familiar sunken floored huts with stone-built ovens. As yet, and this is the only reason they have been given a different name, no cemeteries have been found alongside Mogilany hamlets. No dendrochronological dates are available for this group, so its dating has at the moment to rely on an older method. This was based on the fact that, in most of central Europe, the largely undatable Korchak-type remains succeed the materially richer and hence chronologically more helpful materials generated by its previously dominant Germanic speakers, before the phenomenon of culture collapse set in. The end date for these Germanic-type cultures in any given area, therefore, can provide a useful earliest possible date for the advent of Slavic settlement there, so long as two conditions apply. First, the immigrant Slavs must not have coexisted with the Germanic-speaking groups responsible for the richer material culture being used to provide the date. But, second, there has to have been no lengthy interval between the disappearance of Germanic materials in the area and the arrival of Slavs.
Both conditions are potentially problematic, but the approach does work reasonably well where it can be tested against dendrochronological information in the south. There is no evidence, for instance, that the previously dominant Germanic cultures of northern and eastern Slovakia, and north-eastern Moravia, continued in existence past the year 500. In southern Slovakia and Moravia, together with Lower Austria (Austria north of the Danube), on the other hand, enough later Germanic materials have been found to suggest that they continued in use there until c.550. Bohemia also continued to generate Germanic-type cultures until a similar date.31 These chronologies are broadly consistent with the new scientific dates for the earliest Slavic settlements in these regions, suggesting that it is still worth applying the method to regions where more scientific dates are currently lacking.
In the Roman period, Cracow, home of the Mogilany group, fell within the southern expanses of the old Przeworsk system. Its collapse coincided, as we saw in Chapter 5, with the rise of Hunnic power sometime in the first half of the fifth century. An importedfibula brooch found at the Mogilany site of Radziejow Kujawski can be dated to the later fifth or the very early sixth century, and the start of a second and distinct cultural phase within the group is marked by the appearance of metalwork datable to c.600 ADexcavated at Mogilany pit number 45, providing an earliest possible date of the sixth century for what went before. It seems likely enough, then, that Korchak-type Slavic speakers spread into the power vacuum created by Przeworsk culture collapse in south-eastern Poland in the late fifth or the earlier sixth century, soon after they first became visible in the Carpathian region.32
The early medieval period in most of what is now Poland is not marked, however, by the widespread dissemination of such Korchaktype remains. Areas north of Lublin, eventually extending as far west as the Elbe, saw the development of another regionally distinct archaeological system: the so-called Sukow-Dziedzice culture (Map 18). Up to now, a clear boundary has been drawn between this second set of sites and those of the Mogilany type. Although some of the smaller pot-types of each group are identical, the larger pottery is entirely different in shape, and a much wider repertoire of forms was used here than by potters working more directly in the Korchak tradition. Some of the pots even look like handmade imitations of those previously in vogue in the same lands during the period of the Germanic-dominated Przeworsk culture. The sunken log cabins (Grubenhäuser) which are such a distinctive feature of Korchak areas have also not generally been found in Sukow-Dziedzice lands. Apart from an isolated group on the fertile loess-type soils of Mazovia, Kuiavia and Celmno, the major house-type identified so far is an above-ground wooden cabin. This different building tradition has provided one of the planks of the argument that Poland became Slavic-speaking via an entirely different trajectory of historical development from that which was working itself out in Moravia, Bohemia and the southern Elbe region. To some scholars, the Sukow-Dziedzice and Korchak cultures look so different that the former must have been generated by an entirely separate Slavic-speaking population. According to different views, this population was either indigenous to Poland – having been long submerged under a Germanic elite – or moved into Poland after 500, and not from the Carpathians but from a second ‘Slavic homeland’ outside of Korchak-dominated Carpathian areas – perhaps Byelorussia. According to either of these views, the Slavicization of central Europe so evident in Carolingian sources was the product of two simultaneous but independent waves of Slavic expansion: Korchak-type populations from the Carpathians, and Sukow-Dziedzice from Byelorussia or from within Poland itself.33
The tail end of old nationalist agendas seems to be lurking behind this determination that Poland should have had its own unique trajectory towards Slavdom. In particular, the idea that house-types can provide a secure means of so absolutely distinguishing two population groups has been undermined by some recent excavations. These unearthed sunken huts in three areas where they had been unknown: at Wyszogrod, Szarlig and Zmijewo. At Wyszogrod, moreover, contemporaneous sunken huts and surface cabins were found on the same site. These discoveries make it likely that continuing investigations will uncover Korchak-type sunken huts more generally within Sukow-Dziedzice territories, eroding the apparently clear line that used to be drawn.34 That said, because of the uncertainties of the linguistic evidence, it is perfectly likely that Slavic-speakers were more widely dispersed north of the Carpathians and east of the Vistula in the later fifth century, with the Korchak Podolians being no more than one subgroup among them. It is also entirely likely, that this broader Slavic-speaking population, if it existed, would have later become involved in the broader Slavicization of areas such as Poland. The much wider range of pot forms in use in Sukow-Dziedzice areas is very striking, and strongly suggests that, unlike the Mogilany group, Sukow-Dziedzice has to be seen as a more specific phenomenon than merely another local Korchak Polish variant. This could be because its Slavs had different origins, but, as we shall see in a moment, it may have more to do with conditions the immigrants encountered when they arrived in Poland.
How quickly the new Sukow-Dziedzice cultural form spread across the area between the Vistula and the Elbe is difficult to say, since the internal chronology of the system has not yet been established. Germanic culture collapse in more northerly Przeworsk and Wielbark areas had occurred by 500 or shortly afterwards, which is consistent with a stray reference in a work by the east Roman historian, Theophylact Simocatta, which might just about indicate that some Slavs had reached the Baltic Sea by the 590s (or, frankly, might mean nothing at all). On the other hand, scientific dates for Sukow-Dziedzice sites in Lusatia, in the former DDR, indicate that these belong to a rather later period. Scandinavian metalwork found with Sukow-Dziedzice remains at Rostow Karkow provides a terminus post quem for that site of just after 700 AD. Absolute dendrochronological dates from the actual site of Sukow-Dziedzice itself and a number of well holes in the same region have likewise provided eighth-century dates. These dates apply only to the westernmost Sukow-Dziedzice territories, and, since there is good reason to suppose that the Slavic spread worked generally from east to west, do not necessarily contradict a sixth-century date for some of the Polish materials. For the moment, however, that is the best that can be done, although more scientific investiations will certainly provide more information in due course.35
In broad outline, therefore, the spread of Slavic-speaking domination across the whole of north-central Europe, documented in the Carolingian era, seems to have converged on the Elbe from two different directions, if not necessarily from two points of departure. One line of advance is marked by the ribbon of Prague-Korchak sites running through the uplands of central Europe into Bohemia – and even onwards, in places, west of the Elbe. This trajectory of advance extended over about a century, between c.500 and 600. A second line of advance is marked by the spread of the Sukow-Dziedzice culture across the North European Plain, which was equally successful. It spread eventually, if more slowly than used to be thought, as far west as the River Elbe, which it had reached apparently by c.700. Much here remains obscure, but a broad outline of the initial Slavicization of Europe west of the Vistula can be sketched in from a mixture of literary and archaeological sources.
Mother Russia
For the Slavicization of European Russia up to the Volga we have two main reference points. The first comes from historical sources. Thanks to Islamic geographers of the tenth century, we know that territories east of the Vistula that correspond to modern Byelorussia and Volhynia were under the control of so-called ‘eastern Slavs’ at this time. The most comprehensive picture of the area at the end of the early Middle Ages, however, is provided by a still later source, the Russian Primary Chronicle, whose text, as we now have it, was a product of the early twelfth century. According to its account, by about 900 AD a number of separate Slavic-speaking groups had come to occupy a truly vast area of eastern Europe. The text has most to say about Polyanians, the Slavic-speaking group settled around Kiev where the Chronicle was composed, but many other groups and their approximate locations are mentioned in passing. It is obviously retrospective, but there is no reason to think that it misrepresents to any significant degree the spread of Slavic-speakers across the East European Plain at the turn of the millennium. Byzantine sources, above all the De Administrando Imperio (but this time providing much less problematic, contemporary information), confirm the essential outlines. By the end of the first millennium, Slavic-speaking groups dominated a huge portion of the East European Plain, taking in territory well to the east of the River Dnieper and, in the case of the Slovenes, stretching their control as far north as Lake Ilmen (Map 19).36
From a modern perspective, it’s no surprise to find Slavic-speakers distributed so widely across Mother Russia, but our second reference point shows that this had not always been the case. All the major rivers’ names across a massive tract of territory between the Vistula and the Volga, north of the confluence of the Pripet and the Dnieper, are in fact derived from Baltic rather than Slavic languages. The conclusion seems inescapable, therefore, that Baltic-speakers had at one point dominated this landscape. The situation observable in the tenth century, when Slavic-speakers were in more or less total control of it, must have been created at some point, therefore, by Slavic expansion. This sets up the fundamental conundrum of Russian prehistory.37 In the complete absence of historical sources, which of the succession of archaeological cultures observable in the Russian landscape across the eons of the first millennium represents the initial penetration of Slavic-speakers into zones originally dominated by Balts?
This is another subject area that has benefited hugely from the immense archaeological enterprise that unfolded in Communist Europe after 1945, and here, too, many of the old Soviet-era agendas have been subsiding. It is now possible, on one level, to tell a fairly straightforward story, starting again from the certainly Slavic-speaking world of the Korchak Carpathians in c.500 AD. By the mid-sixth century, Korchak-type materials had spread not only westwards and southwards, but also eastwards further into Ukraine. In this period, the type-site – Korchak itself – was first occupied on the River Teterev near Zhitomir, and the spread continued subsequently. In the seventh century, Korchak materials were to be found further north, in Polesie: in the Pripet marsh zone of tree-name fame. At more or less the same time, a second cultural zone of importance to our story, the so-called Penkovka system, was coming into being, which between 550 and 650 took in large expanses of the forest steppe zone of Ukraine.
In many ways, Penkovka materials are indistinguishable from their Korchak counterparts. Both systems generated small clusters of houses on river terraces that were highly convenient for subsistence agriculture. Penkovka houses, likewise, were partly sunk into the ground, and boasted stone-built corner ovens. The only things that distinguish Penkovka remains are the biconical shape of some the larger ceramics, together with the wider variety of iron tools and decorative metalwork often found in Penkovka contexts. To the outsider (and many insiders too, in fact) the similarities are thus massively more impressive than any differences, and most scholars are confident that if Korchak-type materials were generated by Slavic-speakers, then so was the Penkovka system. Indeed, on the basis of Jordanes’ report of the relative geographical distributions of the Sclavenes and Antae, Penkovka has often been thought to have been the product of the latter, and Korchak of the former. These precise identifications are questionable, but the basic similarities of the two systems, combined with the geographical coincidence between their spread and where we actually find Slavic-speakers in the sixth century, does make it reasonable to think of Penkovka, like Korchak, as at least Slavic-dominated.38
The later seventh century, however, was an era of major change. Across previously Korchak areas and much of the Penkovka zone, together with a substantial area to the north on either side of the Dnieper which had previously fallen beyond the boundary of either system, there arose between 650 and 750 a new culture: Luka Raikovetskaia. Like its counterparts of the same era in the western reaches of Slavdom (the Tornow, Feldberg and Leipzig systems) the main difference between Luka Raikovetskaia and its predecessors was the fact that much of its pottery was now being finished on a slow wheel. Everything suggests that, in general terms, Luka Raikovetskaia represents the reincarnation of the Korchak and Penkovka systems in an era of technological advance, although debate continues over the extent to which it is correct to identify it as one unified system or to pick out instead a number of local variants.
At the same time, some of the easternmost Penkovka areas underwent a further and very distinctive process of development. This zone, together with other territories, which had previously fallen outside the Penkovka system altogether, saw the development of the so-called Volyntsevo culture. Aside, again, from slightly different ceramics, it is distinguished from the Luka Raikovetskaia by a strikingly greater prevalence of both metalwork and strongholds. Its history began in the seventh century, again, but it continued to spread into the eighth, at which point its development is marked by the acquisition of a new name, Romny-Borshevo. The ceramics of this system stand in a direct line of development from the Volyntsevo, but spread over a much wider area (the main reason for the change of name), and particularly into the basins of the Upper Don and the Oka. Its settlement sites are also characterized by the still more extensive use of fortifications. After the period of initial formation, Luka Raikovetskaia and Romny-Borshevo both continued in unbroken sequences of development, with an ever-widening geographical distribution, through to the tenth century. By this point, they extended over the areas where most of the Slavic groups named in the Russian Primary Chronicle were located (Map 19), and there seems no doubt, therefore, that a direct association can be made between tenth-century Slavic-speakers and these two archaeological systems.39
The rise and fall of the material-cultural systems of the East European Plain is now easy enough to follow in outline, and two sets of equations – between Korchak and Penkovka and known Slavic-speakers of the sixth century, and between Luka Raikovetskaia and Volyntsevo and Romny-Borshevo and known Slavic-speakers of the tenth – seem secure enough.
But this is not a historical narrative, and should not be confused with one. What can be charted with some security now is the developing sequence of pottery traditions on the East European Plain in the second half of the first millennium. Historical sources also make it clear that the later phases of Volyntsevo and Romny-Borshevo coincide geographically and chronologically with the dominance of Slavic-speakers by the tenth century. But pots aren’t people, and trying to understand the human history that underlies these ceramic sequences, and their relationship to broader historical patterns of state formation and migration, raises many further questions.
Two have particular force. First, the introduction of wheel-made pottery makes it difficult to be certain how direct was the line of evolution from Korchak and Penkovka populations to those of Luka Raikovetskaia and Volyntsevo. Did the new systems come into being just because Korchak and Penkovka potters adopted a new ceramic technology? If so, then given that the Korchak and Penkovka were in all probability dominated by Slavic speakers, presumably so too were the Luka Raikovetskaia and Volyntsevo. This is the usual assumption, but the ceramic transformations could be hiding a much more complex human history, and the improved pottery – wheel-made pots are better than their handmade counterparts – might also have been adopted by non-Slavs. Second, what is the human history behind the subsequent spread of the patterns of the Luka Raikovetskaia and Volyntsevo cultural systems further north and east from the eighth to the tenth centuries? Was this an expansion of living human beings, or merely the spread of new habits among existing populations? These are both questions to which we will return.
Underlying both, however, is the still bigger issue that emerges when archaeology is confronted with linguistics. Does the documentable spread north and eastwards of the Korchak and Penkovka systems, a trajectory taken further by their Luka Raikovetskaia and Volyntsevo successors, represent the initial Slavicization of Russia and Ukraine, and the overall removal of these areas from a Baltic-speaking orbit In one view, this is perfectly possible. Some linguists, as we have seen, would date the initial separation of the Slavic and Baltic language families to the middle of the first millennium AD, making it natural to equate the appearance of Korchak-type cultures in the Carpathians rim with this moment of linguistic definition. If so, the subsequent spread north and eastwards of probably related archaeological cultures would in all likelihood represent the initial Slavicization of Mother Russia.
But other linguists would date the Baltic/Slavic split rather earlier, possibly even to the second millennium BC. And, in line with this, other archaeologists would argue, on the basis of the general patterns of life that generated them, that some of the systems to be found on the Baltic side of the hydronym divide in the mid-first millennium – in particular the so-called Kolochin culture – are so similar to those that generated the Korchak system that it is arbitrary to suppose the latter was dominated by Slavic-speakers, and the former not. Again, this is, a priori, a perfectly possible argument. In that view, what we would be seeing in the spread of the Korchak system would be the ability of one particularly successful group of Slavic-speakers to spread their domination over an already broadly Slavic-speaking landscape. The first model – where the political dominance of Slavic-speakers and the arrival of the language go hand in hand – would resemble the broad pattern observed already in the Balkans and central Europe. But the less dramatic possibility – that much of Russia and Ukraine became Slavic-speaking sometime before our period – cannot be ruled out.
And more - http://erenow.com/ancient/thefalloft...istory/27.html
Peter Heather - The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History
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There is also the completely forgotten Avar theory of I2a1b. Avars are the most historically overseen Balkan ethnicity, they were here for hundreds of years and fought vicious battles against both Franks and Byzantines. Also, if it weren't for the Avars, Slavs might not have come to the Balkans, since the Byznatine Emperor called them to help him in battle against Avars and then gave them their land (modern-day Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia).I agree it doesn't make sence, but until we know for sure, means until we check those Necropolis from Dalmatia (largest one; Knin-Greblje) from Dalmatian inland (with 200 native romanized graves) about Y-DNA, we will never be sure. That Necropolis (just one out of many, but largest one) is from 4th and 5th century, means long time before Slavs.
Those Y-DNA research should be done next year or in 2019 according to my professor, if they show I2a1b presence then there is no doubt in what you're saying, but..., why don't you consider that another theory about Sarmatian connection?
In Ukraine I2a1b is not high as in Dalmatia but there is enough of it to draw some conclusions, it is not impossible that large migration of two or three Sarmatian tribe went toward west in larger number, maybe some particular Sarmatian tribes, I already mentioned Greeks and their writings in Tanais mentioning Croats amongst Sarmatians.
Also take a look on that map at area of those Sorbs in Germany, it is very interesting how they have higher amount of this Y-DNA and no one else around them, not Germans or Polish, ofcourse this doesn't prove that my theory is more right than yours, they could have come from this area if it's according to your theory, but at this point we cannot be sure until research is done.
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Man, we can dismiss Avar theory in a second, we don't even need Y-DNA for that but Archaeology and History gives us 100% evidence that Avars after they invaded Balkans in 7th century, they go right away to present day Hungary and they founded their state in present day Hungary (centuries before arrival of Hungarians), truly there is no doubt Avars had their state in present day Hungary and nowhere else. This is without doubt in Archaeology, trust me on this.
Also some of Avars maybe stayed back and not went to Hungary, but those numbers are truly negligible.
I2a1b have nothing to do with them.
Avar state, the only Avar state:
And this are all periods of Avar State (Khanate) all the way until Hungarians arrived to Hungary, and then Avars are gone from European scene just like Huns 400 years before them:
P.S. Even today Hungarians don't have anything to do with them, not to mention others.
Also don't forget that the main reason why Langobards moved toward Northern Italy was exactly because of Avar state. Also don't forget that Avars destroyed Gepids state and made it possible for Slavs to invade Balkans, that is the only role Avars truly played, means they destroyed Gepid state and made their own state in today's Hungary and by doing that they destroyed the only obstacle for Slavs (Gepids) to invade Balkans.
OstroGothic state was history already back then because Justinian and Byzantine Empire went completely ape on Ostrogothic Kingdom, they destroyed Goths completely, attacking Goths from two directions; Attacking Dalmatia and Goth cities there, and invasion of Sicilia and moving forward to North Italy, Ostrogoths were completely wiped out as state, and ethnic in the end, those who left merged into other ethnics.
VisiGoth state on the other hand had longer life in Iberia.
Last edited by Robocop; 04-11-2017 at 09:09 PM.
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Possibly, especially from the island of Hvar. I assume they fled to some Adriatic islands for some reason.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12825075In one of the southern island (Hvar) populations, we found a relatively high frequency (14%) of lineages belonging to P*(xM173) cluster, which is unusual for European populations. Interestingly, the same population also harbored mitochondrial haplogroup F that is virtually absent in European populations--indicating a connection with Central Asian populations, possibly the Avars.
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Exactly, bravo. I wanted to mention this. Dick you truly surprise me sometimes, in positive ways.
Yes, some small numbers of Avars fled to some places in negligible numbers, all others founded their state in Hungary and vanished there from European scene when Hungarians/Magyars arrived.
And yes, Y-DNA P is connected to them, very rare and non-european completely.
It is 99% certain Y-DNA P is connected to them.
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Exactly, bravo. I wanted to mention this. Dick you truly surprise me sometimes, in positive ways
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biggest problem seems to be that know one knows who the *uck these people were.
I2a1b.png
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Slavic.
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