Migrations in the Archaeology of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Some Comments on the Current State of Research)

Abstract

Historians of the modern era have recently turned Eastern Europe into a vagina nationum: the greatest mass migration and even the “making of the free world” are directly related to Eastern Europe.1 Historians studying Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages disagree. They doubt that migration could explain even changes taking place in the region. Walter Goffart sees no reason for Germanic tribes residing in the vastness of Ukraine to emigrate: “if really land hungry, they might have satisfied their needs right where they were”.2 According to Guy Halsall, the archaeological record pertaining to East Central Europe in the 3rd century does “not support the idea of a substantial migration”.3 Instead, one can envision communication lines along the principal trade routes.4 The idea that the Goths migrated out of northern Europe to the fringes of the Empire rests “mainly on the evidence of a single ancient source, the Getica of Jordanes, around which complicated structures of scholarly hypothesis have been built”.5 One could argue in principle that the Sântana de MureşČernjachov culture came into being “because of a migration out of the Wielbark regions, but one might equally argue that it was an indigenous development of local Pontic, Carpic, and Dacian cultures”.6 Peter Heather, however, is skeptical about skepticism. To him, there can be no doubt that the Wielbark people morphed into the Sântana de MureşČernjachov people, who became Goths in the course of a century-long migration across Eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.7 Similarly, the