Before considering the question of archaeological criteria that might help identify migrant, or at any rate foreign, peoples from a cultural or ethnic standpoint, we might establish some initial assumptions relative to the historical and archaeological context:
Migrants Limited in Number
Although the “Grandes Migrations” may have impressed those who witnessed them, the number of migrants, Germanic and non-Germanic alike, was not great. Historical sources speak, for example, of 80,000 to 100,000 peoples, about a third of them warriors bearing arms.1010 The Romanized populations confronting them numbered in the millions. We also need to distinguish the quasi-federate force of Visigoths, wandering within the empire from the Balkans to southwest Gaul over 40 years and then integrated into its overall defensive system, from the motley assemblage of Suevi and Vandals who entered suddenly as outsiders in 406. Thus, we should not be looking for numerous barbarian sites resulting from the settlement of external demographic groups: there never were that many in the first place.
Migration often Peaceful and Unrecorded
The arrival of barbarian groups—whether eastern or western Germans or peoples of the steppes such the alans—should not be seen systematically as invasions. Recent research has stressed that outsiders entered the empire for different reasons in a variety of ways over a rather long period. In northern Gaul, for example, palaeoclimatic and political changes from the early third century on led to the abandonment of cultivated land and peaceful, and often unrecorded, colonization by outsiders, often sponsored by the Roman government itself.1011 there also is much evidence of barbarians, including foederati, gentiles, and laeti, being integrated into the expanding late Roman defensive system, and of barbarians enjoying careers in the military.1012
Migrants Well Dispersed throughout Late Roman Society
Although known and appreciated as fighters, barbarians were by no means always at war with Romans or each other. Indeed, it is clear that they never sought to dismantle the administrative system of the western empire and its civilization. on the contrary and above all, they wanted to join it, at the highest levels possible. potential archaeological traces of them, as we shall see, are all the rarer and harder to spot precisely because they were so well dispersed in the sites already favored by the Roman population.1013 There were exceptions, of course: barbarian groups who came from far beyond the limes and did not have a history of contact with the Roman world before they entered it, such as the Anglo-Saxons in the fifth century and the slavs in the sixth.
Mixed Migrants, Ethnically and Culturally Heterogeneous
The barbarians who settled in the Roman west, whether Germanic or steppe nomads, were neither ethnically nor culturally homogeneous.1014 During the migration of any group, an original core population inevitably was joined by other barbarian individuals and groups with their own cultural traditions. And the groups of warriors and the chieftains who made up the entourage of a king or other powerful warlord, such as odovacar, came from very diverse origins. It thus is quite unrealistic to look for a homogeneous archaeological culture, let alone a monoculture, to identify barbarian groups settled in the empire, as shall be seen in the case of northern Gaul.
Inevitable Acculturation of Migrating Minorities
A great gap must have existed between the original culture of barbarian groups before their migration and what it had become by the time they settled within the empire. The very act of migration itself must have initiated significant social transformation: a traditional people was changed into a numerical minority, typically a sort of wandering army whose activities were mostly confined to acts of violence or the threat of it, as they sought to extort the means of survival from either the imperial government or the local population. these barbarian wanderers must have largely abandoned their agricultural, commercial, and craft traditions, thus changing their original material culture. the change in social status also must have led to a deformation of their funerary practices, which generally were intended to affirm the social position of the deceased. And thus we find that barbarian auxiliaries in the service of Rome, settled in the north of Gaul from the middle of the fourth century, began habitually to be buried with weapons, a custom very little practiced in the German territories east of the Rhine from which many of them came and totally unknown up until then in the lands where they settled.1015 The presence of Germanic fibulae in women’s graves nearby confirms the Germanic origin of these men with weapons. The so-called Reihengraberfelder (row grave fields) in which they are found represent a new, unique frontier culture uncharacteristic of either the barbarian or Roman homelands.1016
Another significant example is the Visigothic federates who, after defeating the emperor Valens at Adrianople in 378, wandered through the Balkans and then Italy before reaching southwest Gaul in 412. there, perhaps charged with repressing the Bacaudae,1017 they formed a kingdom centered on Bordeaux and Toulouse and became integrated with the Roman population. By the time the Visigoths entered Gaul, few of those who originally crossed the Danube would have been left, replaced either by children born on the march or by new recruits picked up along the way.1018 What might have been preserved of the Visigothic ancestral heritage? Their language, perhaps (though that assumption too is under dispute), and with it some oral traditions. But what about material culture? It seems likely that most of what they carried with them into Gaul had little to do with the lands they had left behind and must have derived from plunder along the way, such as that taken from Rome in 410. It is not surprising, then, that the Visigoths left behind no significant archaeological traces of their presence in Aquitaine in the fifth century. It is logical to argue rather that their national de-acculturation favored a rapid, even immediate, acculturation into the Roman provincial world. one feature of this was adoption of inhumation burial without grave goods.1019
But after the Visigoths were expelled from Gaul in 507 and rebuilt a kingdom in old Castile in the sixth century, they did manifest a national material culture in their funerary practice. this can be seen, for example, in women’s graves with pairs of fibulae worn at the shoulder and plate-buckles at the waist of the Gothic type (see Fig. 23.3). This custom might well have come from contact with the
Figure 23.3 Funerary artifacts from the grave of a Visigothic woman from the cemetery at Duraton: A. Molinero-perez, La necropolis visigoda de Duraton (Segovia) (Madrid, 1948), pl. 27.
Army of the Ostrogothic king Vidimer.1020 In 473, on orders of the emperor Glycerius (473-474), this army went directly from Pannonia to Italy and the next year on to Aquitaine and Tarraconnensis, thus reintroducing to Visigoths there aspects of ancestral Gothic material culture, notably where female costume was concerned.1021 This hypothesis explains the striking presence in Aquitaine, and more especially in septimania and spain, of Gothic artifacts of the Danubian type, not the sort one would expect to have been brought by the ostrogothic contingents from italy sent there by theodoric after 507 to support the young amalaric.1022
Mobile Elites with an International Culture
Finally, barbarians, and especially barbarian elites, usually were highly mobile, and shared what might be called an “international” barbarian culture resulting from their widespread experiences. The Frankish king Childeric, for example, spent eight years at the thuringian court; and the Herul prince Rodolf came from northern Europe to sojourn with Theodoric in Italy.1023 one should not be surprised that the material culture of this princely barbarian caste was very international in flavor, and that the splendid artifacts from their graves or the treasure finds of the period usually do not betray the geo-cultural origins of their owners. What we can distinguish through archaeology in Late antiquity, to some extent at least, is the Roman nobles from the barbarian chiefs, thanks to different funerary traditions. Noble Romans are identified by monumental funerary architecture, such as mausoleums, richly decorated sarcophagi, and epitaphs, but rarely by votive offerings. Barbarian chieftains, on the other hand, often were buried in wooden funerary chambers, sometimes covered by a tumulus, and typically were accompanied by lavish funerary offerings. Childeric’s tumulus, for instance, combined items evoking power and prestige in the Germanic tradition (golden bracelet, sword with cloisonne hilt, and other high-status weapons) with emblems of Roman authority (cruciform fibula, gold signet ring), which were consistent with his dual role as a German king and the Roman administrator of Belgica H.1024' Thus his assemblage, barbarian elite in overall tone, also suggests some blurring of identity to include elements of both Roman and barbarian culture.
This blurring of identities appears in other cases as well. A late fifth-century grave from the suburban necropolis of Bourges, for example, belonged to a man whose grave goods included a spear inscribed with the words “Regius” and “Patricius.” The former would suggest a connection with the Visigothic king, who then ruled there, and the latter, if it is a title and not a name, denotes the resonant Roman title “patrician.” This merging of aspects of barbarian and Roman
Figure 23.4 Inscribed lance head from Bourges, with legends “Regius” and “Patricius”; late fifth century: Pierre Bailly, “A propos d’une mention de ‘patrice’ dans une sepulture du Ve siecle a Bourges,” in
Actes du XLIIIe Congres de la Federation des societes savantes du Centre (Gueret, 6, 7 et 8 mai 1983) = Etudes creusoises 5 (1984): 39-43, at p. 40.
Identity also is reflected in the manner of burial, for this individual was buried with weapons according to barbarian tradition, but placed within a lead sarcophagus, a well-attested Roman custom.1025 (See Fig. 23.4.)
World History
