Who are the Slavs? - Citations and Sources

[Soldier of Macedon]

According to the article, they found a bone fragment with Germanic runes in the same pit as a type of pottery that has supposedly been identified with the 'early Slavs'. The location of the pit is in today's Czech Republic but in the 6th century it was an area where the settlements of Germanic-speaking and Slavic-speaking peoples were within close proximity to each other. The bone fragment itself is inscribed with the last 7 signs of a runic alphabet, suggesting that the whole bone may have consisted of a complete alphabet and therefore used as a teaching tool. That's about it.

An inscribed cow bone dating back to the seventh century proves that Germanic runes were the oldest script ever used by the ancient Slavs, Czech scientists said Thursday.

I wonder if that is what the actual Czech scientists said or if this AFP journalist is applying his own creative interpretation. The person who inscribed the runes on that bone fragment may have been some Germanic-speaking tribesman or Slavic-speaking individual who was learning to use runes for the purpose of writing in a Germanic language. Is it possible that some of the ancestors of the Czechs may have used runes to write in a Slavic language? Sure, but there is no evidence of it presented in this finding (or anywhere else, for that matter). Which makes the below statement all the more ridiculous.

Up to now, it was believed that the oldest Slavic alphabet was Glagolitic.......the broken bovine rib found in the southern Czech Republic in 2017 and examined by an international team of Czech, Austrian, Swiss and Australian scientists proved the assumption about the alphabet wrong.

Even if another set of letters or signs was used to write in a Slavic language, it can hardly be considered a Slavic alphabet. And the comparison between the runes cited in this finding and Glagolitic is just comical.

[Carlin]

Ancient Bone Sheds Light on Slav Alphabet History

URL:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.courthousenews.com/ancient-bone-sheds-light-on-slav-alphabet-history/

PRAGUE (AFP) — An inscribed cow bone dating back to the seventh century proves that Germanic runes were the oldest script ever used by the ancient Slavs, Czech scientists said Thursday.

Up to now, it was believed that the oldest Slavic alphabet was Glagolitic, invented by Byzantine monk St Cyril in the ninth century.

Cyril and his brother St Methodius came to former Great Moravia, covering today’s Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia and parts of Austria, Germany, Poland, Ukraine and the Balkans, on a mission in 863.

But the broken bovine rib found in the southern Czech Republic in 2017 and examined by an international team of Czech, Austrian, Swiss and Australian scientists proved the assumption about the alphabet wrong.

“The team discovered this was the oldest inscription found with the Slavs,” head researcher Jiri Machacek from Masaryk University in the city of Brno said in a statement.

The team used genetic and radio-carbon testing to examine the bone.

“These sensitive analyses have shown the bone comes from domesticated cattle that lived around the year 600 AD,” said team member Zuzana Hofmanova, an analyst at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

Robert Nedoma from the University of Vienna identified the inscription as so-called Elder Futhark runes, used by the German-speaking inhabitants of central Europe in the second to seventh centuries.

The Elder Futhark alphabet comprised 24 signs, and the last seven were inscribed on the newly found rib, according to the researchers.

“It is probable that the bone originally comprised the whole runic alphabet. Hence, it is not a specific message but rather a teaching tool,” the scientists said.

[Carlin]

NEURI, an ancient tribe placed by Herodotus (iv. 105) to the north-east of Scythia. He says of it that it is not Scythian, but has Scythian customs. Every member of it, being a wizard, becomes a wolf once a year. The position assigned to their district appears to be about the head waters of the Dniester and Bug (Bugh) and the central course of the Dnieper just the region which, on general grounds, place-names, recorded migrations and modern distribution, appears to be the original location of the Slavs (q.v.). The wolf story again recalls the tales of werewolves so common among Slavonic peoples, and there is much probability in Schafarik's conjecture that the Neuri are nothing but the ancestors of the Slavs.

URL:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Neuri

URL:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=ijJ4o2iorhkC&pg=PA103&dq=Neuri+Slavs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjv2P3Ps6PqAhUhc98KHQnIAOwQ6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=Neuri%20Slavs&f=false

[Carlin]

Approximate ethno-linguistic map of European Eastern Kievan Rus in the 9th century: The five Volga Finnic groups of the Merya, Mari, Muromians, Meshchera and Mordvins are shown as surrounded by the Slavs to the west, the (Finnic) Veps to the northwest, the Permians to the northeast the (Turkic) Bulghars and Khazars to the southeast and south.

URLs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muromian-map.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Finns

The Mordvins (also Mordva, Mordvinians) remain one of the larger indigenous peoples of Russia. They consist of two major subgroups, the Erzya and Moksha, besides the smaller subgroups of the Qaratay, Teryukhan and Tengushev (or Shoksha) Mordvins who have become fully Russified or Turkified during the 19th to 20th centuries.

URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification

Indigenous to large parts of western and central Russia are speakers of the Uralic languages, such as the Vepsians, Mordvins, Maris and Permians. Historically, the Russification of these peoples begins already with the original eastward expansion of the East Slavs. Written records of the oldest period are scarce, but toponymic evidence indicates that this expansion was accomplished at the expense of various Volga-Finnic peoples, who were gradually assimilated by Russians; beginning with the Merya and the Muroma in the early 2nd millennium CE.

The Russification of the Komi began in the 13th to 14th centuries but did not penetrate into the Komi heartlands until the 18th century. Komi-Russian bilingualism has become the norm over the 19th and has led to increasing Russian influence in the Komi language.

[Carlin]

[tchaiku]

Citations about Slavs migrating into the Balkans, describing their height:

1. Procopius of Caesarea:

- "(...) Nay further, they [Slavs] don't differ at all from one another in appearance. For they are all exceptionally tall and stalwart men, while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or very blonde, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type, but they are slightly ruddy in color. (...)"

- "(...) Valerian chose one of the Slavs who are men of mighty stature. (...)"

2. Theophilact Simokatta

"(...) The Emperor was with great curiosity listening to stories about this tribe [Slavs], he has welcomed these newcomers from the land of barbarians, and after being amazed by their height and mighty stature, he sent these men to Heraclea. (...)"

3. Theophanes the Confessor:

"(...) The Emperor was admiring their [Slavic] beauty and their stalwart stature. (...)"

4. Caesarius of Nazianzus:

He described Slavs as "numerous and tall", if I'm not mistaken (but I don't have exact quotation at hand).

[Carlin]

Carlin who are those Slavs that devastated Greece during Middle Age?

«Καὶ νῦν δὲ πᾶσαν Ἤπειρον καὶ Ἑλλάδα σχεδὸν καὶ Πελοπόννησον καὶ Μακεδονίαν Σκύθαι Σκλάβοι νέμονται»

"And now most of Epirus and Hellas and Peloponnesus and Macedonia are inhabited by 'Scythian' (=uncivilized) Slavs"

My guess is that they came from regions as far north as Poland, but perhaps also -- somewhere from 'Dacia', where there were many Slavs established long before the 6th-7th c.

[tchaiku]

Carlin who are those Slavs that devastated Greece during Middle Age?

«Καὶ νῦν δὲ πᾶσαν Ἤπειρον καὶ Ἑλλάδα σχεδὸν καὶ Πελοπόννησον καὶ Μακεδονίαν Σκύθαι Σκλάβοι νέμονται»

"And now most of Epirus and Hellas and Peloponnesus and Macedonia are inhabited by 'Scythian' (=uncivilized) Slavs"

[Carlin]

As of the beginning of the 6th century there was in fact no significant Slavic presence anywhere in the territory of modern Russia except the province of Bryansk while the Slavic core embraced contemporary western and northern Ukraine, southern Belarus and south-eastern Poland. The territory north of the Slavs was dominated by various Baltic tribes who occupied significant area that included all of the contemporary Lithuania, most of Belarus, southern half of Latvia, all of the modern province of Smolensk and partially the provinces of Moscow (western half) and Pskov (southern districts) as well as the historical East Prussia now shared by Poland and Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. All the rest of today’s central and northern Russia was the realm of Finnic and Finno-Ugric tribes.

http://www.conflicts.rem33.com/images/Russia/rus_pre_history.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Slavs

Brzezinski, Richard; Mielczarek, Mariusz (2002). The Sarmatians, 600 BC-AD 450. Osprey Publishing. p. 39. [...] Indeed, it is now accepted that the Sarmatians merged in with pre-Slavic populations.

Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. p. 523. [...] In their Ukrainian and Polish homeland the Slavs were intermixed and at times overlain by Germanic speakers (the Goths) and by Iranian speakers (Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans) in a shifting array of tribal and national configurations.

Atkinson, Dorothy; Dallin, Alexander; Warshofsky Lapidus, Gail, eds. (1977). Women in Russia. Stanford University Press. p. 3. [...] Ancient accounts link the Amazons with the Scythians and the Sarmatians, who successively dominated the south of Russia for a millennium extending back to the seventh century B.C. The descendants of these peoples were absorbed by the Slavs who came to be known as Russians.

Slovene Studies. 9–11. Society for Slovene Studies. 1987. p. 36. [...] For example, the ancient Scythians, Sarmatians (amongst others), and many other attested but now extinct peoples were assimilated in the course of history by Proto-Slavs.

"Between the sixth and seventh centuries, large parts of Europe came to be controlled by Slavs, a process less understood and documented than that of the Germanic ethnogenesis in the west. Yet the effects of Slavicization were far more profound". Geary (2003, p. 144)

[Carlin]

This appears to be from a Turkish or Turkic site. It contains excerpts from F. Curta's book with analysis/comments.

URL:

http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/20Roots/260Convergence/Slavs/CurtaF_MakingOfSlavsConclusion.htm

Here are several excerpts -


1) The bottom line of the study: Neither the sources, nor archeology allow to equate “Sclavenes” and “Antes” with the origin of the Slavs. The work and the heart of the its Conclusion are confirming the fact that before 12th c., “no “Slavs” called themselves by this name, no group took on the label imposed by outsiders”, and “the first clear statement that “we are Slavs” comes from the twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle”. Behind the supra-ethnical names “Sclavenes” and “Antes” of the 6th-12th cc. stand numerous ethnically-assorted local horse pastoralist nomadic tribes, generically named Wends and Winidi (Wendeln “Wanderers” Vandals) by the contemporaries, and in the case of the Sclavenes identified with Severeis, Cutrigurs, and Suvars, relatively small Türkic tribes of the Western Hunnic circle. The numerous multi-ethnic local sedentary agrarian tribes called Slavs were made in a Türkic cauldron, and are known from the distinctly Greek and Roman mirrors, with terminology largely formed from their perspective.

The greatest achievermernt of the F. Curta's Conclusion is the decoupling of the terms “Sclavenes” and “Antes” from the term “Slav”.


2) The unfortunate conflation of the terms Slav and Sclavene confuses the otherwise fairly clear issue: Slavs were not horsed people, they still are not; Sclavene were horsed people, with herds of horses, and therefore possessing the technology of horse husbandry. That distinction between the sedentary cultivators and nomadic horse husbandry stockbreeder is unmistakable throughout the analysis, and it is reflected in the original terminology. Moreover, before 560s, the sources associate Sclavene with Köturgur “Cutrigurs”, and after 560s they switch the Köturgur role to the Avars, and identify the raiders as mounted Bulgars leading the Slav militia. That transparently discloses the ethnic identification of the Köturgur nomads as Bulgars, and leaves Avars as supreme overlords commanding ethnically Bulgar armies with their Slavic auxiliaries. In the Greek lingo, Bulgars are Sclavene, Σκλαβόι, a kind of the generic nomadic Scythians. In the political hierarchy, but not ethnically, the Severs (Severeis) were a brunch of Bulgars, ever since the Bulgars took over the leadership from the Severs/Suvars/Savirs.


3) The problem is that of the investigator, not of the sources or our ignorance. The situation of the 453- 550s closely parallels that of the Kipchak Khanate/Juchi Ulus in 1380-1480, when the Rus leaders did not know who is a recipient of their obligations, and were both withholding their tax payments till the situation clears up, and playing the internecine strife game to prolong it. In the Hunnic state, every pretender tried to gain an upper hand by claiming the Byzantine's monetary inheritance. That started still during Atilla's days, when distracted with the Roman Empire, he left the Byzantine affairs unenforced, and was planning to return to them when death and subsequent division of inheritance drastically changed the political map. The enforcement raids of the 490s-540s were led by Bulgars of the Irnik/Ernak/Hernach Kaganate, named in the sources Huns and Bulgars, with their auxiliary Antes; in the period 540s-560s the sources name Huns, Cutrigurs (Köturgurs), and Sclavenes without naming Slavic auxiliaries, and afterwards the sources name Avars, and their Bulgar and Sclavene vassals, without naming the Slavic auxiliaries.


4) Segregating the terms Slav and Sclavene make the sources much more intelligible. The dispersed organization of the Slavic communities is known from numerous unrelated sources, that made their subjugation quite an easy task, and for their own protection they needed patronage anyway. That neatly falls into the concept of the “Slavic democracy”. Very soon, in the Avar period, in the sources appear the first Slavic communal leaders, under a Türkic name zupan, from the Türkic zopan “caftan”, Greek ζγπαν, Ital. Giuppane, its allophonic Sumerian shuba/sipa and Türkic shupan/chuban/choban/chaban stand for “shepherd”; these are the elders of the villages. A military title voivode appeared at the same time, from the Türkic boi- (voi-) “subjugate” (lit. “to neck, step on somebody's neck, bend somebody's neck”. To lead an assembly of multi-lingual peasants from dispersed villages, the voivode had to be an appointed position, like the Norman Dir heading the Slavic militia in Kyiv in 860s; that is until capable leaders were available from the Slavic stock. The Slavic peasants remained in the auxiliary position well into the Asparukh time, to the 8th c. and some later.practice, but over millenniums history accumulated numerous examples, best known of which are the treatment of the Khazar Kagans, and the poisoning of the Chingiz-khan papa. Since the imperial Greeks generally lived with the same succession system as the traditional Türkic system, the Lateral Order of Succession, the Greek practices as far as disposition of their leaders were not contrasting with the Sclavene practices, it is all a matter of historical situation.


5) This short phrase tells in our face who the Sclavenes are: they are Suvars/Savirs/Subars/Severeis/Severyans, well known from all kinds of sources other than the Late Antique Balkan sources. Besides the Theophanes direct statement that Sclavenes are Severeis, and Fredegar's are Wends (i.e. a horse-nomadic nation, which the Suvars certainly were), and Frankish Cosmography are Winidi, Paul the Deacon tells of their dux Boruth, otherwise named Boloch (r. 520-522), whose widow Boarix (Boyar-kyz = Boyar's daughter) was a Queen of the Savirs and a Byzantine ally.

The period immediately after 520 AD was tumultuous for the Dulo dynasty. Details are murky, but after the death of the Western Huns' King Bulyak-Bolgar Djilki “Bolokh”, r. 520-522 (aka “Bolah”,“Valakh”) are known two regents (Ilchibek m., Ilchibika fem.), the widow Boyarkyz (aka Boarix) 522-535, and “Gostun” (aka “Kushtan”) 527-528. Boyarkyz was a regent for her son As-Terek, who died in 527, after which arose a double-regnum (or triple-regnum), since we have parallel names of the regent Kushtan ~ Gostun (527-528), and rulers Djambek (527-535), Moger (528), Aiar (Avar, 528-531), Saba-Urgan (Zabergan, Kotrag, 531-535), and unknown Suvar ruler (527-535).

In the Türkic societies, disposition of the leaders was not a daily


6) Once the Türkic Savir ethnicity of the Sclavene is established, the ethnicity of the Antes also becomes tentatively clear, since Sclavenes and Antes spoke a common language. The name Antes < Türkic “Anchu” (likely Anchy) = border guards remains applicable independently of their ethnic affiliation, but the Antes tribes could be bilingual and have their own language(s) too; with the absence of direct statement on the ethnic affiliation of the Antes tribes, unlike in the case of Severeis, their ethnic affiliation must be resolved with the help of ethnological and biological distinctions.


7) In the second half of the sixth century and the early seventh century the Byzantine authors did not know “Slavs”. They still knew the Sclavenes and Antes who are “Slavs” only in slanted backward projection from a far-away 12th c., when the Slavic group identity was first formed.


8) The story with Σκλαβόι ~ Sclavenes is more blurred. The Σκλαβόι (Sklaboi) is a Türkic agglutinative compound Sk + la + boi = “of tribe Sk” or “of people Sk”, where Sk is a stem found in numerous Türkic tribal names: Scythians, Saka, Sekler, Sakar, Sagadar, Sagay, Saha; -la- is a Türkic adjectival and adverbial affix: Rusla = Russian, yerla = earthly, arkala = archly, öla = awedly, badla = badly, bodla = bodily, bögüshla = bogusly, ikila = both, etc., thus Skla (Sakla, Sekla, Sikla, Sokla, Sukla) is something with Sk property or a property of Sk tribe; boi in Türkic is “tribe, people”. The Σκλαβόι is exonym with various derivative forms digested by numerous languages, and it explains the “κ” in “Σκ-”, and the form Sclavenes vs. Slavenes. The form Slavenes could be a contracted from of Sclavenes, or could be an independent appellation derived from the Türkic süläü = “word, speak” > Sl. “slovo”, “slava” > Slav, Slovak, Slovene, etc., or could be a conflation of two independent appellations. It is quite possible that equation of Sclavenes with Slavs is a willful backward projection, applied anachronically.


9) Both the pre-ioticization and palatalization of velars are properties of the Oguric Bulgar language, and are relicts of the Türkic in Slavic. Rotacization is a notable property of the Chuvash, which is held to be a remnant of the Türkic Bulgar language. They complement the Türkic lexus in the pre-Slavic and Slavic, and the Türkic morphological elements in the pre-Slavic and Slavic. The Slavistic philology keep turning a blind eye to the Türkic-related facts of the Slavic languages, frequently invoking internal development of the inherited linguistic properties.


10) It is a common knowledge that the the twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle were re-written to sanitize and create. In spite of that, in the Russian and politically related historiographies they are widely used without juxtaposition of conflicting sources, continuing the revision of the 12th c. into the modern science, and thus propagating the history with an angle.

[George S.]

for the sake of a reference point can we make this a sticky so that other people can see these references and not start umpteen threads on slavs.You guys have said what is said to say.

[Soldier of Macedon]

The absence of a significant influence of Common Slavic in the Balkans is also evident from the small number of Balkan place names of Slavic origin, which could be dated on phonetical grounds, with any degree of certainty, before c. 800.

There may be an absence of 'Slavic' place names prior to this period but that doesn't mean it wasn't related to Balkan languages. The direct predecessors of the modern Italian, French and Spanish languages all started to take shape around the 9th century (see Veronese Riddle, Oaths of Strasbourg and Glosas Emilianenses respectively). At some point prior to that period, place names in these languages would have also been minimal, however, that doesn't mean they aren't largely derived from Latin.

[Risto the Great]

It is only the association with this political development that brought Slavic into closer contact with other languages. This explains why, despite the presumed presence of Slavic speaking communities in the Balkans at a relatively early date, the influence of Common Slavic on the non-Slavic languages of the area – Romanian, Albanian, and Greek – is minimal and far less significant than that of Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian. The absence of a significant influence of Common Slavic in the Balkans is also evident from the small number of Balkan place names of Slavic origin, which could be dated on phonetical grounds, with any degree of certainty, before c. 800.

An interesting point which does seem to confirm some commonality that must have pre-existed in the language of the Macedonians.

[Soldier of Macedon]

For the sake of quick reference, here is a summary of some of the more relevant sections of Florin Curta's 'The Making of the Slavs'. Some of these may have already been posted previously.

More than any other artifact category, however, pottery became the focus of all archaeological studies of the early Slavic culture.........Initially just a local variant of Borkovsky´’s Prague type, this pottery became the ceramic archetype of all Slavic cultures. The origins of the early Slavs thus moved from Czechoslovakia to Ukraine. The interpretation favored by Soviet scholars became the norm in all countries in Eastern Europe with Communist-dominated governments under Moscow’s..........The “Prague-Korchak type,” as this pottery came to be known, became a sort of symbol, the main and only indicator of Slavic ethnicity in material culture terms. Soviet archaeologists now delineated on distribution maps two separate, though related, cultures. The “Prague zone” was an archaeological equivalent of Jordanes’ Sclavenes, while the “Penkovka zone” was ascribed to the Antes, fall-out curves neatly coinciding with the borders of the Soviet republics..........To speak of the Prague culture as the culture of the migrating Slavs is…….nonsense…….the archaeological evidence……..does not match any long-distance migratory pattern. Assemblages in the Lower Danube area, both east and south of the Carpathian mountains, antedate those of the alleged Slavic Urheimat in the Zhitomir Polesie, on which Irina Rusanova based her theory of the Prague-Korchak-Zhitomir type. More recent attempts to move the Urheimat to Podolia and northern Bukovina are ultimately based on the dating of crossbow brooches found at Kodyn and some other places. These brooches, however, are not the only late fifth- or early sixth-century artifacts in the area.

………instead of a “Slavic culture” originating in a homeland and then spreading to surrounding areas, we should envisage a much broader area of common economic and cultural traditions. The implementation of an agricultural economic profile, which is so evident on later sites, is very likely to have involved some short-distance movement of people. The dominant type of economy seems to have been some form of “itinerant agriculture” which encouraged settlement mobility…….Such population movements, however, cannot be defined as migration. There is simply no evidence for the idea that the inhabitants of the sixth and early seventh-century settlements in Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine were colonists from the North. Nor does the idea of a “Slavic tide” covering the Balkans in the early 600s fit the existing archaeological data. South of the Danube river, no archaeological assemblage comparable to those found north of that river produced any clear evidence for a date earlier than c. 700. By contrast, there is no doubt that many early Byzantine forts in the Balkans were abandoned only during Heraclius’ early regnal years………..Though both Greece and Albania produced clear evidence of seventh-century burial assemblages, they have nothing in common with the “Slavic culture” north of the Danube river.

Since no other source referred to either Sclavenes or Antes before Justinian, some have rightly concluded that these two ethnies were purely (early) medieval phenomena.

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.

After Heraclius’ reign, there are no other sources referring to Slavs, except Book II of the Miracles of St Demetrius. Justinian (the mid-sixth century), Maurice (the late sixth century), and Heraclius (the second third of the seventh century) are thus the major chronological markers of the historiography of the early Slavs.

Procopius is the first author to speak of Slavic raiding across the Danube. According to his evidence, the first attack of the Antes, “who dwell close to the Sclaveni,” may be dated to 518. The raid was intercepted by Germanus, magister militum per Thraciam, and the Antes were defeated. There is no record of any other Antian raid until Justinian’s rise to power. It is possible therefore that this attack, like that of the Getae equites of 517, was related to Vitalianus’ revolt.

Procopius claims that the Sclavenes of 549 “had never in all time crossed the Ister river with an army before.” It is hardly conceivable that Procopius forgot what he had reported about the invasions following Chilbudius’ death, particularly about that of 545. Could he have implied that the Sclavenes of 549 were not those of 545?

......just as with contemporary Gepids, Lombards, or Bulgars, no particular item was ethnically specific to the Slavs.

Though in agreement with those who maintain that the history of the Slavs began in the sixth century, I argue that the Slavs were an invention of the sixth century. Inventing, however, presupposed both imagining or labeling by outsiders and self-identification.

The Slavs did not migrate from the Pripet marshes because of hostile environmental conditions. Nor did they develop forms of social organization enabling them to cope with such conditions and presumably based on cooperation and social equality (zadruga). Niederle’s thesis does not stand against the existing evidence and has at its basis an outdated concept of migration. That the migrationist model should be abandoned is also suggested by the archaeological evidence examined in Chapter 6.

Neither Theophylact nor the author of the Strategikon knew any other area of Slavic settlements except that located north of the Danube frontier. Furthermore, no clear evidence exists of an outright migration of the Slavs (Sclavenes) to the regions south of the Danube until the early years of Heraclius’ reign. Phocas’ revolt of 602 was not followed by an irresistible flood of Sclavenes submerging the Balkans. In fact, there are no raids recorded during Phocas’ reign, either by Sclavenes or by Avars. By contrast, large-scale raiding activities resumed during Heraclius’ early regnal years.

The earliest archaeological evidence of settlement assemblages postdating the general withdrawal of Roman armies from the Balkans is that of the 700s. This suggests that there was no “Slavic tide” in the Balkans following the presumed collapse of the Danube frontier. In addition, the archaeological evidence confirms the picture drawn from the analysis of written sources, namely that the “Slavs” were isolated pockets of population in various areas of the Balkans, which seem to have experienced serious demographic decline in the seventh century. The discussion in Chapter 4 has been based on the concept that the disintegration of the military system in the Balkans, which Justinian implemented in the mid-500s, was the result not so much of the destruction inflicted by barbarian invasions, as of serious economic and financial problems caused both by the emperor’s policies elsewhere and by the impossibility of providing sufficient economic support to his gigantic building program of defense. This conclusion is substantiated by the analysis of sixth-century Byzantine coin hoards, which suggest that inflation, not barbarian raids, was responsible for high rates of non-retrieval.

Furthermore, there is no evidence, until the early regnal years of Heraclius, of an outright migration of the Slavs (Sclavenes) to the region south of the Danube river.5 No evidence exists that Romans ever tried to prevent the crossing, despite the existence of a Danube military fleet. Moreover, all major confrontations with Sclavene armies or “throngs” took place south of the Stara Planina mountains.

The earliest changes in material culture which can be associated with emblemic styles and arguably represent some form of group identity postdate by a few decades the first mention of Sclavenes and Antes in historical sources. Can we call (Slavic) ethnicity this identity constructed by material culture means? The analysis presented in Chapter 5 shows that material culture may have been and indeed was used for the construction of ethnicity. Despite intensive interaction across the “no man’s land” between the Tisza and the Danube, clear material culture distinctions were maintained in a wide range of artifacts.

To judge from the existing evidence, the rise of the local elites was coincidental with the dissemination of emblemic styles which may have represented some form of group identity. It is very likely that this is more than simple coincidence. Big-men and chiefs became prominent especially in contexts in which they embodied collective interest and responsibility. Chiefs like Dauritas and Samo “created” groups by speaking and taking action in the name of their respective communities. Political and military mobilization was the response to the historical conditions created by the implementation of the fortified frontier on the Danube.

As suggested in Chapter 3, the Sclavene ethnicity is likely to have been an invention of Byzantine authors, despite the possibility, which is often stressed by linguistically minded historians, that the name itself was derived from the self-designation of an ethnic group. It is interesting to note that this ethnic name (slovene) appeared much later and only on the periphery of the Slavic linguistic area, at the interface with linguistically different groups.

…….contemporary sources attest the use of more than one language by individuals whom their authors viewed as Antes or Sclavenes. The “phoney Chilbudius” was able to claim successfully a false identity, that of a Roman general, because he spoke Latin fluently, and Perbundos, the “king” of the Rynchines, had a thorough command of Greek. In fact, language shifts were inextricably tied to shifts in the political economy in which speech situations were located. Just how complicated this political economy may have been is shown by the episode of the Gepid taken prisoner by Priscus’ army, during the 593 campaign. He was close to the Sclavene “king” Musocius and communicated with him in the “king’s language.” Formerly a Christian, he betrayed his leader and cooperated with Priscus, presumably using Latin as the language of communication. Finally, both the Gepid traitor and Musocius’ Sclavene subjects, who were lured into the ambush set by Roman troops, were accustomed to Avar songs, which were presumably in a language different from both Slavic and Latin.

…..Common Slavic itself may have been used as a lingua franca within and outside the Avar qaganate. This may explain, in the eyes of some linguists, the spread of this language throughout most of Eastern Europe, obliterating old dialects and languages. It may also explain why this language remained fairly stable and remarkably uniform through the ninth century, with only a small number of isoglosses that began to form before Old Church Slavonic was written down. This is also confirmed by the fact that Old Church Slavonic, a language created on the basis of a dialect spoken in Macedonia, was later understood in both Moravia and Kievan Rus. The same conclusion can be drawn from the episode of Raduald, duke of Benevento, reported by Paul the Deacon and discussed in Chapter 3. Raduald, who had previously been duke of Friuli, was able to talk to the Slavs who had invaded Benevento, coming from Dalmatia across the sea. Since the duchy of Friuli had been constantly confronted with Slavic raids from the neighboring region, we may presume that duke Raduald learned how to speak Slavic in Friuli. His Slavic neighbors in the north apparently spoke the same language as the Dalmatian Slavs. Slavic was also used as a lingua franca in Bulgaria, particularly after the conversion to Christianity in 865. It is only the association with this political development that brought Slavic into closer contact with other languages. This explains why, despite the presumed presence of Slavic speaking communities in the Balkans at a relatively early date, the influence of Common Slavic on the non-Slavic languages of the area – Romanian, Albanian, and Greek – is minimal and far less significant than that of Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian. The absence of a significant influence of Common Slavic in the Balkans is also evident from the small number of Balkan place names of Slavic origin, which could be dated on phonetical grounds, with any degree of certainty, before c. 800. As with material culture emblemic styles, the Slavic language may have been used to mark ethnic boundaries. The emblematic use of Slavic, however, was a much later phenomenon and cannot be associated with the Slavic ethnie of the sixth and seventh centuries. Slavs did not become Slavs because they spoke Slavic, but because they were called so by others.

Ethnies were not classified in terms of language or culture, but in terms of their military and political potential. Names were important, therefore, because they gave meaning to categories of political classification.

The Antes were constantly allies of the Romans, while Sclavenes always appeared on the side of their enemies. A different Antian ethnicity may thus have existed irrespective of the common, “utterly barbarous,” language, which, according to Procopius, both ethnies used.

In the light of these remarks, the very nature of a Sclavene ethnicity needs serious reconsideration. Procopius and later authors may have used this ethnic name as an umbrella-term for various groups living north of the Danube frontier, which were neither “Antes,” nor “Huns” or “Avars”. Jordanes did the same, though unlike others, he chose an ancient name, the Venethi, probably because he believed that the contemporary configuration of gentes beyond the limits of the Empire was a conse-quence, if not a reincarnation, of that described by ancient authors such as Tacitus or Ptolemy. To him, in other words, the barbarians of the sixth century, unless touched by the course of Gothic history, were frozen in time and space, basically the same and in the same places as viewed by the ancient authors. That no Slavic ethnicity existed in the eyes of any sixth- or seventh-century Byzantine author, which could be compared to the modern concept of ethnicity, is shown by Pseudo-Caesarius’ usage of the term “Sclavenes”. To him, the opposite of “Sclavenes” is .RipianoÛ, which was not an ethnie, but a name for the inhabitants of the Roman province of Dacia Ripensis. The contrast is that between a group living north and another living south of the Danube frontier, to which Pseudo- Caesarius referred by the biblical name Physon. His focus was on the specific location, within one and the same climate, of groups supposedly different in customs and religious life. The same is true for the author of the Strategikon. If Sclavenes were discussed in a different chapter than Avars, it is because, in his eyes, they had radically different social and political systems and, as a consequence, different forms of warfare. Roman generals, therefore, ought to learn how to fight them differently. Nevertheless, when it comes to real raids, the evidence discussed in Chapter 3 reveals that many authors were not at ease pinning down who exactly was ravaging Thrace in the 580s and who, at the same time, was in Greece. This, I must emphasize, is in sharp contrast to other authors’ concepts of Slavic ethnicity. That to our sixth- and seventh-century authors, ethnicity was an instrument to differentiate between enemies and allies is also shown by Theophylact Simocatta’s episode of the Gepid captured by Priscus’ army in 593. To the author of the Feldzugsjournal used by Theophylact as a source for Priscus’ campaign, this “Gepid” was different from “Sclavenes,” even if he had chosen to live among them and was a friend, if not a subject, of “king” Musocius. His “Gepid” ethnicity became apparent and important only when it became necessary to make a difference between him, a former Christian, and the other, “Sclavene” prisoners, who refused to reveal the location of their chief ’s village. Unlike them, the “Gepid” deserter would become a key factor for the successful conclusion of Priscus’ campaign. Viewed from this perspective, ethnicities were just labels attached to various actors in historically determined situations. Like all labels, they were sometimes misleading. The author of the Strategikon warns against those still claiming to be “Romans” ('RvmaÝoi), but who “have given in to the times,” forgot “their own people,” and preferred “to gain the good will of the enemy,” by luring Roman armies into ambushes set by the Sclavenes. To the experienced soldier who wrote the Strategikon, any ethnicity, including a Roman one, should be treated with extreme suspicion, if not backed by a politically correct affiliation. Byzantine authors seem to have used “Sclavenes” and “Antes” to make sense of the process of group identification which was taking place under their own eyes just north of the Danube frontier. They were, of course, interested more in the military and political consequences of this process than in the analysis of Slavic ethnicity. Chiefs and chief names were more important than customs or culture. When customs and culture came to the fore, as in the case of the Strategikon, it was because its author believed that they were linked to the kind of warfare preferred by Sclavenes and Antes. A similar concept may have guided Procopius in writing his Slavic excursus. It is because of their military skills that the Sclavenes and the Antes caught the attention of the Roman authors. As early as 537, Sclavene mercenaries were fighting in Italy on the Roman side. The first Sclavene raid recorded by Procopius predates by only five or six years the publication of the first seven books of the Wars. In his work, Procopius viewed the Sclavenes and the Antes as “new” and their presence in the Lower Danube region as recent. Although he constantly referred to Sclavenes in relation to Huns or other nomads, there is no indication that he believed them to have recently come from some other place. That he considered them to be “new” can only mean that they had not, until then, represented a political force[/B] worth being treated like the Lombards, the Gepids, the Cutrigurs, and other “allies” surrounding the Empire. It is because he thought the Sclavenes and the Antes were not politically important (or, at least, not as important as Lombards, Gepids, or Cutrigurs) that Procopius failed to record any chief names. To be one of Justinian’s ¦nspondoi, one needed first to have a “king.” The irony behind the episode of the “phoney Chilbudius,” with its plot setting imitating that of a neo-Attic comedy, is that the Antes, who eventually became Justinian’s ¦nspondoi, did not have a true leader, for they had “lived from old under a democracy.” The making of the Slavs was less a matter of ethnogenesis and more one of invention, imagining and labeling by Byzantine authors. Some form of group identity, however, which we may arguably call ethnicity, was growing out of the historical circumstances following the fortification of the Danube limes. This was therefore an identity formed in the shadow of Justinian’s forts, not in the Pripet marshes. There are good reasons to believe that this identity was much more complex than the doublet “Sclavenes-Antes” imposed by the Byzantine historiography. Book II of the Miracles of St Demetrius and Fredegar’s chronicle give us a measure of this complexity. That no “Slavs” called themselves by this name not only indicates that no group took on the label imposed by outsiders, but also suggests that this label was more a pedantic construction than the result of systematic interaction across ethnic boundaries. The first clear statement that “we are Slavs” comes from the twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle. With this chronicle, however, the making of the Slavs ends and another story begins: that of their “national” use for claims to ancestry.

Our present knowledge of the origin of the Slavs is, to a large extent, a legacy of the nineteenth century.

Either as “cumulative mutual Slavicity” or as Sclavene military units organized and controlled by steppe nomads, the idea that the Slavs became Slavs by speaking Slavic is pervasive.

[TrueMacedonian]

Were there any Slavs in seventh century Macedonia?
by Florin Curta

http://www.academia.edu/2292584/Were_there_any_Slavs_in_seventh-century_Macedonia