SLAVS AND THE EARLY SLAV CULTURE

The first certain information about the Slavs dates to the sixth century a.d. The question of the location, time, and course of ethnogenetic processes that shaped the "earliest" branch of Indo-Europeans remains one of the most fiercely discussed issues in central and eastern European historiography. A modest set of primary written sources from that period and a larger but more controversial set of linguistic arguments form the basis of what is known concerning the beginnings of Slavic history. It is mostly thanks to archaeological findings that the understanding of early Slavic culture has broadened in the last fifty years. Authoritative archaeological evidence entered into the discussion on the origins of the Slavs only in the 1960s, when archaeologists began to recognize and analyze assemblages of artifacts from the fifth through the sixth centuries throughout the area between the Elbe and Don Rivers.

According to the "western" thesis, which has not been analyzed properly with respect to the Polish territory, the Slavs' homeland was either in the basin of the Oder and Vistula (perhaps only the Vistula) or between the Oder and the Dnieper. At present, the evidence supporting this hypothesis is weak. Thorough analysis of the findings from the second through the fifth centuries from the area of central Europe, carried out by Kazimierz Godłowski, confirmed the nonindigenous character of Slavic culture on the Oder and Vistula. The fact that the cultural models of two consecutive palaeo-ethnological phenomena were identical—the archaeological findings from the second through fifth centuries in the central and upper Dnieper region and those of the later Slavic structures from fifth to sixth centuries—was also noted by Godłowski. The reliability of the "eastern" concept has been constantly growing, as archaeological source-based research has progressed in eastern and central Europe. The archaeologists' arguments have been confronted with the contents of historical records.

The Byzantines were the first to notice the Slavs—raids from a new wave of barbarians from the north endangered their empire's Danube border. In the first half of the sixth century, Jordanes, in his history of the Goths, pinpointed Slavic settlements in the region surrounded by the upper Vistula, the Lower Danube, and the Dnieper. There, according to Jordanes, along the Carpathian range, "from the sources of the Vistula over immeasurable area, settled a numerous people of Veneti." The Veneti were divided into Sclavenes and Antes—both groups commonly regarded as Slavs. The Sclavenes lived in the area from the Vistula to the Lower Danube, and the Antes inhabited the area to the east of the Dniester, up to the Dnieper. The Byzantine writer Procopius of Caesarea, a contemporary of Jordanes, records in his Gothic War (De bello Gothico) that "uncountable tribes of the Antes" settled even farther to the east. He recorded that in about a.d. 512 there was "a considerable area of empty land" to the west of Sclavenian settlements (perhaps in Silesia?). It is hard to overestimate the importance of Procopius's words that Sclavenes and Antes spoke "the same language" and that they had long had one common name.

The records of these authors seem to correspond to the area of archaeological phenomena that is identified with the remnants of the Slavs at the beginning of their great expansion. The southern and eastern frontier of Slavdom described in the first half of the sixth century from the Byzantine perspective matches the border of a specific and exceptionally homogeneous cultural province, which can be interpreted only as Slavic. All available excavation materials confirm the division of this province, between the mid-fifth and mid-seventh centuries, into at least three tightly interrelated branches. The historical records allow for the identification of the western group (the Prague culture) with the Sclavenes and of the southeastern group (the Penkovka culture) with the Antes. The name of the third group (the Kolochin culture) is unknown but was perhaps the "Veneti."

These groups represent an identical cultural model. The differentiation of the discussed archaeological units is so slight that it is practically based on a secondary criterion, that is, the differences among the characteristic forms of pottery, which is the only mass finding. The early development stage of all three cultures (the turn of the sixth century) is characterized by a large majority of simple handmade pots without ornamentation.

The boundaries of these cultures were transformed considerably in the late sixth century and into the seventh century. Although the areas occupied by the Kolochin and Penkovka cultures remained the same, the Prague culture spread widely to the west: it encompassed the basin of the Middle Danube and the upper and middle Elbe. At the same time a new phenomenon arose in the basin of the Oder and on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea: the Sukow culture, most likely the younger stage of the Prague culture. Unfortunately, the disappointing state of research on the areas south of the Danube makes it impossible to obtain a clear picture of archaeological structures in the Balkans.

The ethnographic characteristics of early Slavic society captured by historians and archaeologists allow researchers to describe settlement forms; economic structure; the method of artifact manufacture and its stylistic features; some elements of the social system, customs, and beliefs; the funeral rite; warfare; foreign influences; standards of living; and the general level of civilization development. Early Slavic settlements hardly ever were found in the mountains: their traces are rarely seen more than 300 meters above sea level. The areas of fertile soil close to rivers and woods most often were selected. Nondefensive settlements were built along the edges of river valleys. Typical houses were sunken-floored huts on a square plan, with sides from 2.5 to 4.5 meters long. The wooden walls were erected in the form of a log cabin ("blockhouse") or were of pile ("Pfostenbaum") construction. A stone or clay oven typically stood in one corner, although some huts had hearths in the center. According to Procopius, the Slavs "live in pitiable huts, few and far between." The so-called Pseudo-Maurikios, a Byzantine historian writing at the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh centuries, says, "They live in the woods, among rivers, swamps and marshes."

Natural forms of environmental exploitation pervaded the economy, which was based mainly on agriculture. The main crops were millet and wheat; breeding cattle was at the forefront of husbandry too. As a result, the inhabitants of rural settlements were totally self-sufficient, although their lives were of low standard, a fact noted by the Byzantines. According to Pseudo-Maurikios, the Slavs were numerous and persistent; they easily endured heat, chill, and bad weather as well as scarcity of clothes and livelihood.

No form of well-developed handicraft existed, apart from a rudimentary form of ironworking. The models for molten metal ornaments were borrowed from other cultures, as was the handicraft method of pottery production with a potter's wheel (from the sixth and seventh centuries). There are no clear traces of widespread trade. Records exist on the chiefs and tribal elders, who were usually leaders of small tribes. The funeral rite demanded cremation. The remains of human bones, with a few rare poor gifts for the dead, were put in shallow pits, either in a vessel (an urn) or directly in the soil.

The territory of the later—that is, pre–late fifth century—Slavic society is unclear. The ethnogenetic connection between the remains of Slavic settlements from the sixth and seventh centuries and earlier structures can be observed only in the east. The most reliable archaeological guidelines lead to the area of the upper and middle basin of the Dnieper, where a large group of people, whose remains are defined as "the Kiev culture," lived from the second or third century until the beginning of the fifth century. This is, as it were, the matrix of the three early Slavic cultures: the Kolochin culture (taking up almost the same area as the Kiev culture earlier); the Penkovka culture; and, to a large extent, the Prague culture. In the steppe and forest-steppe zones of the Ukraine are concentrated the earliest archaeological assemblages (dated undoubtedly to the fifth century) belonging to these three Slavic groups.

The eastern origin of the Slavs is confirmed directly by one written source. The so-called Cosmograph of Ravenna, writing in the seventh or eighth century, mentions the motherland of the Scythians, the place from where generations of Sclavenes originated. The specific location is unknown but he mentions the vast area of eastern Europe. The land inhabited by the Slavs at the beginning of the sixth century, reconstructed on the basis of archaeological findings, was approximately three times bigger than the area occupied by the Kiev culture in the first decades of the fifth century. New territories were taken over in the south and west—up to the Carpathians, the Lower Danube, and the Upper and Middle Vistula. The second stage of Slavic territorial expansion took place in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries. The population masses concentrated in the Lower Danube moved to the Balkans and occupied land as far as Peloponnese. A steppe people of the Avars, who settled in the Carpathian Basin in about a.d. 568, played a significant role in these events. At the same time other currents of expansion were moving to the west, reaching the eastern Alps and the Baltic Sea and occupying the Elbe basin.

Between the Baltic, the Elbe, and the Danube the newcomers probably encountered largely empty territories. In the Balkans, however, they first devastated the area and suppressed the locals and then, from the end of the sixth century onward, populated the land inhabited by the Greeks, by the remains of the Thracians and Germans, and, in the west of the peninsula, by groups of Romans. One of the mechanisms of the Slavs' demographic success—mass abduction of natives to captivity—is documented clearly in written records. In time, massive territorial growth together with the adoption of diversified ethnic substrates created the conditions for a deepening of the divisions in culture (and undoubtedly language as well) within what had so far been a unified Slavic world.

See alsoScythians (vol. 2, part 7); Poland (vol. 2, part 7); Hungary (vol. 2, part 7).

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MichaŁ Parczewski