The Celts – the Germans – the Slavs

Abstract

The article deals with the capabilities of archaeology and its cooperative scientific disciplines in the study of expressions of protohistorical collective identities’ ethnicity which are rather limited. The Celts. Nowadays, we have considerable problems with ethnicity of a large group of tribes, the main bearers of the LaTène culture, although considerably numerous historical, linguistic, epigraphic, palaeographic, iconographic and other sources are also available here. Despite this fact, we know that the Celtic tribes were aware of their related identity. Historical linguistics – absolutely independently from archaeological testimonies – proved close relatedness of languages of ancient continental as well as medieval insular Celts. Although not all LaTène culture bearers were necessarily Celts, most of them were; at the same time, not all Celtic tribes maintained this culture after being included into the Antique world. The Germans. We know that also tribes called Germanic were aware of their related identity. It is documented by the facts that they all spoke mutually understandable languages originating from Proto-German and shared very close mythology. Material culture of individual Germanic tribes is rather significant and, in many cases, typical of a tribe; however, in contact with the Roman Empire and the Huns, mainly their elites gave up their tribal and ethnic identity. The tribes with stable and flexible organizational forms able to adopt progressive innovations succeeded in complex ethnogenetic processes. Besides the Franks, the Anglosaxons, Germans (Deutche), Danes and Swedes were able to develop into independent medieval nations. The Goths, Vandals, Gepids, Suebi, Heruli and other Germanic tribes, however, did not manage to adapt to more developed environments and survive as original cultural-ethnical entities. They disintegrated and gave up to external military attacks when they became organizationally, militarily, economically and ideologically weakened in attempts to create their own ‘states’. The Slavs. A large group of tribes was called Sclavini, Anti, Veneti by antique authors of the 6th c. and documented under their own names – Slovene, slovenski narod, slovensko plemja since the 9th c., although they simultaneously used numerous tribal or regional names. Archaeologically, these oldest Slavs are represented by three related cultures – Prague, Penkovka and Koločin, which are interpreted as historically known Sclaveni, Antes and Veneti, from which individual branches of the Slavs developed. The common Slavic linguistic and cultural identity gradually developed through tribal identities into identities of individual Slavic nations after extensive migrations mainly to the territories of Byzantium, former Roman provinces and their northern peripheries. As for this process among the western Slavs, the tribes which were able to found their own early ‘states’ – the Bohemian and Polish kingdoms – were first to achieve their own ethnic identity. Some of the tribes, like most of the north-western – Polabian and Pomeranian – tribes were assimilated by the East Frank Empire or later by the Kingdom of Germany and became extinct.