Abstract
Historians do least violence to our sources when we draw boundaries in the same places as the people we study. Ethnogenesis theory appears to offer art historians just that possibility. Certain early medieval groups, for example the Goths and Franks, are thought to have gradually developed a sense of “ethnic” identity1 manifested in characteristic art forms. One can therefore speak of Gothic amulets or Frankish fibulae, label those objects medieval (rather than ancient), and map their formal changes over time, bringing order to a large body of chaos. But the theory is not without its own problems. We cannot be sure whether or in what ways textual terminology related to actual groups. How can we discuss Gothic development when we do not know whether people called Goths by outsiders thought of themselves that way, whether unrelated groups were given the same name, or whether the name is properly used for more than one generation? Archaeology is sometimes brought in to refine our definitions, but that, too, is fraught with peril. Surviving bjects can fail to conform to the expected orderly progression.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Robert Bartlett, “Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity,” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 (2001): 39–56.
Patrick J. Geary, “Barbarians and Ethnicity,” in Interpreting Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World, ed. G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 107–29.
Walter Pohl, “Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies,” Archaeologia Polona 29 (1991): 39–49.
Sian Jones, “Historical Categories and the Praxis of Identity: The Interpretation of Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology,” in Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, ed. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 219–32.
Siân Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997)
Sebastian Brather, Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift 39 (1998): 457–62.
H.B. Walters, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Cameos, Greek, Etruscan and Roman in the British Museum, rev. and enlarged ed. (London: British Museum, 1926), p. 372.
Genevra Kornbluth, “Games (including Backgammon and Chess),” in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. Glen W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 459–60.
Alexander Mlasowsky, Die antiken Tesseren im Kestner-Museum Hannover (Hannover: Kestner-Museum, 1991), no. 126.
Berta Segall, Katalog der Goldschmiede Arbeiten (Athens: Druckerei Pyrsos, 1938), no. 94.
Robert Roeren, “Ein frühalamannischer Grabfund von Gundelsheim (Kr. Heilbronn),” Fundberichte aus Schwaben, 15 (1959): 83–93.
Rainer Christlein, Die Alamannen: Archäologie eines lebendigen Volkes (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss, 1978), p. 115, pl. 35.
V.P. Petrov, Materialy i Issledovaniia po Arkheologii SSSR 116 (1964): 112–13.
Mechthild Schulze-Dörrlamm, “Gotische Amulette des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr.,” Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 16 (1986): 347–55.
Stephen Shennan, “Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity,” in Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity, ed. Stephen Shennan (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), esp. pp. 5–14 [1–32].
Florin Curta, “From Kossinna to Bromley: Ethnogenesis in Slavic Archaeology,” in On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 201–18.
Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, ca. 500–700 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Peter Heather, The Goths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 18–19.
Joachim Werner, “Herkuleskeule und Donar-Amulett,” Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 11 (1964): 176–97.
Audrey L. Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1981).
Birgit Arrhenius, “Bergkristall,” Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1976), 2: 267–69.
Donald B. Harden et al., Glass of the Caesars: The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, the British Museum, London, Römisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne (Milan: Olivetti, 1987), pp. 179–88.
Reinhard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung: Das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen Gentes (Cologne: Bühlau, 1961).
Patrick Geary, “Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages,” Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 113 (1983): 15–26.
Walter Pohl, “Telling the Difference: Signs of Ethnic Identity,” in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 17–69.
Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 14 and passim.
Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, rev. ed., trans. Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Die Antiken Gemmen des kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, 3 vols. (München: Prestel, 1991), 3.1732:73–74.
J.R. Martindale, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. 2, A.D. 395–527 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 43–48.
Percy Ernst Schramm, “Brustbilder von Königen auf Siegelringen der Völkerwanderungszeit,” in P.E. Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik: Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis zum sechzehnten Jahrhundert, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1954–1956), 1 (1954): 213–22.
Herwig Wolfram, Intitulatio I: Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel bis zum Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts (Graz: Hermann Böhlaus, 1967), pp. 77–79.
Steven Fanning, “Emperors and Empires in Fifth-Century Gaul,” in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, ed. John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 288–97.
Philip Grierson and Melinda Mays, Catalogue of Late Roman Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: From Arcadius and Honorius to the Accession of Anastasius (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1992), p. 74.
Gerd G. Koenig, “Archäologische Zeugnisse westgotischer Präsenz im 5. Jahrhundert,” Madrider Mitteilungen 21 (1980): esp. p. 223 [220–47 and pls. 59–67].
Phillip Grierson, “The Date of Theoderic’s Gold Medallion,” Hikuin 11 (1985): 19–26.
E.A. Thompson, The Visigoths in the Time of Ulfila (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 34–43.
Kevin Greene, “Gothic Material Culture,” in Archaeology as Long-Term History, ed. Ian Hodder (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Hermann Hinz, “Am langen Band getragene Bergkristallanhänger der Merowingerzeit,” Jahrbuch des Rümisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 13 (1966): 212–30.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2007 Celia Chazelle and Felice Lifshitz
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kornbluth, G. (2007). Material Ethnogenesis? A Crystal Conch of the “Goths”. In: Chazelle, C., Lifshitz, F. (eds) Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12305-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12305-3_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-73516-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-12305-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)