Barbarians Read online

  THE BARBARIANS

  LOST CIVILIZATIONS

  The books in this series explore the rise and fall of the great civilizations and peoples of the ancient world. Each book considers not only their history but their art, culture and lasting legacy and asks why they remain important and relevant in our world today.

  Already published:

  The Barbarians Peter Bogucki

  Egypt Christina Riggs

  The Indus Andrew Robinson

  The Persians Geoffrey Parker and Brenda Parker

  THE

  BARBARIANS

  LOST CIVILIZATIONS

  PETER BOGUCKI

  REAKTION BOOKS

  To Jim Wei and Vince Poor, for the opportunity to pursue my scholarship and their collegial interest in my work

  Published by Reaktion Books Ltd

  Unit 32, Waterside

  44–48 Wharf Road

  London N1 7UX, UK

  www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

  First published 2017

  Copyright © Peter Bogucki 2017

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

  Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and

  Index match the printed edition of this book.

  Printed and bound in China

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 9781780237657

  CONTENTS

  CHRONOLOGY

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  1 HUNTERS, FISHERS, FARMERS AND METALWORKERS

  2 CONNECTIONS, RITUALS AND SYMBOLS

  3 TRADE, SALT, GREEKS AND WEALTH

  4 ROMANS ENCOUNTER THE HIGH IRON AGE

  5 BARBARIANS BEYOND THE IMPERIAL FRONTIER

  6 BARBARIANS LIVE ON

  REFERENCES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INDEX

  CHRONOLOGY

  c. 9500 BC

  Establishment of relatively modern vegetation and wildlife in temperate Europe

  c. 7000 BC

  Domestic plants and animals appear in Greece

  c. 5500 BC

  Expansion of farming begins in central Europe

  c. 4000 BC

  Adoption of farming by hunter-gatherers in southern Scandinavia and British Isles; first ‘lake-dwelling’ settlements built in Alpine Foreland

  c. 4000–3500 BC

  Wheeled vehicles are invented, probably in central or southeast Europe

  3384–3370 BC

  Arbon-Bleiche 3 on Lake Constance inhabited

  c. 3300 BC

  Ötzi the Iceman is killed crossing the Alps

  c. 3200 BC

  Passage grave at Newgrange is built in Ireland

  c. 2900 BC

  Construction of first bank and ditch begins at Stonehenge

  c. 2620–2480 BC

  Stonehenge is expanded to full extent

  c. 2400–2300 BC

  Amesbury Archer dies near Stonehenge

  c. 2500–2000 BC

  Transition from Stone Age to Bronze Age in temperate Europe

  2049 BC

  Seahenge is built on English coast

  c. 2000 BC

  Man in Bush Barrow near Stonehenge buried with lavish grave goods

  c. 1550 BC

  Dover Boat abandoned

  c. 1370 BC

  Egtved Girl is buried in an oak coffin in Denmark

  1365–967 BC

  Flag Fen ritual platform is built and maintained in eastern England

  c. 1000–800 BC

  Transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age in temperate Europe

  c. 800–500 BC

  Intensive salt mining at Hallstatt

  747–722 BC

  Biskupin built in northern Poland

  c. 600 BC

  Greeks establish trading colony at Massalia, southern France

  c. 590–530 BC

  Mud-brick wall in use at Heuneburg, southwestern Germany

  c. 400 BC–AD 400

  Bog bodies are deposited in wetlands across northern Europe

  c. 350–300 BC

  Hjortspring Boat is deposited in bog with weapons sacrifice

  c. 300 BC

  La Tène art style appears in western Europe

  c. 200 BC–AD 400

  ‘Royal’ sites in Ireland flourish

  148 BC

  Corlea Trackway built in Ireland

  58 BC

  Caesar invades Gaul

  AD 9

  Slaughter of Varus’ legions in Teutoberg Forest by native forces led by Arminius

  AD 43

  Romans invade Britain

  c. AD 200

  War-booty sacrifice made at Illerup Ådal A

  AD 310–20

  Nydam Boat constructed in northern Germany

  AD 406

  Barbarians cross the Rhine in force, devastation ensues

  AD 410

  Goths sack Rome, Roman officials leave Britain

  AD 451

  Romans and Visigoths defeat Huns at Châlons, eastern France

  AD 476

  Conventional date for final collapse of Roman Empire in the West

  AD 480

  Sandby Borg on island of Öland sacked, inhabitants massacred

  AD 481/2

  Childeric, king of the Franks, is buried in Tournai, Belgium

  AD 496

  Childeric’s son Clovis converts to Christianity

  AD 1557

  Concept of a ‘Migration Period’ introduced by Wolfgang Lazius for population movements during the first millennium AD

  AD 1808

  William Cunnington excavates Bush Barrow near Stonehenge

  AD 1854

  Ferdinand Keller investigates Swiss lake-dwelling sites

  AD 1933

  Walenty Szwajcer discovers Biskupin in Poland

  AD 1950

  Tollund Man discovered in Denmark

  AD 1987

  Tony Clunn finds the site of an important Roman defeat in the Teutoberg Forest

  AD 1991

  Ötzi the Iceman found by hikers in the Alps

  AD 2014

  New Iron Age ‘royal tomb’ is discovered at Lavau in France

  Mount for spear shaft, c. 400, from the Vermand Treasure, the most richly appointed barbarian warrior grave ever found. The grave was likely that of an auxiliary soldier stationed in the Roman province of Gaul.

  PREFACE

  The civilizations of Greece and Rome that flourished in Mediterranean Europe did not develop in isolation. To their north, non-literate peoples inhabited river valleys, mountains, plains and coasts from the Atlantic to the Urals. The ancient Mediterranean civilizations called them ‘barbarians’ as a way of marking them as different and alien. Their story, known almost exclusively through archaeological finds of settlements, offerings, monuments and burials, is as compelling as that of the great literate, urban civilizations. Moreover, the prehistoric past of Europe echoes into the modern era through new discoveries, celebrations of the past, tourist attractions and even politics.

  Classical civilizations on the north shore of the Mediterranean Sea were surrounded by barbarians in Europe, southwest Asia and North Africa. This book deals with the barbarians that lived in Europe, the area where my archaeological research has been concentrated. Unlike most discussions of barbarians that pick up when these peoples made contact with classical civilizations, I will show that the societies that met the Greeks and Romans in the final millennium BC had a long prehistoric her
itage. As an archaeologist, I privilege the material record over written accounts, and one of the aims of this book is to show the reader what archaeology can tell us that texts cannot.

  Let me acknowledge that the title The Barbarians: Lost Civilizations is an oxymoron. By definition, the people we call barbarians were not civilized, in terms of what the concept of ‘civilization’ meant to the inhabitants of Greece and Rome. Except for those few who were schooled in neighbouring literate societies, European barbarians did not write or speak Greek or Latin. With the exception of the large towns known as oppida at the end of the first millennium BC, they did not live in settlements that might be called urban. The organizing principles of their communities were chaotic in comparison with the hierarchies and rules that structured Greek and Roman society. They fail just about every test of what it means to be ‘civilized’.

  When viewed over the long arc of time that begins in the Stone Age, however, the European barbarians reveal a remarkable story of innovation, mobility and social complexity. They traded, farmed, herded and fought with energy and enthusiasm. Some members of barbarian society sought status, wealth and prestige, while others went about their everyday work. When they encountered civilizations, they cunningly took advantage of new opportunities for social mobility. Just because barbarians were different from Greeks and Romans does not mean that they are any less interesting.

  This book should not be taken as a definitive grand narrative of the European barbarians. Instead, it hits the highlights as I see them, especially of topics that I personally have found interesting over the last forty years of archaeological research, teaching and writing. I hope that the reader will find many of these intriguing and will seek further information. Much is available on the Internet, although this information has to be regarded critically. More can be learned by visiting sites and museums across barbarian Europe that exhibit, interpret and reconstruct the material world of these prehistoric societies.

  The legacy of the Barbarian World remains with us today. Thus another goal of this book is to bring the barbarian story into the present day and reflect on how we have come to view the pre-literate peoples of Europe. The final chapter talks about the role of the barbarian narrative in modern history, politics and culture.

  INTRODUCTION

  Between 2000 BC and AD 500,1 Europe north of the Alps was inhabited by remarkable societies that matched the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean in many respects except one: literacy. They remain relatively invisible in the historical narrative of the emergence of European society except to be grouped under the single name of ‘barbarians’. We know a tremendous amount about these peoples, and the privileging of written sources from classical authors simply overlooks the rich body of evidence about them. Their monuments are visible across the European landscape, while beneath the surface lie their settlements and their graves. Yet they come across in the popular imagination as violent, bloodthirsty killers responsible for the collapse of Rome and other crimes against humanity.

  This book attempts to redress this traditional indictment of barbarians. Lest the reader think that it will be ‘Springtime for Arminius’,2 let me stress that there will be no effort here to make the prehistoric inhabitants of northern Europe appear more civilized than they were. Their bad reputation has been amplified over the centuries, which also allows them to be dismissed from history. Yet we really should care who built Stonehenge, what it means to make bronze and iron, and above all, who were the people that the Greeks and Romans met when they went north.

  Since we do not know the names of people who lived in northern areas until very late in the story, we have to understand them as communities linked by similar things and practices as well as deep pasts. We do not know how they thought of their own identities, but we can be sure that they never considered themselves to be barbarians. They were farmers, traders, metalsmiths, chiefs, slaves, parents and children just like everyone else. Collectively, they made up what I will call ‘the Barbarian World’.

  The Barbarian World was not a monolithic entity. Over the 3,000 years that are the focus of this book, it was transformed many times. It also varied geographically, from Ireland to Russia and from the Arctic Circle to the Alps. Yet throughout this area, ancient people had contacts across great distances and passed down traditions and memories across the centuries. The fact that barbarians could not write does not mean that they should be written out of history.

  The problem with written sources

  It is true that classical authors did write about the barbarians, and myths and sagas that were not recorded until later can be projected backward into the pre-literate past. Many classical authors who wrote about the barbarians never actually met one, however, and extrapolation from indirect sources produces a confused mixture of legends and details. Ethnohistoric narratives and travellers’ accounts from later centuries are better sources, but they have limited coverage and provide only snapshots of complex social, political and religious arrangements.

  The most important problem with written sources about non-literate peoples is that they impose the viewpoint of the writer. This is always a problem for historians. As Winston Churchill said about Stanley Baldwin, ‘history will say that the right honourable gentleman was wrong . . . because I shall write the history.’3 Luckily other people also wrote about British politics in the 1930s, so historians can evaluate whether Churchill’s account is accurate. With non-literate ancient peoples, writing by superordinated literate authors imposes a particular perspective. For example, almost all accounts of the life of African slaves in the Antebellum South were written by white authors, for it was illegal to teach the slaves how to write (although some did learn to do so). Thus, our knowledge of their everyday lives is either unrecorded or badly skewed.

  The same constraint applies in prehistoric Europe. Accounts by Greek and Roman chroniclers were not written impartially, nor were they intended for an impartial readership. As we will see below, it suited Caesar and other Roman writers to establish a sharp distinction between the pacified peoples living within the Imperial frontiers and the unpacified peoples living outside. Such a distinction may or may not have been real, and there are indications that this differentiation does not reflect the inherent social and ethnic similarities across the frontier. Thus the relatively few written sources about the Barbarian World that we have from classical authors must be taken not as definitive but simply as one line of evidence, and a flawed one at that.

  Archaeology as a primary source

  Direct knowledge of the Barbarian World comes almost completely from archaeology, the study of the material remains of past peoples from which we can infer details of their lives and practices. Several centuries of archaeological study of the last several millennia BC and the first millennium AD have yielded a huge body of information that fills museums and archaeological laboratories across Europe. Archaeologists populate universities, museum staffs, national and regional antiquities offices and private firms that engage in rescue archaeology. Scholars from North America and as far away as Japan have been involved in the study of European archaeology. On the basis of the archaeology, there is a lot that can be said about the Barbarian World, but there is so much more that we still do not know.

  Archaeology in northern and central Europe involves the study of ancient sites and the artefacts that they contain, as well as stray finds recovered from rivers, sea floors, glaciers and other unusual places. It differs from archaeology of the classical world of Greece and Rome and the civilizations of Egypt and the Near East in that European sites are rather mundane by comparison. There is no Acropolis, no Pyramids of Giza, no Colosseum. With a few imported exceptions, the sites left by the barbarians do not have inscriptions or texts. Figurative sculpture is largely absent, unless acquired by trade. An archaeologist looks at an immense hillfort like Maiden Castle in southern England with awe, but to the uninitiated it looks like a lot of ditches around a hill. Even Stonehenge, whose photographs make it ap
pear huge, is puny by comparison with major classical monuments.

  Instead, the sites of barbarian Europe are small, often invisible on the surface. The most evident are thousands of burial mounds, also known as tumuli or barrows. They are almost everywhere, and many more have been destroyed over the intervening millennia. Other graves lie buried in cemeteries or individual tombs. Mortuary sites of the barbarians have often yielded spectacular grave offerings. Human bodies are also found in unusual places, mummified high in the Alps or submerged in bogs, often having met grisly deaths.

  Evidence for prehistoric settlement is everywhere in Europe, ranging from the earliest hunters of the Ice Age, through the earliest farmers, herders and metalworkers, until the dawn of literate civilization. Most settlements cannot be seen, since timber was the main building material, and wood decays unless waterlogged. Thus much of what we know about ancient buildings in Europe comes from stains in the soil where upright timbers were set into postholes and trenches. The variety of structures is astonishing: long, short, round, oval, rectangular, big, small. Although we know a lot about their outlines, we know less about the structures and roofs, although we can make educated guesses.

  Stone Age longhouse at Łoniowa, Poland, being excavated, showing postholes and pits.