[gothic-l] Re: Polish Views On the Goths

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

Hi Bertil,

I put this article on this list some time ago as well. What do you 
think about the proposition of merging of Gothic-germanic traditions 
and Baltic traditions to form the (Old) Prussians (Prussi). I spend a 
lot of time in today's Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg) former East Prussia, 
where archaeologists told me a similar story based on their 
excavations of Prussian grave sites. At the time I could not really 
make much sense of it, but the article by Urbanczyk seems to indicate 
that this is the view of local archaeologists and historians.

Dirk


--- In gothic-l at egroups.com, Bertil Häggman <mvk575b at t...> wrote:
> Thought maybe y'all would be interested
> in the views underneath on the Goths in
> Poland.
> 
> Gothically
> 
> Bertil
> 
> Volume 01 Issue 03 - 
> Publication Date: 1 December 1998 
> The Goths in Poland - where did they 
> come from and when did they leave? 
> in European Journal of Archaeology, 
> Przemyslaw Urbanczyk Institute of Archaeology 
> and Ethnology, PAN, Warsaw, Poland 
> 
> Recent archaeological discoveries and reinterpretations 
> of written sources supported by the concepts of historical 
> anthropology allow the creation of a new picture about the 
> Goths. Most of the archaeologists studying the cultural 
> situation in northern Poland during the Roman period 
> admit today that the roots of the Wielbark culture commonly 
> identified with the early Goths are to be sought in local 
> traditions. The results of that process, which can be 
> explained in terms of change in symbolic consciousness 
> rather than by a demographic expansion, became 
> archaeologically visible in the mid-first century AD. The 
> decision to leave the Baltic zone could have been taken 
> by a Gothic social elite endangered by tensions resulting 
> from unstable trade relations with the Roman Empire and 
> climatic deterioration. However, a substantial part of the 
> agricultural Wielbark population stayed behind, preferring 
> well-known circumstances than risks of an unpredictable 
> fate in distant lands. Among those people, after some time, 
> the hierarchization process was repeated, leading to the 
> emergence of a new elite, which decided to follow their 
> predecessors by migrating to the south east. They are 
> identified by the sources as the Gepids. There are strong 
> archaeological indications that some part of the Wielbark 
> population must have again stayed behind in Poland 
> maintaining close contacts with their southern 'cousins'. 
> Archaeologists today suggest that some 'Gothic' groups 
> from the Pontic steppes returned to the Baltic. The merging 
> of Germanic and Baltic traditions resulted in a new cultural 
> formation. In the ninth century AD, its material culture became 
> more and more Prussian but there is evidence for lively 
> contacts with western Europe, Scandinavia and the Abbassid 
> Khalifate. A specific tradition recorded in the oldest Polish 
> chronicles and in the twelfth century epitaph of the first Polish 
> king Boleslav the Brave raises the serious possibility that 
> some memory of the presence of Goths east of the Vistula 
> somehow survived over centuries and it was used for 
> construction of the Piasts' dynastic tradition.


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