Two recent books on the Goths

[faltin2001]

Hi all,

over the Christmas holidays I had the chance to read two quite recent 
books on the Goths, which I think are 'must-reads' for anybody 
interested in the history of the Goths. One is "Rome's Gothic Wars - 
>From the Third Century to Alaric", by Michael Kulikowski, Cambridge 
University Press, 2007. I suppose chapter 3, entitled 'The Search for 
Gothic Origins' will be of special interest to many on this list.

The author dismisses Jordanes Getica as a genuine source of Gothic 
early history, stating for example (p. 43) "And yet Jordanes, as we 
shall see, is not merely unreliable, he is deeply misleading". 
Kulikowski demonstrates convincingly how Jordanes' story underpinned 
and still underpins much of the scholarly research of the Goths till 
today - both historical and even more perplexingly archaeological. In 
this vain he shows just how misguided authors such as Anders Kaliff 
are in their treatment of the subject. 

Kulikowski writes on page 55-56 "Rather than migrants from the 
distant north, it is more likely that the Goths who entered imperial 
history in the earlier third century were a product of circumstances 
of the imperial frontier. ... These were the social forces that 
created the coalitions of the Franks and Alamanni along the Rhine and 
the upper Danube in the third century, and we have suggested that the 
Goths on the lower Danube shoulde be understood in the same way."

Kulikowski argues that the Wielbark-Chernyakhov connection is largely 
based, consciously or unconsciously on the Jordanes narrative. The 
cultural influences on the Chernyakhov culture are so plentiful and 
balanced that without Jordanes scholars would not have dreamt of 
privileging the Wielbark connection. Kulikowski writes "The answer, 
at least in my view, is that there is no Gothic history before the 
third century. The Goths are a product of the Roman frontier, just 
like the Franks and the Alamanni who apear at the same time."

I know, this book will not meet with the approval from some on this 
list, however, I think it very well worth reading. It shows a novel 
and refreshingly plausible picture of late antiquity and migration 
age history and in terms of its conceptualisations shoould also be 
revealing to those who have special interest in fringe goups such as 
the Heruls. 

The second book, which I finally managed to read is Patrick Amory's 
much celebrated book "People and identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-
554". Cambridge University Press, 1997. Amory's books also includes a 
chapter on the origin of the Goths, which is entitled 'The origin of 
the Goths and Balkan military culture'. This chapter can be seen as 
antecedent to the one by Kulikowski. Both authors show what we call 
Goths and what the Romans called Goths in a new light. Amory 
demostrates, not least with an extensive prosopography the amorphous 
ethnic situation along the Roman Balkan frontier, were the name Goths 
could easily pass from one group to the next with the actural members 
of such groups often not even being aware that the Romans had labled 
them in that way. 

Boths books are of course in English and therefore accessible to 
everybody on this list. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

Cheers,

Dirk

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