[gothic-l] Polish Views On the Goths

[Bertil Häggman]

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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