One direct result is a much clearer picture of the major material cultural systems of Germanic-dominated Europe in the Roman period, and in particular the identification of the Wielbark culture of northern Poland as an entity recognizably distinct from its immediate Przeworsk neighbour to the south, which had been identified and relatively fully investigated between the wars. There are many similarities between the two, but differences both in detail – for example, pot decoration, weapon construction – and on a larger scale distinguish them. Wielbark males were never buried with weapons, whereas Przeworsk males often were, and Wielbark cemeteries often produce a mixture of cremation and inhumation rites, whereas Przeworsk populations only ever cremated. Such differences indicate substantially different beliefs about any afterlife.
What makes these identifications so important for the Marco-mannic War is that the plethora of new finds has also made it possible to evolve much more reliable archaeological dating systems for the remains. Kossinna – dread founder of culture history – had started the job using the intersection of two elements. First, he and his peers established the principle of using stylistic development to establish relative dates within a particular ‘culture’. The appearance of more developed designs of a particular object, or more sophisticated forms of the same kind of decoration, was – reasonably, as it turns out – presumed to be subsequent to simpler, therefore earlier, forms. In principle, this approach can be taken with any type of object, but the method was originally applied largely to pottery. Early researchers then attempted to use occasional finds of more precisely datable objects, often Roman coins in Germanic remains, to calibrate the stylistic sequences against a more absolute chronology. If a coin of 169 AD was found with a particular type of pottery, then that type was clearly being made after that date. This was fine as far as it went, but the time lag between the production and final deposition of datable objects was always guesswork, and could generate deeply erroneous conclusions, since we now know good-quality first- and second-century Roman silver coins were still circulating widely in barbarian Europe, for instance, in the fourth century.
Applying this basic approach to the much larger body of material that had become available by 1970, scholars were able to establish sequences of stylistic development for a much wider range of items: weapons, buckles, jewellery and combs, amongst others. This put the dating of finds on a much firmer footing, since it could be based on all the materials in a given cache, not just on one item, and, as a result, the chronology of these major Germanic-dominated cultural systems can now be broken down into distinct phases, each typically defined as consisting of an association of particular weapon types with certain forms of brooch, buckle, pot and comb. In particular, this has made it infinitely easier to spot the occasional rogue item that had continued in use from an earlier period and whose inclusion in a later burial would previously have thrown dating estimates out.9
All this is relevant to the Marcomannic War because it emerged from the new work that dramatic transformations began to unfold in the configuration of Germanic, or Germanic-dominated, material cultural systems on the territory of what is now Poland from about the middle of the second century AD. In particular, the Wielbark cultural system started to spread southwards from Pomerania into the north of Greater Poland (between the Rivers Notec and Warta), and south-eastwards across the Vistula into Masovia (Map 4). In the past, the identity of the population groups behind this set of remains generated acrimonious debate because of their potential relevance to the highly vexed question of Slavic origins, but it is now generally accepted that the Wielbark culture incorporated areas that, in the first two centuries AD, were dominated by Goths, Rugi and other Germani, even if its population had not originally been (or still was not) entirely Germanic-speaking. The new territories into which Wielbark remains began to spread from c.150, however, had previously been occupied by a population whose material remains belonged to the Przeworsk system. This has traditionally been associated with the Vandals, but certainly encompassed other population groups besides. Like most of these cultural areas, it was so large that it must have included several of the small first- and second-century Germanic groupings mentioned by Tacitus and Ptolemy.
What really matter, however, are not the detailed identifications, but the brute fact of Wielbark expansion. The chronological coincidence here is much too striking to be dismissed. Wielbark expansion – indicating a major upheaval of some kind in northern Poland – occurred at more or less the same time as the Marcomannic War. It must have been connected with it in some way, and shows that the frontier disturbances that appear in the Roman sources were linked to a wider set of convulsions affecting a broader tranche of Germanic-dominated Europe. What the archaeological evidence cannot make clear at this point is whether this link was one of cause or effect. Even the improved stylistic chronologies cannot date remains more closely than phases of twenty-five years or so, and there are always considerable chronological overlaps between adjacent phases. In this case, a twenty-five-year window is large enough for Wielbark expansion to have been either cause or effect of the Marcomannic War. More precise carbon-14 or dendrochronological dates will be needed for greater clarity on this point, and will no doubt become available, but for the moment we have to leave the issue open.10
It is also unclear how we should envisage the human history behind the expansion of the Wielbark system. Archaeological zones are the material remains of systems, not things, so an expansion in the geographical area of one system at the expense of another need not represent an act of conquest, as Kossinna would automatically have assumed. In principle, expansion might be the effect of a number of different kinds of development: conquest or annexation certainly, but also extensions of trading patterns, belief structures and so forth. In this instance, it does seem clear that Wielbark expansion to an extent represented the acculturation of existing Przeworsk populations to new Wielbark cultural norms, rather than their complete replacement by Wielbark immigrants. As Map 4 shows, at some cemeteries Wielbark-type remains replaced Przeworsk predecessors with no intervening gap, and no obvious signs of discontinuity in use. Here we may well be dealing, therefore, with a Przeworsk population taking on new Wielbark burial habits with regard to weaponry and inhumation, and presumably also, therefore, the particular patterns of belief that underlay them. But even this much change did not occur in a vacuum. Something must have led these Przeworsk populations to change some long-established life – or rather, death – habits. What this may have been, the archaeological evidence does not say. In my view, some new degree of political influence is much the likeliest answer, since even cultural imitation usually follows political prestige.
Equally important, and operating alongside any acculturation, Wielbark expansion also involved some population displacement southwards from northern Poland. This is reflected in the historical sources. By c.200 AD, for instance, the Roman army was able to recruit into its ranks Goths – one of the old Wielbark groups – from the fringes of Dacia. A hundred years before, Gothic territories had been too remote from the frontier for this to happen. But the archaeological material is itself also highly suggestive. The general density of Wielbark sites had been growing apace since the start of the millennium. Individual settlements were short-lived, falling in and out of use relatively quickly in the first and second centuries, reflecting the population’s inability to maintain the fertility of its fields in anything but the short term. But there is also a broader pattern. Within each twenty-five-year period after the birth of Christ, there was a larger total number of settlements in use in Wielbark areas. On the face of it, this suggests population growth, which would help explain both the displacement southwards to the Carpathians, which allowed the Romans to pick up Gothic recruits, and the general Wielbark pressure being applied on its more immediate Przeworsk neighbours in central Poland. As we have seen, the evidence on agricultural production from Germanic Europe does indeed suggest that its population grew substantially in the
Roman period, so that this picture is far from implausible. If so, a growing Wielbark population was perhaps posing some of its Przeworsk neighbours a stark choice – between being absorbed into the Wielbark system and finding alternative domains.11
There is much more, of course, that we would ideally want to know, and it’s particularly frustrating that we cannot be sure whether Wielbark expansion preceded or followed Marcus Aurelius’ woes on the frontier. Nonetheless, history and archaeology combine well enough here both to show that the war was highly unusual in its scale and duration and to suggest that one of the causes of this was the role being played by intrusive population groups moving into the frontier region from further afield. It is not just the rather ropy evidence of the Historia Augusta that suggest that the events of the Marcomannic War involved large numbers of people on the move. Some of the much more trustworthy fragments of Dio’s History suggest the same, with Wielbark expansion adding a further dimension to our understanding of what was afoot. All of this is enough to show that the Marcomannic War cannot be understood as a slightly more violent than usual frontier spat. And the case for seeing it as a watershed is only strengthened when we turn our attention to the third century, when Wielbark expansion increased in momentum and further Germanic migration entirely remade Rome’s frontier world.
To the Black Sea and Beyond
The countermeasures of Marcus Aurelius defused the immediate crisis of the 160s effectively enough, and peace returned to Rome’s European frontiers for the best part of two generations. The third century, however, was to witness trouble on a still greater scale. The problems were made all the worse by the fact that the same era saw the rise to prominence of the Sasanian dynasty, which turned the Near East, largely equivalent to modern Iraq and Iran, into a superpower to rival Rome. The Sasanians were much the greatest threat, destroying the armies of three Roman emperors – even capturing the last of them, Valerian, and leading him in chains behind Shapur I, Sasanian Shah-an-shah, ‘King of kings’. When Valerian died, they flayed his corpse and pickled his skin as a victory trophy. This new threat naturally forced Roman military resources eastwards, and events on the Rhine and the Danube have to be seen in this context. If the Sasanians had not exploded into history simultaneously, Rome’s third-century European antagonists would never have enjoyed such freedom of action.12
In western Europe, on the Rhine and the Upper Danubian frontiers, the third-century crisis involved a moderate amount of migration and a larger dose of political reorganization. This was precisely the era in which the new Germanic confederations we examined in the last chapter began to appear. The Alamanni appear as enemies of Rome for the first time in 213, when the Emperor Caracalla launched a punitive or pre-emptive campaign against them. The Alamanni were presumably already posing some kind of threat at that point, but our sources, limited as they are, indicate that it increased dramatically from the 230s. One particularly large Alamannic attack occurred in 242, and such raids were then apparently more or less continuous through the 240s and 250s, although this picture emerges from a scatter of fragmentary historical, archaeological and above all coin-hoard evidence, since no continuous narrative sources survive. But by about 260, at the very latest, the Alamanni and other groups in the region were causing seriously substantial difficulties. Some were already receiving Roman subsidies, and a famous votive altar, recovered from Mainz, records a Roman counterstrike in which thousands of prisoners taken in a raid on Italy were recovered. Most arresting of all, in 261 or thereabouts (the Roman state never trumpeted its defeats) the so-called Agri Decumates, land that had been occupied since early in the first century (Map 5), was abandoned.
As far as we can tell, this wasn’t exactly an Alamannic conquest. It was more a question of the then Emperor in the west, Postumus, deciding to withdraw much-needed troops from the region for the defence of strategically more important areas. It is testimony, nonetheless, to the level of pressure being exerted on the frontier, and the withdrawal failed to solve the problem. More Alamannic assaults are recorded in the late 260s and mid-270s, vivid evidence of which has come to light in the form of the unlucky thirteen individuals who were brutally killed, dismembered and partly scalped before the remains were thrown down the well of their farm at Regensburg-Harting. The situation on the new frontier was finally stabilized by further Roman campaigning in the late third and early fourth centuries under the Tetrarchs and the Emperor Constantine, which initiated the more stable pattern of fourth-century client-state relations that we observed in Chapter 2.13
Although much of this crisis was clearly stimulated by the extra military power that was one result of overall Germanic development and the new political confederations it generated, two bouts of migration also played a significant role. First, following the Roman withdrawal, the Alamanni moved into the Agri Decumates, which is where they were happily ensconced in the fourth century. They had not come from far. What exactly it meant to be an Alamann in the third century is much disputed, and we will return to the issue later in the chapter. But all the physical evidence from the Agri Decumates – of jewellery, ceramic types and modes of burial – indicates that its new Germanic masters had their origins not very far to the east, in the lands of the so-called Elbe-Germanic triangle, west of the River Elbe from Bohemia in the south to Mecklenburg in the north (Map 5).
Second, established just to the rear of the Alamanni in the fourth century, but still within occasional reach of Roman diplomacy, lay the territory of the Burgundians. Unlike the Alamanni, who were an entirely new political formation of the late Roman period, Burgundians were already known to Tacitus and Ptolemy in the first and second centuries. At that point, they held lands much further to the east (now occupied by modern Poland). They were one-time members of the Vandalic world, living somewhere between the Oder and the Vistula. Thus, by the fourth century some Burgundians had moved around five hundred kilometres westwards. The historical evidence indicates that at this point they were established somewhere on the middle stretches of the River Main, and there is some archaeological confirmation. Materials are not plentiful, but a cluster of sword burials have been excavated in broadly the same area. The materials found in these graves resemble items found earlier in east Germanic territories, and are quite distinct from materials associated with groups from the Elbe-Germanic triangle. It is important, though, to acknowledge the limitations of the evidence. Up to the third century and indeed beyond, east Germanic populations universally cremated their dead, and the Main sword burials are inhumations. The historical evidence also locates fourth-century Burgundians most firmly in the Kocher valley, but no east Germanic materials have been unearthed there. Some migration is clear enough, then, on the part of both Alamanni and Burgundians, but its nature, scale and causation need to be examined with care.14
If the third-century crisis was serious enough on the Rhine, the action was much more explosive further east. Where the Marcomannic War had unfolded largely on the Middle Danube plain, this time the worst of the fighting occurred to the east of the Carpathians, in the wide stretches of territory bordering the northern shores of the Black Sea. It began in 238, with a recorded attack by some Goths on the city of Histria, close to the point where the River Danube runs into the Black Sea (Map 6). This inaugurated an initial run of largely Gothic attacks upon the Roman Empire, all launched across its Lower Danube frontier between the Carpathians and the Black Sea. It’s impossible to reconstruct anything like a full narrative of these assaults, but they peaked around the year 250. In 249, the east Balkan city of Marcianople was ransacked by the Gothic followers of two leaders – Argaith and Guntheric – and the violence escalated quickly.
In the spring of 250, another Gothic leader by the name of Cniva broke through the Roman frontier and crossed the Danube at the old legionary fortress of Oescus, which guarded one of the river’s easiest crossings. He then marched into the heart of the Balkans, capturing the city of Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv in Bulgaria) south of the Haemus Mount
ains, where he overwintered. The following year, the Emperor Decius attempted to intercept the then retreating Goths, but was himself defeated and killed at Abrittus.15 This was a huge disaster. On one level, it was even worse than the more famous defeat in the Teutoburger Wald. For the first time, a reigning emperor had been cut down in a battle with barbarians. On another, however, the situation was less serious than it might appear. At the time of Decius’ death, the Empire was in the midst of immense internal political upheaval, one knock-on effect from the huge crisis stimulated within the Roman system by the emergence of the rival Sasanian superpower. Decius was the ruler of only part of Roman Europe and North Africa, and had led into battle only a relatively small percentage of the imperial army. It was a major defeat, but troop losses were not so huge as to pose a structural threat to imperial integrity. This shows up clearly in subsequent events. Some further attacks followed across the Danube in 253 and 254, but they achieved little, and the Goths then abandoned the Danubian line of attack. The natural conclusion is that Decius’ successors had effectively closed it off.
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