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Historians have postulated several explanations for the appearance of "barbarians" on the Roman frontier: weather and crops, population pressure, a "primeval urge" to push into the Mediterranean, or the "domino effect" (whereby the Huns fell upon the Goths who, in turn, pushed other Germanic tribes before them). Entire barbarian tribes (or nations) flooded into Roman provinces,[citation needed] ending classical urbanism and beginning new types of rural settlements.[35] In general, French and Italian scholars have tended to view this as a catastrophic event: the destruction of a civilization and the beginning of a "Dark Age" which set Europe back a millennium.[35] In contrast, German and English historians have tended to see it as the replacement of a "tired, effete and decadent Mediterranean civilization" with a "more virile, martial, Nordic one".[35] Rather than "invasion", German and Slavic scholars use the term "migration" (German: Völkerwanderung, Czech: Stěhování národů, Northern Sami: folkvandring and Hungarian: népvándorlás), aspiring to the idea of a dynamic and "wandering Indo-Germanic people".[36] The scholar Guy Halsall has seen the barbarian movement as the result of the fall of the Roman Empire, not as its cause.[35] Archaeological finds have confirmed that Germanic and Slavic tribes were settled agriculturalists[37] who were probably merely "drawn into the politics of an empire already falling apart for quite a few other causes". The Crisis of the Third Century caused significant changes within the Roman Empire, in both its western and eastern portions.[38] In particular, economic fragmentation removed many of the political, cultural and economic forces which had held the empire together.[39] The rural population in Roman provinces became distanced from the metropolis, and there was little to differentiate them from other peasants across the Roman frontier. In addition, Rome increasingly used foreign mercenaries to defend itself. This "barbarisation" of the Empire was paralleled by changes within barbaricum. For example, the Roman Empire played a vital role in building up barbarian groups along its frontier. Propped up with imperial support and gifts, the armies of allied barbarian chieftains served as buffers against hostile barbarian groups. The disintegration of Roman economic power weakened groups that had come to depend on Roman gifts for the maintenance of their own power. With the arrival of the Huns, this prompted many groups to invade the provinces for economic reasons.[40] The nature of the barbarian takeover of former Roman provinces varied from region to region. For example, in Aquitaine the provincial administration was largely self-reliant. Halsall has argued that local rulers simply "handed over" military rule to the Ostrogoths, acquiring the identity of the newcomers.[8] In Gaul the collapse of imperial rule resulted in anarchy: the Franks and Alemanni were pulled into the ensuing "power vacuum",[41] resulting in conflict. In Spain local aristocrats maintained independent rule for some time, raising their own armies against the Vandals. Meanwhile, the Roman withdrawal from lowland England resulted in conflict between Saxons and the Brythonic chieftains (whose centres of power retreated westward as a result). The Eastern Roman Empire attempted to maintain control of the Balkan provinces, despite a thinly-spread imperial army that relied mainly on local militias and an extensive effort to re-fortify the Danubian limes. The ambitious fortification efforts collapsed, worsening the impoverished conditions of the local populace and resulting in colonization by Slavic warriors and their families.[42] Halsall and Noble have argued that such changes stemmed from the breakdown in Roman political control, which exposed the weakness of local Roman rule. Instead of large-scale migrations, there were military takeovers by small groups of warriors and their families (who usually numbered in the tens of thousands). This process involved active, conscious decision-making by Roman provincial populations. The collapse of centralized control severely weakened the sense of Roman identity in the provinces, which may explain why the provinces underwent dramatic cultural changes at this time even though few barbarians settled in them.[43] Ultimately, the Germanic groups in the Western Roman Empire were accommodated without "dispossessing or overturning indigenous society" and maintained a structured and hierarchical (albeit attenuated) form of Roman administration.[44] Ironically, they lost their unique identity as a result of this accommodation and were absorbed into Latinhood. In contrast, in the east, Slavic tribes maintained a more "spartan and egalitarian"[45] existence bound to the land "even in times when they took their part in plundering Roman provinces".[46] Their organizational models were not Roman, and their leaders were not normally dependent on Roman gold for success. Thus, they arguably had a greater effect on their region than the Goths, Franks or Saxons had on theirs.[47] Ethnicity Based on the belief that particular types of artifacts (generally elements of personal adornment found in a funerary context) are thought to indicate the race and/or ethnicity of the person buried, the "Culture-History" school of archaeology assumed that archaeological cultures represent the Urheimat (homeland) of tribal polities named in historical sources.[48] As a consequence, the shifting extensions of material cultures were interpreted as the expansion of peoples.[49] Influenced by constructionism, process-driven archaeologists rejected the Culture-Historical doctrine;[49] they marginalized the discussion of ethnicity altogether, and focused on the intragroup dynamics which generated such material remains. Moreover, they argued that adoption of new cultures could occur through trade or internal political developments rather than military takeovers. Many scholars take a more moderate position. While recognizing that artifacts do not possess an inherent "ethnic ascription", some artifacts may have been used as "emblems in identity and otherness – of belonging and exclusions".[50] Peter Heather suggests that although shifts in culture should not solely rely on migratory explanations, there is no reason to a priori rule them out (especially if there is evidence from literary sources).[51] Profound changes in culture (and language) could occur through the influx of a ruling elite with minimal (or no) impact on overall population composition,[52] especially if it occurs when the indigenous population is receptive to such changes. Depiction in media Terry Jones' Barbarians, a 4-part TV documentary series first broadcast on BBC 2 in 2006 Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion, a real time strategy game |
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