Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo (ed.)
Archaeology and ethnicity.
Reassessing the “Visigothic necropoleis”
DOSSIER
A r q ue o lo gía y T e r r it o r io M e die val 18 , 2 0 11. pp. 15 -2 7
I. S. S. N . : 113 4 -3 18 4
Ethnicity and early medieval
cemeteries1
Etnicidad y cementerios altomedievales
Guy Halsall *
SUMMARY
RESUMEN
This article responds to recent work by Michel Kazanski and Patrick Périn, defending the ability of archaeology to recognise ethnic identity in the burial record
of the early Middle Ages. After summarising the main
outlines of their argument, it takes the components of
their hypothesis in turn and subjects them to analysis. This analysis is based around the archaeological
evidence and what it can and cannot say without the
intrusion of preconceptions drawn from a (usually oldfashioned) reading of historical sources. After finding
the argument wanting even on its own terms, the
article concludes by looking at the nature of ethnicity
itself and whether it is likely to leave such obvious and
straightforward traces in the archaeological record.
Este artículo pretende responder al reciente trabajo
de Michel Kazanski y Patrick Périn, que defiende la
capacidad de la Arqueología para reconocer la identidad étnica en los registros funerarios altomedievales.
Tras resumir las líneas principales de su argumentación,
somete a análisis cada postulado de sus hipótesis.
Dicho análisis se basa en la evidencia arqueológica y
en lo que ésta puede o no aportar, sin introducir preconcepciones extraidas de una lectura (generalmente
anticuada) de las fuentes históricas. Tras encontrar el
argumento deficiente, incluso en sus propios términos,
el artículo concluye planteando la naturaleza de la
etnicidad en sí misma, y si es verosímil que deje tan
obvias y directas huellas en el registro arqueológico.
Key words: Ethnicity, Burial, Archaeology, Early
Palabras clave: Etnicidad, Enterramiento, Arqueología, Época altomedieval, Europa Occidental
Middle Ages, Western Europe
This paper responds to two recent articles
by Michel Kazanski and Patrick Périn (KAZANSKI/
PÉRIN 2008; 2009), which make an extended and
sustained attempt to make a case in favour of
archaeology's ability to recognise and identify
ethnic identity, particularly in cemeteries. In
Britain at least, this would not be a fashionable
position to take, since the publication of Siân
Jones' monograph on the topic (JONES 1997),
even if one can argue that in Anglo-Saxon
archaeology its implications have not yet been
fully internalised. In the archaeology of mainland
Europe, however, it remains a much more
respectable stance and indeed seems currently
to be supported by one might call a "counterrevisionist" scholarly offensive. Patrick Périn's
knowledge of the archaeological data from
France, particularly the burial record, pertaining
to the Merovingian era is second to none;
indeed one wonders whether it will ever be
matched. Similarly, Michel Kazanski has an unrivalled empirical knowledge of metalwork and of
the archaeology of the East Germanic-speaking
regions of late antiquity. For all these reasons,
1 The time taken to research, write and present this paper was funded by the award of a Major Research fellowship to the author by
The Leverhulme Foundation. Travel to Vitoria was funded by the Universidad del País Vasco/ Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. I should
also like to thank Juan Antonio Quiros Castillo, for his kind invitation to give the lecture upon which this paper is based and for his
hospitality in Vitoria in November 2010.
* Department of History, University of York, United Kingdom
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Guy Halsall
peoples or nations- in too monolithic a way.
Their work, they state, is based on quite
different premises. They also claim that it
would be unrealistic to expect homogenous
or monocultural archaeological manifestations
of the barbarians planted on Roman soil and
make sensible statements about the fluidity of
ethnic identity and the mixed and changing
composition of supposedly ethnic groups. This
takes account not only of the work of Reinhard
Wenskus but also of his successors such as
Herwig Wolfram and perhaps even of Walter
Pohl (WENSKUS 1961; WOLFRAM 1988; 1997; POHL
1998). So far, one might say, so good. However, whether, or to what extent, these fine
sentiments are reflected in Périn and Kazanski's
actual conclusions needs to be scrutinised.
these publications deserve to be taken seriously
but the ideas they express must be subjected to
close scrutiny. This is a mark of the respect with
which this work deserves to be considered.
The argument in the longer and more
detailed piece (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008) can be
summarised as follows:
Kazanski and Périn take their methodological starting point from work published by H.-J.
Eggers (1950), which claimed to derive its strength from the avoidance of the ‘Mischargumentation’ (mixed argumentation) which avowedly
characterised earlier work. Instead, it allegedly
treated the different bodies of evidence – historical, archaeological, linguistic or onomastic,
etc. - separately and on their own terms. These
conclusions are then compared to produce an
overall theory. This looks exactly the same as
the "multidisciplinary" methodology used in my
first book, on the Merovingian Region of Metz
(HALSALL 1995). It aims at the same advantages
and at avoiding the same pitfalls. Ironically,
however, I adopted that methodology to
avoid pitfalls in work carried out using Eggers'
methodology! There is a link between the
claims made in these articles and those which
Périn is accustomed to make (not untypically in
French academic practice), of ‘Cartésianisme’:
that is to say a radical scepticism, making no
prior demands on the evidence; everything
must be demonstrated through reason. These
assertions of methodological rigour and purity
("purification regressive") must be subjected to
close examination.
The two authors argue that the acculturation of barbarians on Roman soil was
‘ineluctable’ and demonstrate this through the
example of the Visigoths. In the course of a
30-year wandering across Europe, by the time
the ‘Visigoths’ arrived in Gaul in 412, ‘where
they were tasked with the repression of the
Bagaudae and formed a kingdom’ (KAZANSKI/
PÉRIN 2008:188) they had lost their material
culture. This ‘disacculturation’ led to a rapid
acculturation in Aquitaine and explains why
the Visigoths left no archaeological traces there.
When forced into Spain they developed, by
contrast, a national material culture, and in this
were helped by their contact with the Ostrogothic army of Widimer. This is an argument
that Périn has made before (PÉRIN 1993).
Kazanski and Périn then discuss a series of
criteria that are relevant to the definition of
ethnicity:
‘Mischargumentation’, an alleged mix of
archaeology folklore, linguistics and history
thrown together in an ad hoc fashion, was what
post-war archaeologists like Eggers claimed,
not incorrectly, had lain behind the Germanist,
nationalist works of Gustav Kossinna. Kossinna's
work, of course, had been popular with the
Nazis and had underpinned some of Hitler's
claims to territory, in France and in the Soviet
Union (FEHR 2002). German archaeologists wanted to distance themselves from this. Similarly,
Kazanski and Périn argue that Kossinna's ideas
had seen archaeological cultures as simple
reflections of ethnic groups –equated with
1: Funerary practices: They claim (KAZANSKI/
PÉRIN 2008:191) that burial practices are
strictly linked to religious belief in traditional societies and thus deeply rooted
within ethnic groups. They are also linked
to social factors. All that said, Kazanski and
Périn nevertheless conclude that it would
be impossible to distinguish, archaeologically,
a Barbarian who was perfectly integrated in
Roman society or a Roman living in barbaricum and buried according to local practice.
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Ethnicity and early medieval cemeteries
2: Ethnic costume: This is a key pillar of Kazanski and Périn's argument but it is developed
mostly with regard to female costume, as
we shall see shortly.
6: Germanic Animal Art. Kazanski and Périn
claim that this has specifically pagan and
therefore barbarian significance (KAZANSKI/
PÉRIN 2008: 199-201).
3: Ethnic weapons: Males were trained in
the use of weapons from early boyhood
onwards and so, say Kazanski and Périn
(2008:195-6), particular weapons can be identified as ethnic markers. The example they
use is that of the francisca, which (they say)
is found throughout the Frankish ’protectorate’.
On the basis of these points, Kazanski and
Périn move on to four case studies:
1. The presence of West Germanic barbarians
in northern Gaul in the late 4th and early 5th
centuries (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:201-207).
2. Eastern Barbarians in Gaul at the same time
(KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:207).
4: Traditional Female Costume: As mentioned,
this is the key support of the argument
(KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:196-9). According to
Périn and Kazanski, in traditional societies
these costumes are sacralised and regulated. Vague reference is made to the work
of ethnographers in support of this point,
but it is nevertheless claimed to be almost
a universal rule, proved over and over by
anthropologists (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:196;
2009:150). Against the back-drop of a claimed
ethnic costume for east and west Germanic
women, they then discuss a series of tombs,
where the brooches are of the ‘wrong’ type,
or where the ‘right’ brooches are worn in
the ‘wrong’ place as examples of acculturation.
3. Common Prestige fashions among barbarian warriors in the second half of the fifth
century (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:207-209).
4. Germanic minorities in Gaul in the late fifth
and early sixth centuries (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN
2008:209-12).
So much for Kazanski and Périn's argument,
which originates in work by Kazanski (KAZANSKI
1997). As stated, it is based upon a very thorough knowledge on the one hand of Merovingian archaeology in France and, on the other, of
the material culture, particularly the metalwork,
of the cultures from around the Black Sea and
Danube areas and their presence in Gaul. As
far as empirical awareness of data is concerned
I cannot hope to equal these authors. However,
the logical and methodological coherence of
the arguments they present, in support of the
idea that ethnicity can be detected through the
archaeology of Gaul at the time of the Migrations, can be examined more closely.
The occupant of grave 756 at Vicq, for example, wore a Visigothic buckle and a pair of
bow brooches at the shoulder but also wore,
at the chest two small local zoomorphic brooches (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:196-7 & 195, fig.22).
On the other hand, the subject of grave
140 at Nouvion-en-Ponthieu wore two
‘Visigothic’ brooches but at the waist rather
than at the shoulders, where they ‘should’
have been (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:197-8).
Serious engagement with these ideas is a
mark of respect for the work (and knowledge)
of their authors. This makes it all the more
disappointing that Périn and Kazanski do not
deal with the growing literature on early medieval cemeteries that rejects their model and its
antecedents. This work is simply ignored. Under
this heading I could include Sebastian Brather's
monumental Ethnische Interpretation in der
frühgeschichtliche Archäologie (BRATHER 2004a),
or Bonnie Effros’ writings on the supposedly
conservative dress of barbarian women (EFFROS
Explanations relating to the dead belonging
to the second generation of immigrants are
adduced (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:198).
5: Hand-made pottery. This is claimed not to
be an object of commerce, but made by
women in the settlement and therefore a sign
of ethnic identity (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:198-9).
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17
Guy Halsall
At the 2010 International Medieval Congress
in Leeds Philipp von Rummel, was asked what
we should call belt buckles or brooches if not
Gothic or Vandal or whatever. He replied by
drawing attention to the fact that no one has
any difficulty in talking about pottery without
using ethnic terminology. An amphora is Spanish or Eastern Mediterranean, a fine ware
bowl is African Red Slip or a dérivée sigillée
paléochrétienne, or whatever. There is no
reason why we cannot use such general terms
for brooches as well, or (perhaps better) just
describe them in terms of their principal features (as Anglo-Saxon archaeologists do, with
their "Great Square-Headed" Brooches &c.).
One really must wonder how much clearer
the archaeology of the Völkerwanderungszeit
would become if all these superfluous ethnic
terminologies were abandoned.
2004) or Philipp von Rummel’s discussions of the
shortcomings of ideas about barbarian dress
(VON RUMMEL 2007; see also von RUMMEL 2010), or
other Freiburg School studies casting doubt on
the geographical origins of key classes of object
(GAUSS 2009), or my own or Frans Theuws’ studies of the late Roman and Merovingian cemeteries of Gaul (HALSALL 1992; 2000a; 2010:131-67;
THEUWS 2009; THEUWS/ALKEMADE 2000), and
so on. It is possible to read between the lines
and to see these pieces – implicitly – as part
of a growing counter-offensive by traditionalist
archaeologists against new readings of the excavated data, prompted mainly by the publication
of Brather’s book (BIERBRAUER 2004; BROGIOLO/
CHAVARRÍA ARNAU 2010; VALENTI 2009), but one
would have preferred a closer engagement with
the specific arguments proposed in the newer
works, rather than a simple restatement of
the old views, and the application of an unjust
damnatio memoriae on revisionist work.
Indeed assigning any ethnic name to
archaeological evidence is quite impossible on
archaeological grounds alone. No specific ethnic
identity of any sort can ever simply emerge from
the archaeological record on its own, whether
that record be studied through artefact design,
or from distribution maps or charts of percentage frequencies (as, e.g. in SIEGMUND 1998; 2000).
Such an interpretation can only – ever – arise
through the application to the archaeological
data of a series of assumptions derived from
written sources. In other words, the ethnic
interpretation of material cultural data can
never, ever result from looking at archaeology
alone, and taking it on its own terms. Put another way, no ethnic interpretation of archaeology can ever claim to be ‘Cartesian’, or to be
using ‘pure’ archaeological reasoning. To assign
any of these names to an object immediately
contaminates the archaeological evidence with
the influence of an historical narrative. Indeed,
a number of Kazanski and Périn's examples are
made entirely in accordance with one particular
view of the period's history.
In British archaeology, the approach taken
would usually be to address the nature of
ethnicity and whether, theoretically, such forms
of identity would or could be identifiable in
the archaeological record. Adopting that line
of argument would, however, leave us in a
position (for reasons we shall encounter at
the end) with little to say about Kazanski and
Périn's works other than simply to restate an
important methodological difference between
British and much of mainland European early
medieval archaeology. Instead, therefore, it has
been felt more profitable to examine, in depth
and on their own terms, the arguments of this
recent and detailed defence of the traditional
viewpoint. Other problems with the project of
detecting ethnicity in the cemetery evidence
will then be discussed.
To what extent does Kazanski and Périn's
argument live up to the claims of methodological purity made for it? One obvious point
must be made at the very outset, and cannot
be made too forcefully: an object does not
have an ethnicity. This is perhaps an insultingly
obvious point, but how many times do we read
in archaeological literature (not just in the work
of the two authors under discussion) about a
Visigothic belt buckle, or a Lombard brooch?
Let us take, for example, the case of the
Visigoths in Aquitaine and Spain. The first thing
that needs to be said is that the whole problem
is driven – indeed the ‘problem’ is created –
by the historical narrative. Without a historical
record that told us that people called Goths
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Ethnicity and early medieval cemeteries
the francisca is found overwhelmingly in Gaul
and very rarely in barbaricum. There is quite
abundant evidence that the axe was in use
within the Roman army (HALSALL 2010:134-5).
Looked at in purely archaeological terms one
would argue that the francisca was a weapon
that appeared in Gaul in the fifth century and
was occasionally, usually later, found beyond
the Rhine. The archaeological record, when
set alongside a more critical reading of the
documentary and epigraphical sources, suggests
that the francisca was a weapon used by the
very late Roman armies in Gaul and that the
Franks adopted it from their service in those
armies. Whether or not one accepts that, the
interpretation of the francisca as diagnostically
Frankish could not emerge from the archaeological record on its own.
came to Aquitaine in the second decade of
the fifth century, there would be no problem,
there would be no ‘absent’ or ‘invisible’ Goths
to explain. The second problem, and it is one
to which I will return, is that it assumes that
the historical record, in the form of historicallyattested ethnic identities, would be simply,
passively reflected in the archaeological record,
and that the variability in that record will automatically reflect the variability or oppositions
suggested in the written data.
The next issue with this case study concerns
Widimer and his army. For the last twenty years
Patrick Périn has used this ‘Ostrogothic’ army
as the explanation upon which to hang the
appearance of an apparently Gothic material
culture in Spain (PÉRIN 1993). Unfortunately,
there is little or no evidence for this army.
Widimer is not attested in any contemporary
sources: only in Jordanes’ Getica from the
middle of the sixth century. A Billimer mentioned by Paul the Deacon has been suggested
to be the same man but neither source is very
trustworthy on these matters. A Wittimer
appears in two letters of Ruricius of Limoges
who might or might not be the same man, but
they say nothing about his arrival from Italy or
anything that would confirm Jordanes’ story
(HALSALL 2007:278-9; 2010:70). Even in the late,
unreliable stories we have, there is insufficient
evidence to say what became of this army. It
is nowhere said that it ever went to Spain. All
told, this example is about as far away as one
could possibly get from being an example of
a ‘Cartesian’ approach to the archaeological
evidence, without being influenced by data
from other sources.
Indeed, in many cases the archaeological
evidence is not being taken on its own terms
at all. The example of Germanic barbarians
in Late Roman northern Gaul, claimed to be
an ‘assured’ case of archaeology showing the
presence of an intrusive ethnic group in Gaul
(KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:201), is a good illustration.
Almost none of the standard interpretation of
so-called federate graves in northern Gaul in
the fourth century would emerge from a purely
archaeological reading (HALSALL 1992; 2000a;
2010:131-67). Were this evidence generated in
a prehistoric context, as I wrote nearly twenty
years ago (HALSALL 1992:201), no one would
ever find in it any evidence of a migration.
Almost all of the material culture found in the
burials is of Roman Gallic origin; the rite itself
is basically the standard rite of Roman Gaul,
but with more grave-goods; the rite is actually
quite different from that used in the barbarian
territories; etc. The traditional argument finds
its strongest support in a series of brooch types
buried with some of the women in these graves
but when one studies the distribution of these
objects one finds that it is almost exactly the
same as that for other items of metalwork such
as belt buckles and other belt appliqués, or of
Roman pottery and metal vessels, which, as
no one is in any doubt about, were produced
in Gaul and exported beyond the Rhine to
Germania. This alone begs the question of
why one interpretation is followed for some
A second instance can be found in the citation of the francisca as a diagnostically Frankish
weapon. Isidore famously, and incorrectly, said
that the Franks drew their name from the
francisca (Isidore, Etymologiae 18.6.6) but the association between the Franks and this weapon
actually goes back no further than the middle
of the fifth century, and Sidonius Apollinaris.
Accounts of the fourth-century Franks make
no mention of the weapon and the archaeological record of franciscas equally does not go
back earlier than the fifth century. Moreover
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Guy Halsall
posed on the basis of the political history of
the period, which has East Germanic federates
arriving in northern Gaul to fight in the armies
of the Roman king Syagrius. Note too that the
very nature of Syagrius – even the reality of his
existence as a king of the Romans, in opposition
to invading Franks – cannot be securely proven
on the basis of the written evidence! Therefore,
the written sources are not being subjected to
close scrutiny, either. At every turn, whenever
one looks into the details of the approach
and the arguments deployed, we could not be
further from a methodology which relied upon
the strict, rigorous, ‘pure’ analysis of separate
bodies of evidence on their own terms before
the comparison of conclusions at a higher level.
In actual fact, this is Mischargumentation at its
most mixed! Indeed, mixta confusaque, to adapt
a phrase of Gregory of Tours.
types of artefact and not others with the same
distribution and, frequently, similar elements of
decoration. Close inspection of the artefacts
too suggests that they were being manufactured in Gaul, exported to Germania, and copied
there, as had long been the case with Roman
jewellery. It is clear to me that only the intrusion of a pre-determined historical narrative
has led to this evidence being read as evidence
of barbarian immigration into Gaul. There are
many, many other illogical arguments and selfcontradictions in the traditional argument which
I have discussed at length elsewhere (HALSALL
2010:131-67).
Similar cases from other areas can be adduced. For example, recent work has suggested
that some of the brooches used as evidence
for the presence of eastern Germani in the
west in the fifth century are not imports from
the east at all (GAUSS 2009). When one looks at
distribution maps one can indeed join the dots
to produce a ‘migration’ from the Danube to
Gaul or Spain (KAZANSKI/MASTIKOVA/PÉRIN 2008),
but one need only do that if one has decided
in advance (on the basis of non-archaeological
sources) that that has to be the direction of
movement. Why not from Spain to the Danube? Or, more plausibly and as has apparently
been argued recently, from a Mediterranean
production centre and then distributed in two
directions, east and west, to Gaul or Spain and
to the Danube and further east?
In fact, in an appendix to the 2008 article,
Kazanski criticises R. Hachmann, one of the
pioneers of Eggers' methodology, praised at the
start (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:185-6), for not making
Scandinavian archaeology fit the story provided
by Jordanes' Getica (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:212-3).
Never mind that just about every scholarly
analysis of the Getica has rejected its account
of the Goths’ Scandinavian origins (HEATHER
1991; GOFFART 1988:20-111; 1995)… This does not
seem to demonstrate a very deep commitment
to the principles of ’regressive purification’!
Similar incoherence emerges when the
argument’s other premises are examined. Let
us start with the idea of burial ritual as a marker
of ethnic identity. Of course, in theory, the way
one disposes of the dead, bound up as it is
with ideas of cosmology and religion, might be
expected to be an area where traditions were
strictly guarded. It is therefore frequently said
that burial is a very conservative element of
social practice. And yet, in terms of its archaeological traces, it is anything but conservative.
Changes in burial practice come thick and fast
in antiquity. At least ten changes in methods of
placing the dead took place in lowland Britain
during the first seven and a half centuries of the
Christian era (HALSALL 2000b:261). Between the
time when unaccompanied inhumation, wrapped in a shroud or in simple costume, became
Sometimes a historical narrative is adduced,
without worrying about the fact that actually
it is not attested in any actual written sources!
Like Widimer’s army, such is the case, with
the argument that certain brooch types found
in northern Gaul, which have some general
similarities with others found on the Danube,
represent the presence of East Germanic soldiers in the region. These brooches are items
of female apparel, so it is argued that these
women are the wives of the (archaeologically
invisible) soldiers. I have already drawn attention to the problem with assuming an east-west
movement behind the distribution map. No
matter that no written source mentions the
presence of East Germanic soldiers (let alone
their wives) in northern Gaul. A story is com-
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Ethnicity and early medieval cemeteries
argued, against the empirical evidence for the
northern Gallic production of the material in
these burials, that the way it is used reveals
that these burials are of immigrant Germani
(SCHMAUDER 2003: 279-80, n.31). Allegedly, the
brooches are used in the traditional fashion
of West Germanic Tracht or costume. Two
brooches are used at the shoulders, either to
fasten a Peplos dress, or probably more plausibly, to pin a shawl over a dress. The problems
with this argument are many. Most importantly,
as I have just mentioned, the burial record of
the areas whence these alleged immigrants
are supposed to have come is overwhelmingly
formed by cremation (the Frankish homeland
famously being more or less blank on distribution maps). This means that we have very little
evidence about how brooches were worn by
the women of the Germani. Indeed most of
it is furnished by the burials under discussion
(e.g. BÖHME 1974:161), making the argument
more logically problematic! A second problem
is that, for all the supposed immutability and
conservatism of ‘sacralised’ female costume, the
archaeological record reveals great variability
in the numbers and positioning of brooches,
the presence and absence of other artefacts,
and so on. It is often forgotten that Roman
women also wore jewellery. Although the
brooch had dropped out of use, temporarily
at least, by the middle of the fourth century, it
had been common and indeed sometimes used
in exactly the same ways, up until the third
century (FEHR 2008:89-97). One must ask why
fashion only explains the Romans' discarding
of the brooch, but not their readoption of it;
why immigration only explains the brooch's
reappearance and not its disappearance; and
above all, why Roman female costume, in being
subject to fashion like this, was less sacralised
and conservative than ‘Germanic’ women's
dress. In fact, though, when looking at late
Roman Gallic burials the implicit assumption
is that Roman Tracht was more immutable
than Germanic because the archaeologicallyrevealed diversity of female graves supposedly
shows variability and acculturation by ‘Germanic’ women; these cannot be Roman women
because (it is implied) Roman women were
not allowed to adopt new items or otherwise
change their dress!
normal in Europe sometime in the latter half
of the first millennium (ZADORA RIO 2003) and
the revival of cremation in the early twentieth
century, burial does look very conservative
across most of Mediterranean and western
Europe, in terms of its archaeological remains,
but one need only consult other records, about
mourning, funerals, commemoration or even
the above-ground markers or gravestones to
see that burial in fact continued to be a dynamic
area of social expression.
The alleged evidence of ‘Germanic’ migration into northern Gaul in the fourth century
again stands as a useful lesson. Here, the custom
employed in these supposedly intrusive burials
is completely different from that used in the
alleged incomers’ homeland. This is explained
as evidence of acculturation but, for this to
carry any weight, archaeologically, one would
need to see communities cremating their dead
without accompanying goods and then gradually
adopting the host population’s rites. Instead,
were we to assume that these are the graves
of incomers, something for which I see no good
evidence, what we would have here would be
communities abandoning their ancestral funerary customs (those supposedly closely guarded, conservative markers of ethnic identity)
immediately that they were over the frontier.
Another of Kazanski and Périn's arguments
in favour of acculturation is that burials with
belt buckles alone are ‘Roman’ whereas those
with the belt buckles and more grave-goods
(weapons for mean and suites of jewellery for
women) are those of the immigrants, because
the latter have included more of their traditional
customs (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:191). Yet actually
none of this custom of burial with grave-goods
is traditionally ‘Germanic’ at all. The barbarians
between the Rhine and the Baltic or the North
Sea Coast cremated their dead, sometimes
including dress-adjuncts or other objects, often
not, sometimes in a cremation urn, sometimes
with no container at all – indeed often without
container or goods, making them archaeologically all but invisible.
This brings us on to the key support for
Kazanski and Périn's position, which is the
alleged conservatism of female dress. It is often
AyTM 18, 20 11 pp. 15 -2 7 I.S.S.N.: 1134 -3184
21
Guy Halsall
close scrutiny of all aspects of the burial, not
just the grave-goods and their date. It would
require us to examine the deceased’s age, for
one would expect, were Périn's model correct,
that old women would retain their traditional
costume into the second generation of burials.
One might expect children in the first generation to be buried in traditional dress by their
parents, but what of adolescent and young
adult women who died during the first generation, who would otherwise have become
the more acculturated women of the second
generation? How does this transition play out,
and how is it reflected in the archaeological
record? The hypothesis requires sophisticated
thinking and modelling, not simply mapping
onto different chronological phases. It should
also be said that where the earliest intrusive
graves on a site do not fit the traditional model,
the argument is sometimes deployed that
these women had partly acculturated before
they arrived at the place where they died
(KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:198; 2009:157)! Of course,
if one does not think that they are immigrants
in the first place (I have already suggested that
the empirical grounds for this assumption are
weak) this is not a very convincing argument,
even if it is convenient.
The third problem for the Kazanski-Périn
hypothesis concerns the very nature of this
supposedly North-West ‘Germanic’ costume
with its pairs of brooches at the shoulders. It
is actually a pair of problems. The first is that
it runs completely against the argument that
wearing two brooches at the shoulders is the
traditional East, not West, Germanic female
costume, so that burials with brooches at the
shoulders can be argued to be of fifth-century
‘East Germanic’ immigrants (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN
2008:201). What the slightly earlier burials from
northern Gaul show is that such a mode of
employing brooches was already known in that
region. Indeed the other half of the problem is
that a rigorous examination of the data suggests
that not only was it not exclusive to eastern
Germani, it might have been a late Roman
provincial Gallic fashion.
This idea of fashion –only a description
rather than an explanation, to be sure– nevertheless produces yet more reasons to question
our authors’ methodology. When one looks at
the archaeological record one sees only huge
variety, through time and place, such as does
not accord with the assertion of deep conservatism in dress. Indeed the notion is more
than slightly undermined by the invocation of
acculturation. In Gaul the general lesson would
indeed seem to be of the general acculturation
of the Franks into the structures of fifth-century
northern Gallic society at the same time as
their political, ethnic identity began to be widely
adopted. This nevertheless casts some doubt
upon the degree to which female costume is
either as conservative and regulated as is being
proposed, or as directly, intimately linked to an
ethnic identity.
These points lead on to two further issues.
One is that female costume, as revealed in
the cemeteries, not just of Merovingian northern Gaul but in some parts of the Roman
frontier provinces, in Anglo-Saxon England,
southern Germany, and northern Italy, in fact
varies significantly according to the age of the
deceased (e.g. BARBIERA 2005; BRATHER 2004b;
2008; CLARK 2000). My study of the Frankish
cemeteries of Lorraine reveals that children did
not usually receive items related to gendered
costume (HALSALL 1995:254; 1996). Most jewellery
(the essential elements of ‘traditional’, ‘ethnic’
costume) is found with teenagers and young
adults, and women older than their twenties are
increasingly rarely interred with these artefacts.
This alone must make a purely ethnic reading
of the costume much too simplistic. It is not
When I have discussed these problems
with Patrick Périn 2 he has explained that he
sees the first generation of immigrants keeping
closely to their traditional dress but subsequent
generations adopting more and more items of
the fashions of the host population. This is an
interesting idea, but to explore it would require
2 I should underline that M. Périn has always been most friendly, supportive and willing to discuss these issues. I want to make it clear
that, although we hold diametrically opposed interpretations, that opposition is founded in no personal animosity.
22
AyTM 18, 20 11 pp. 15 -2 7 I.S.S.N.: 1134 -3184
Ethnicity and early medieval cemeteries
style that archaeologists have pinned on them.
There are no better examples than the Goths
themselves. The followers of Theodoric, however minimalist a view one might want to take,
must have numbered very many times more
than the fifty or so archaeologically known
‘Ostrogothic’ graves in Italy and the Balkans
(BIERBRAUER 1994). The Goths of Aquitaine and
Spain – patently – did not bury all of their dead
in a particular, Gothic style. Indeed they did not
bury their dead in that way when they were in
the Balkans, and even before 376, to judge from
the Černjachov/Sintana-de-Mureš culture they
did not have a single burial rite in any case, but
a mix: cremations and inhumations of all sorts,
found within the same cemeteries (for useful
survey, see HEATHER/MATTHEWS 1991:59-69). So,
even on the ‘best-case scenario’ (where one
actually accepts the ethnic import of the rite),
these ‘ethnic groups’ only buried some of their
dead – a small minority – in a particular way. So
one must ask, again, why? There must – clearly
– have been some reason, other than simple
ethnicity, that led some people to distinguish
some of their dead from the great majority.
In other words, even where ethnicity might
be an acceptable description of the meaning
of objects, it is rarely a satisfactory explanation
for their deposition.
to deny that there might be ethnic significance
in the nature of adolescent female costume. If,
however, the nature of dress and its adornment
changed through the female life-cycle, as I have
just suggested, then this seriously questions the
model of a progressive abandonment of traditional ethnic costume through time, generation by
generation, according to idea of ‘acculturation’.
This indeed raises one of the most serious
problems of all with the traditional point of
view: why the variability observable in the
archaeological record need have anything at all
to do with ethnicity. Kazanski and Périn acknowledge this point (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:191)
but they do not allow it to obstruct their
argument. All sorts of other dimensions of an
individual’s identity can come into play in the
construction of the burial record. I have already
mentioned, and discussed in detail elsewhere
(HALSALL 2010:289-412), the role of gender and
age. Kazanski and Périn mention religion and
‘social factors’ as being involved in the establishment of a burial rite and its archaeologically
observable features (KAZANSKI/PÉRIN 2008:191)
but they do not pause to consider how these
different dimensions might work together as
ultimately and primarily ‘ethnic’, rather than
(as I would see it) cross-cutting each other
and making the ethnic interpretation more
incoherent.
Here lies, in my view the solution to the
problem –or non-problem, as I would preferof the archaeological invisibility of the Goths
in Aquitaine. The explanation cannot simply
lie in the Goths' lack of any Gothic metalwork.
As the dominant force in the region surely
they could simply have forced Roman craftsmen to make some. Or they could –as the
Kazanski-Périn hypothesis suggests with regard
to other situations- have worn local products
in accordance with the Gothic Tracht. The
simple absence of the right metalwork cannot
explain the abandonment of a rite. At this point
it must, however, be said that, as the ‘Gothic’
inhumation rite was actually only created in
later generations (in Spain), Périn's theory
about the Aquitanian Goths reverses time in
arguing about the non-appearance of something
that had in fact not yet been developed! For
Kazanski and Périn a Goth is always a Goth
and will (or should) always do what she or he
This in turn leads me to the problem that
underlies all such traditional ‘ethnic’ readings,
and that is that they ignore the processes
behind the creation of the archaeological
record itself, seeing it simply (as mentioned)
as a passive reflection of ‘reality’. Whatever
else one might say about British archaeological theory in its current state, in its postprocessual phase in the 1980s it did bring to
the foreground the idea that the formation
of archaeological evidence is a deliberate and
meaningful activity, founded upon active choices, designed to create information as well as
conveying it to an audience. One must always,
therefore, ask why people chose to bury their
dead in this way. The problem with the ethnic
reading is that for many of the ethnic groups
known to us it is clearly the case that they did
not generally bury their dead in the particular
AyTM 18, 20 11 pp. 15 -2 7 I.S.S.N.: 1134 -3184
23
Guy Halsall
the Byzantine enclaves, and on the Frankish
border in Septimania. Furnished burials are also
well attested on the Basque frontier where the
presence of that political border must surely
be part of the explanation. In other words, on
the fringes of political authority, where claims
to local power might be contested between
individuals or groups asserting the backing of
different political forces, and in situations like
those of the sixth century, where political and
military power were often based on ethnic
ideas, we might expect the meaning of objects
placed with the dead to have some ethnic
import - but in a very different way from that
envisaged in traditional readings.
is attested as doing at some point in Gothic
history (regardless of when or where). This is
only one instance where, in spite of claiming
to believe the opposite, they do in fact treat
ethnic identities and cultures as unchanging
and monolithic.
Where an ethnic or political identity is
displayed in burial with grave-goods, the crucial thing is that it is displayed to an audience
for a particular reason (HALSALL 2010:203-60).
Therefore one must ask why the Goths would
necessarily have buried their dead in a costume
that proclaimed their Gothicness in Aquitaine in
the fifth century. Migration is not something that
automatically shows up in the excavated record;
indeed it is very often archaeologically invisible.
I have argued repeatedly that furnished inhumation (with grave-goods) is essentially a sign
of social competition of some sort (HALSALL
2010:203-60). In earlier sixth-century northern
Gaulish cemeteries, in a very fluid society with
few or no rigid class distinctions and few means
of securing local pre-eminence beyond royal
service, whole communities seem to have participated in the competitive grave-goods ritual, as
they did in lowland Britain (HALSALL 2010:278-84).
In other areas, such as Ostrogothic Italy, lavishly
furnished graves seem to be concentrated in
the urban foci of the realm and may demonstrate a claimed Gothicness to an audience of
other members of the aristocracy competing
for royal favour (HALSALL 2007:336-8). There is
not a blanket explanation for all burial rituals
with grave-goods. One must look at what sorts
of individual are being buried, in what numbers
within what sorts of cemeteries and with what
types and quantities of object (HALSALL 2008).
But the display of grave-goods is transient by
its very nature and therefore requires both the
bringing together of an audience to see it and
the existence of a symbolic language rendering
the message intended by the ritually-deposited
objects comprehensible to that audience. All
this points, inexorably, towards political competition of some sort.
This brings me to my concluding points. I
have taken the Kazanski-Périn argument on its
own internal merits, to show that the thesis
is not very satisfactory even by its own lights,
using the sorts of empirical archaeological
methodologies that it claims to espouse. From
there, my argument has led us, bit by bit, to
overall theoretical problems, which cast serious
doubt on the whole project.
The first is that the relationship between
material culture and ethnic identity is very
problematic. A classic anthropological study
from many years ago showed that one could
quite easily compile a list of features, of language, of dress or hairstyles, or other features
that people said distinguished their group from
others, or which distinguished other groups
from theirs. And yet, in practice one found
that these features were either rarely if ever
observed in use or, where they were, one
found that they did not distinguish one group
from another (MOERMAN 1969; POHL 1998 makes
similar points about the early Middle Ages). Another
study, from East Africa, showed that age-grades
within one particular society adopted material
culture associated with a neighbouring group
to distinguish themselves from the age groups
below and above them (LARRICK 1986). It is
difficult to begin to imagine the havoc that this
would play with any attempt to read ethnic
identity from the distribution map of artefacts!
Yet we can see similar things within our late
antique evidence, where Roman soldiers and
aristocrats adopted items of costume which
Indeed, the so-called Gothic cemeteries
of Spain lie generally along the fringes of the
kingdom: not just in the northern Meseta, as
is well-known, but also in the south, around
24
AyTM 18, 20 11 pp. 15 -2 7 I.S.S.N.: 1134 -3184
Ethnicity and early medieval cemeteries
In a sense we have come full circle, because
it may be that, as with the military associations
of barbarian ethnic identities, we can propose
that some objects in graves – weapons – might
have conveyed that identity to an audience.
This archaeological reading would fall foul of
most of the strictures set out at the beginning
of this paper, being a reading of material culture
entirely in the light of documentary sources.
However, this reading of the documentary
sources and its application to material culture
is somewhat more subtle (and indeed more
grounded in the written data). It might be the
case that certain types of brooch, used in particular ways with particular types of people, in particular contexts, did have an ethnic connotation,
so that a Jutish brooch in England might have
implied that the wearer claimed a Jutish identity.
were held to be barbarian –what I have termed
‘barbarian chic’ (HALSALL 2007:110)– or where
people within barbaricum, women as well as
men, used imported Roman material culture
to show their high status (HALSALL 2007:57-58).
Indeed, around 400 some people in the north
of Germania adopted the Roman inhumation
rite in order to distinguish themselves from their
fellows (BEMMANN 1999; KLEEMANN 1999). This
did not make them Romans by birth, although
for all we know some of these individuals, if
they had served the Roman Empire, might well
have styled themselves Romani. In Gothic Italy
or on the margins of the Gothic kingdom of
Spain, individuals might very well have styled
themselves Gothi without being descended
from people who had crossed the Danube
in the 370s or 380s. It was a claim to power
and status.
An important caveat for this point, though,
is that it only remains a suggestion, which can
only be made in a particular context. It cannot
be taken as a general rule, such as that people
with weapons are always Franks, wherever
they are found and in whatever context: that
is plainly untrue. It also implies nothing biological, genetic or exclusive about the claim being
made. Indeed this suggestion has the fluidity
of our modern understandings of ethnicity.
Thus, although having the appearance of having
come round in a circle, we end with a very
different understanding of the relationship between material culture, and ethnicity from that
with which we started. The argument moves
forward, as in a spiral and in so doing I think that
it opens up our cemetery evidence to much
more interesting and less constricting readings.
That, ultimately, is the point. Ethnicity is a
state of mind, with no necessary correlation
to things which are objectively measurable,
whether material, biological or genetic. This will
always make attempts to read off monolithic
ethnic identities, or even the interplay between
monolithic ethnic identities (which is what is
at stake in ‘acculturation’ arguments), highly
dubious. More pertinently, perhaps, ethnicity
is itself a complex dimension of an individual’s
identity, existing in several layers which can
be adopted or highlighted, abandoned, played
down or concealed. Early medieval people did
not have to see themselves as either Romans or
Franks, as either Goths or Sueves. An inhabitant
of sixth-century Spain, who took up arms and
attended the army using an assertion of Gothic
identity as a means to acceptance within this
military-political group, was not thereby precluded from having Roman, provincial or civitas
identities as well, which he might have used at
other times in other circumstances. None of
these groups was monolithic in itself: Romans
self-identified by their civitas, a very important
and much-neglected level of post-imperial
identity: there were different groups within the
Franks, there were political regional groupings,
by kingdom or by Roman province, which have
most of the features of ethnicity (Neustrian,
Austrasian, Aquitanian or Provençal).
AyTM 18, 20 11 pp. 15 -2 7 I.S.S.N.: 1134 -3184
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