Beyond the River, under the Eye of Rome Ethnographic Landscapes, Imperial Frontiers, and the Shaping of a Danubian Borderland by Timothy Campbell Hart A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Greek and Roman History) in the University of Michigan 2017 Doctoral Committee: Professor David S. Potter, Co-Chair Professor Emeritus Raymond H. Van Dam, Co-Chair Assistant Professor Ian David Fielding Professor Christopher John Ratté © Timothy Campbell Hart [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8640-131X For my family ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Developing and writing a dissertation can, at times, seem like a solo battle, but in my case, at least, this was far from the truth. I could not have completed this project without the advice and support of many individuals, most crucially, my dissertation co-chairs David S. Potter, and Raymond Van Dam. Ray saw some glimmer of potential in me and worked to foster it from the moment I arrived at Michigan. I am truly thankful for his support throughout the years and constant advice on both academic and institutional matters. In particular, our conversations about demographics and the movement of people in the ancient world were crucial to the genesis of this project. Throughout the writing process, Ray’s firm encouragement towards clarity of argument and style, while not always what I wanted to hear, have done much to make this a stronger dissertation. David Potter has provided me with a lofty academic model towards which to strive. I admire the breadth and depth of his scholarship; working and teaching with him have shown me much worth emulating. David has also been steadfast in his support of my research over the years, and I am particularly grateful for the role he played in facilitating a semester of study at the University of Vienna in 2015. While developing this dissertation, David’s cogent insights on Roman frontier policy, and jaundiced eye towards some of the sacred cows of ‘barbarian studies’ have been particularly helpful. Without his steady hand on the steering-oar, my fragile barque might long ago iii have gone to wreck and ruin on the shoals of academic controversy over ‘grand strategy’ and ‘barbarian ethnogenesis.’ I would also like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee: Christopher Ratté for guiding my archaeological thinking at the inception of this project, and Ian Fielding, whose insights on Ovidian reception in later antiquity helped me avoid some pitfalls, previously unseen. Thanks are also due to Ruth Scodel, Sara Forsdyke and the late Kweku Garbrah for teaching me proper ancient Greek, and to Ruth Caston, David Potter, and Bruce Frier for making sure my Latin didn’t slip. Ian Moyer deserves special thanks, as well. Our reading together during preliminary examinations provided me with an important skillset for thinking about ancient groups and identities, which has proven invaluable throughout the dissertation process. Looking backwards, I must also acknowledge a debt to my academic mentors at the University of Minnesota and Grinnell College. First, my M.A. advisor, Andrea Berlin deserves great thanks for showing me what excellent archaeology looks like in the field and in the classroom, and for her advice on shifting my primary focus from field archaeology to history writing. Thanks are also due to Bernard Bachrach and Peter Wells for opening a young scholar’s eyes to the worlds of late antiquity and Rome’s northern neighbors. Finally, I would not have ended up on this path without the support and encouragement of the Classics faculty at Grinnell College, most importantly Monessa Cummins, my undergraduate advisor. She taught me how to write academically and read Latin, and remains a pedagogical role model to this day. During the course of researching this dissertation, I have had the great privilege of traveling and studying overseas in Austria and Romania. Thanks are due first to the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School, and to the departments of History and Classical Studies for providing iv generous funding in support of these ventures. I would also like to thank Bernhard Palme, who welcomed me to Vienna and made the Institut für Alte Geschichte und Altertumskunde feel like home. Fritz Mitthof also deserves thanks for his cogent feedback as I began the process of refining my dissertation from a vague collection of ideas into a viable, coherent project. In Romania, I must thank Doina Benea and Calin Timoc of the Universitatea de Vest, Timișoara, for welcoming me to Tibiscum with the best sort of rough, field hospitality. Conversations with them and others while excavating in 2014 were pivotal in helping me narrow my research focus, and taught me much about archaeology - and academia in general - in the contemporary Danubian world. Back in Ann Arbor, my friends and colleagues in Classical Studies, History, and Classical Archaeology have helped make the last seven years some of my happiest. I am particularly grateful to Jessica Stephens, Mike Leese, Graham Claytor, Jonathan McLaughlin, Beth Platte, and Jenn Finn, who made me feel a part of the IPGRH family from day one, and whose scholarly exempla I strive daily to emulate. Thank you also to Tiggy McLaughlin, my dauntless cohort-mate: a model historian and good friend every step of the way. To Amy Pistone, Jacqui Stimson, Nick Geller, and all my friends in the Angell-Kelsey community, I couldn’t have asked for better colleagues, comrades, and trivia teammates. You all have made my years at Michigan a pleasure. Special thanks, in particular, to Ann Cornel, my library companion during the final summer’s push. Your encouragement and timely, gardening-related distractions helped me maintain my sanity during a stressful period. Finally, I owe many debts to M.S.W., whose intelligence inspires me, and who continually encouraged me to see the world in new ways, to S.E.L., who reminded me to look for the poetry in the world, even when writing prose, and to M.M.M., without whose limitless support during my first decade of adulthood, none of this would have happened. v In the position of honor, at the end, I would like to thank my family. First, my cousin Chris Hart, who provided an early model of what a young academic could look like, and who wisely told me to never attend a grad school that didn’t want to pay me to be there! Thanks next to my brothers, Gabe and Matt, who occasionally managed to drag me away from my books as a child, and who, as adults, have done much to keep our family a close-knit one, while I’ve all-too-frequently had my nose back in the tomes. Gratitude is due also to my grandparents: to Jean and Harry Hart, who first put a copy of National Geographic in my young hands, and always encouraged me to explore a broader world, past and present, and to Alice and Robert McKay, who taught me to love horses and live close to the land. Finally, while words cannot really capture the debt of gratitude I owe to my parents, who have been unswerving in their support of my academic endeavors, I would like to thank my father, William Hart, for always standing as a model of calm dignity in a chaotic world, and for modeling an appreciation of nature’s power, both as a source of personal inspiration and as a shaper of human destinies. Last, a special thanks to my mother, Victoria McKay Hart, who has encouraged me to approach the world around me with both gratitude and a questioning eye for as long as I can remember, and who has always been eager to ‘talk history’ with her son. Our conversations - many and varied - have done much to help me clarify my own ideas, and continually remind me that there is a place for work like this in the broader world. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ........................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................................................... xii LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................. xiii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................. xv NOTES .................................................................................................................................................... xvii ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................... xviii PART I INTRODUCTION. .................................................................................................................................. 1 I. A River and an Ideology .................................................................................................................. 1 II. Borderlands and Frontiers .............................................................................................................. 5 0.2.2. The borderland matrix ........................................................................................................ 6 0.2.3. Theorizing Roman frontiers and borderlands ................................................................... 8 0.2.4. Towards a model of borderland processes for