Who Were the Gepids and Ostrogoths on the Middle Danube in the 5Th Century? an Archaeological Perspective

Chapter 23 Who Were the Gepids and Ostrogoths on the Middle Danube in the 5th Century? An Archaeological Perspective Zsófia Rácz 1 Introduction – Attempts to Identify the Gepidic and Ostrogothic Populations in the Carpathian Basin The changes that took place during the Hunnic Period, at the end of the 4th c. and in the first half of the 5th c., fundamentally transformed the political and social conditions in the Carpathian Basin. In a process similar to what had un- folded in the borderlands and other parts of the Western Roman Empire, new medieval kingdoms were created in both the Alföld (Great Hungarian Plain), which had earlier been ruled by the Sarmatians, and the former region of Pannonia. According to written sources, various peoples of eastern Germanic origin played a significant role in the 5th-century history of the Carpathian Basin. After the death of Attila and the fall of the Huns, the Ostrogoths and the Gepids took centre stage: in the Battle of Nedao (453), the alliance, under the command of the Gepidic king Ardarik, defeated the army of Attila’s sons and occupied a large portion of the areas (the Tisza region and Dacia) held by the Huns.1 A considerable section of Pannonia came under Ostrogoth rule. The Eastern and Western Roman empires concluded contracts with the Gepidic, Gothic, Suevian, Scirian, Rugian, and Herulian kingdoms, which had formed on the ruins of the Hunnic Empire; based on the tributes they were paid, however, these polities had nowhere near the political weight of the Hunnic Empire.2 What we are dealing with in these cases is the rise of new ethnic groups and polities through contact with the Hunnic and Roman empires at the end of the 4th c. and in the first half of the 5th. It is difficult to determine to what degree the gentes, first mentioned in the 450s, can be identified with the ethnonyms which appear in 3rd- and 4th-century sources, and with the eastern 1 For a summary, see Pohl 1998b; Kiss P. 2015; Nagy, B. Tóth 1998. 2 In 443 the Eastern Roman Empire paid 2,100 Roman pounds to the Huns, while in the post mid-5th c., it paid 100 pounds a year to the German polities. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004422421_025 772 Rácz Germanic population of the Wielbark period.3 Moreover, the written sources refer primarily to kings, military commanders and armed retinues. For information on the people belonging to these groups, the communities comprising the hinterlands, and the lifestyles, cultural milieux and cultural connections of these communities, we need to turn to archaeological sources. Archaeological achievements of recent decades – including newly discovered sites and devel- opments in methodology – have demonstrated the usefulness of archaeological information beyond the mere illustration of known historical facts. These two kinds of historical sources should be treated as complementary. The ethnonyms appearing in the sources have also served as a starting point for archaeological efforts to connect concrete artefacts to specific ethnic groups. The categorising of finds with respect to ethnicity – and also to the chronologies provided by the historical sources – became the most im- portant goal of archaeological interpretation. In the case of the Gepids, István Bóna attempted to reconstruct the history of their arrival and dispersal in the Carpathian Basin.4 According to Bóna’s model, by the 3rd c. at the latest, a unified Gepid population had formed, which, after leaving its ancient home- land along the lower reaches of the Vistula, neighbouring the Goths, settled next to the Przeworsk population in the north-east corner of the Carpathian Basin in the late 3rd c. In the second half of the 4th c., the group had moved to the south, and at the time of the Hunnic attack occupied a significant part of the Tisza region, extending ‘at least to Körös’. During the Hunnic occupa- tion, the Gepids remained in their ‘place’ and became the auxiliary units of the Huns. According to István Bóna, during this time, when the Hunnic epicentre shifted to the Tisza region, ‘besides some Sarmatian groups of the Danube-Tisza interfluve and Temesköz, the Gepids remained the sole inhabitants’.5 Bóna’s narrative is based primarily on sporadic historical sources concerning the second half of the 3rd c.6 and the middle of the 5th c.7 These, in fact, provide no basis for determining where the Gepids had settled in the 3rd and 4th c.8 The term Gepid does not appear in any of the written sources from the late 3rd through the mid-5th c. Volker Bierbrauer proposed a different origin for the Gepids: the final de- parture of the Gepids from their settlement along the Vistula took place only 3 See Heather 2008b, 160–161. 4 Bóna 1984, 294–295; Bóna 1993, 52–55. 5 Bóna 1993, 53. 6 Jordanes, Getica 97–100 and Mamertinus, Panegyrici Latini III (XI) 17,1. 7 Jordanes, Getica 199. 8 Bierbrauer 2006, 170–172..

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