MIGRATION PERIOD PEOPLES

including feature essays on:

Angles, Saxons, and Jutes . . . . . . . . . . . 381

Baiuvarii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Dál Riata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

Goths between the Baltic and Black Seas . . . 388

Huns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Langobards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

Merovingian Franks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396

Ostrogoths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

Picts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

Rus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406

Saami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

Scythians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

Slavs and the Early Slav Culture . . . . . . . 414

Vikings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

Visigoths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

Migration or population movement is a well-documented feature of ancient Europe. At the end of the Ice Age (11,000 years ago), hunters and gatherers moved into areas of Europe that had been glaciated during the Pleistocene. Both archaeological and skeletal evidence indicate that migration played a role in the establishment of the first farming communities in central Europe. Archaeological, place-name, and literary evidence document substantial population movements in central Europe during the later Iron Age.

Population movements are also well documented throughout the Early Middle Ages, and the period from a.d. 400 to 600 is often referred to as the Migration period. In the fifth and sixth centuries a.d. barbarians from outside the Roman Empire—Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Franks, and others—moved into many regions of western Europe. The nature of these migrations has been debated by both archaeologists and historians for decades. Do they represent large-scale population movements, or are they small migrations of a military and political elite who dominated the local sub-Roman populations and initiated changes in material culture and ideology? Today, many archaeologists would favor the latter explanation. This chapter profiles many of the Migration period peoples—including the Saami, of likely ancient, not migratory, origin—who are known through the archaeological record and through historical sources. The Scythians are also included in this section even though they disappear from the historical record at the very beginning of the Migration period, c. a.d. 375.