Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 25. – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1995)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Christie, N.: The Survival of Roman Settlement alog the Middle Danube: Pannonia from The tenth Century A. D. p. 303–319. t. XX–XXIII.

Alba Regia, XXV, 1994 N. CHRISTIE THE SURVIVAL OF ROMAN SETTLEMENT ALONG THE MIDDLE DANUBE: PANNÓNIA FROM THE FORTH TO THE TENTH CENTURY A.D. Summary') As guardian of the long and important Middle Danubian limes, Roman Pannónia protected the central provinces of the Empire. Despite a mass of defensive structures, the limes was progressively overrun from the later 4th century and Pannónia was eventually ceded to the Huns in 430. Subsequently the region fell victim to Germans and eastern nomads and stability of a sort was only restored with the establishment of the Hungarian State in the late 10th century. This paper examines the question of settlement change between the 4th and 10th centuries, viewing the degree to which the various invaders maintained, ignored or replaced the network of Roman structures. Introduction In recent years increased emphasis has been placed on the question of the survival of Roman structures and society, with scholars keen to identify stubborn resistance on the part of the Romanised peoples of the former Empire against giving way culturally and socially to the barbarian conquerors. Often such 'Roman' resistance This article forms a slightly modified version of a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology; it summarises research carried out during tenureship of a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford (1989-1992). Fieldwork was funded by grants from the British Academy, the T.W. Greene Fund (Craven Committee, Oxford) and the Ilchester Fund (Taylor Institution, Oxford). My thanks to Dr. A . Kiss of the National Museum of Hungary, Budapest, for discussion of the archaeology of the period 500-800; also to participants of seminars presented at the Institute of Archaeology, London and at St. Cross College, Oxford. Alison Wilkins kindly drew the figures and Robert Wilkins and Jennie Lowe produced the plates accompanying this text. centres around a historical or semi-historical champion, whether Syagrius in Gaul, Arthur in Britain or Severin in Noricum, whose death marks the collapse of the last vestiges of Roman life. Archaeology has come to give greater support to the general pattern of survival: in Britain we can note the reuse of hill-forts, the creation of sub-kingdoms, the persistence of Roman nomenclature, and the maintenance of Continental and Mediterranean trade-contacts; in Gaul and Spain the survival of late Roman urban and rural centres helps identify the continuing vitality of the Roman aristocracy; and in Noricum excavations along the liméP attest enduring islands of Roman life coming under increasing barbarian sway. In the case of Noricum, the fascinating Vita Severini, composed by the monk Eugippius in с 510 but recounting events of с 455-480, describes Severin, in a governor-cum-bishop role, seeking to stem the barbarian tide by reorganising native settlement along the Danube, evacuating exposed forts and towns and, in particular, reviving the many Christian communities of the region (Haberl-Hawkes 1973). Here we see how the Church had come to form the sole source of control and salvation for the population in the absence of any Roman administrative or military body - at various points we hear of Severin entreating the inhabitants to trust in God or to fast, but also to rally to counter the raiding enemy; elsewhere we see the church as the distribution point of a rare supply of olive oil brought downstream (Vita Severini, ch.XI. XVII, XXVII, XXVIII). Gaul, Spain, Italy and Africa never suffered the constant raiding and destruction endemic to the Rhine and Danubian provinces from the mid-3rd century, where the role of the military was paramount and civilian life was progressively worn down. The inner provinces came to be occupied by Germans wanting a share in the Empire and who therefore sought largely to maintain the existing settlement patterns - all this with variable effects on their 303