Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 29/3. (2009)

Fábián István: Artefacts and Ethnic Group sin the North-Danubian Area int he 4th-7th Centuries

ARTEFACTS AND ETHNIC GROUPS IN THE NORTHDANUBIAN AREA IN THE 4TM-7TH CENTURIES

FÁBIÁN ISTVÁN

Petru Maior University, Tärgu Mure§

The roman retreat during the reign of Aurelian opened a new perspective in the economic development of the former Trajanic province, on whose territory different migratory and indigenous groups lived in radically changed conditions. The different stages of economic development of the migratory populations, their relations with the Roman Empire, the Roman presence on the northern shore of the Danube and the existence of well determined commercial relationships between the former and the latter are the main coordinates of economic life of the period. The presence of the import objects in funerary context, in thesauri, or in settlements formulates the question: who owned them? Is there a relation between a certain artefact and a certain ethnic group who lived for a period of time in this area?

It is a very much used and abused question. The historiographical discourse linked to the ethic assignment of a certain category of objects is to long (and sometimes too ideologised) and therefore it is not the subject of the present paper. On the other hand the influences are so powerful making it very hard to give a clear ethnic attribution to many artefacts. We find very suitable what Mrs. Hica-Cämpianu asserted: “at this moment when to the arguments given to a certain ethnic....we can give the same amount of counter-arguments the problem of ethnic assignment cannot be solved in a decisive matter”1.

The problem of ethic attribution and that of the differentiation of certain ethnic groups is not a new one: the authors of Late Antiquity such as St. Augustine2, Menander Protector3, Ammianus Marcelinus4, or Isidor of Seville observed the ethnic markers between the different populations who made contact with the Empire. To notice the fact that these ethnic markers were the same for all ancient authors: jewellery, weapons, and funerary customs. In this context of ethic markers a special place is occupied by jewellery. Walter Pohl asserted that what is considered as “specific objects / national costume” of an ethnic group or another is a creation of the 19th century romantic history.

Jewellery is important in differentiating the upper classes (so they appear as markers of vertical differentiation) but in the same time it can distinguish a community from another in

1 Hica-Cämpeanu 1979, 163.

2 De Civitate Dei (14,1), Sf. Augustin. After, Ványó 1980, 103.

3 Pohl - Reimnitz, 1998, 18.

4 Ammianus Marcelinus, Istoria romanä, 31, 2, 17.

M A R I S I A XXIX, p. 161-164