The ‘Western Cimmerians’ and the first Greek settlers in the Troad (original) (raw)

Ethnicity in the steppe lands of the northern Black Sea region during the early Byzantine times

Archaeologia Bulgarica, 2019

Obsessed with linking particular groups known from the written sources to archaeological assemblages or cultures, archaeologists have neglected the accumulation over the last few years of data on the steppe lands north of the Black Sea during the 6 th and 7 th centuries. Many are still guided in the interpretation of those data by an uncritical understanding of the written sources. The paper offers an overview of the ethnographic reports of the Black Sea region, from Priscus to Menander the Guardsman, with a particular emphasis on the passage in Procopius' Wars which imitates a periplus-like account. Ethnographic concerns greatly distort the traditional framework of the periplus, and make room for digressions on such things as customs, religion, government, and the like. In spite of the common opinion on the matter, Procopius does not describe nomads moving around in the steppe lands. The constraints of the genre that Procopius imitated (periplus) are responsible for the "linear" arrangement of the ethnic names one after the other. Only in the northern segment is a three-tiered classification introduced, as in the case of the Huns-Cimmerians-Cutrigurs. That classification allows the distinction between foes and friends of the Romans. Those closer to the Romans (Cutrigurs) are their enemies, while those farthest from them (Utigurs, Trapezites) are their allies. Both Procopius and Pseudo-Zachariah wrote about Huns, albeit in different languages. Procopius and Agathias mention Cutrigurs, but Jordanes has only Bulgars. Are assemblages dated to the 6 th century and discovered in the lands north of the Black Sea the remains of the Bulgars or of the Cutrigurs? What is, in fact, the basis for any linkage between the historical and the archaeological evidence? The second section of the paper is based on a critical approach to the archaeological record. Judging from the existing evidence, the people in the Black Sea steppe lands regarded prehistoric mounds as "old, " and therefore chose to bury some of their dead in barrows. Such practices may have been connected with claims to the ancestors supposedly buried underneath the mounds. At the same time, the idea of placing the dead in prehistoric mounds may have something to do with the desire to make their tombs visible in the landscape, and thus to communicate the status of an individual or of a family In the steppe lands north of the Black Sea, burial within a prehistoric mound was probably meant to conjure the (imagined) past in order to re-invent traditions. That the earliest cases are from the northwestern area of the Black Sea Lowlands, while in the late 6 th and early 7 th century burials in prehistoric barrows appear also in the northwestern region of the Sea of Azov and in Crimea may not be an accident. During the second half of the 6 th and the early decades of the 7 th century, the Black Sea Lowlands between the Dniester and the Molochna rivers were troubled borderlands, and the written sources clearly point to the dissolution of earlier tribal confederacies, such as the Cutrigurs and the Utigurs, as a result of attacks from Avars and Turks. It is possible that burial in ancient barrows was a response to the claims laid on the Black Sea steppe lands, particularly those in northern Crimea and those between the Dnieper and the Danube, in close proximity to the Empire.