Download PDF | Sergiu Musteaţă - Nomads and Natives beyond the Danube and the Black Sea 700–900 CE, Arc Humanities Press 2018.
323 Pages
INTRODUCTION
THE EARLY MIDDLE Ages are of special importance for European history, as this period marks the genesis of many peoples, of state formation, and of the affirmation of feudal relations. This work spans almost two centuries, from the end of the seventh until the late ninth century. During this time a series of political, military, economic, social, and religious transformations took place. The lower chronological limit is marked by the migration of the Bulgars south of the Danube (680/681), and the upper limit coincides with the movement of the Hungarians from the Eastern European steppes to the Carpathian Basin (895/896).
This span includes significant events in the history of Central and Southeastern Europe. The Avar Kaganate controlled not only the Pannonian Steppe but also some regions east of the Tisza up to the Western Carpathians, which has been proven by the Avar graves and cemeteries identified in these areas. The Bulgarians’ settlement south of the Danube and the creation of a new political power changed political realities in the region and directly contributed to the distancing of relations between Byzantium and the North-Danube regions.
The situation in the ninth century directly affected the so-called political silence in the Carpathian-Danubian regions (Map 1). Political reshuffling in the North-Danube areas began with the liquidation of Avar power and was followed by the division of spheres of influence between the Franks, the Moravians, and the Bulgarians. The appearance of the Hungarians at the mouth of the Danube and their conflicts with the powers and populations in the region led to the establishment of their control over the Pannonian Steppe and some other regions east of the Tisza in the late ninth century and beginning of the tenth century. Geographical Boundaries. The appearance and evolution of human beings was and is closely linked to natural factors, but human interactions with the natural environment have still only been modestly investigated.1 Therefore, during historical research, it is necessary to know the peculiarities of the geographical environment (relief, hydrography, climate, vegetation, etc.) and their connections with the anthropic factor.2
The research is geographically bounded by natural landmarks, such as the Tisza, Danube, and Dniester Rivers to the west, east and south, to the southeast by the Black Sea coast, and to the north by the northern Bukovina region (Map 1). This area is known in the literature as the Carpathian-Danubian region, as the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic space or as the northern region of the Lower Danube. At the same time, the space included in this work is not separated from neighbouring territories, especially since the regions to the east of the Carpathians fall within the context of the North-Pontic and East-European steppes, while those from the west fall within the extensive areas of the Pannonian Steppe. The Carpathian-Danubian space is a macro-territorial system, the result of a long paleogeographical evolution, and a component part of the European continent, having Central and East-European, Balkan and Pontic interferences.3 In this part of Europe, several forms of reliefs conjoin, such as seashores, plains, plateaus, hills, and depressions, and these constitute the morphological structural steps of the area (mountains, hills and plateaus, and plains, including coastal platforms).
Thus, the geographical environment in the north of the Lower Danube is quite varied and complex.4 The geo-system of the region is thus a harmonious unity of geological, relief, hydrographical network, socioeconomic, and human-ordered elements (Map 1). The landscape is determined by the geological structure of the region, the result of a continuous development process that influenced the formation of other elements of the environment (the hydrography, soils, flora and fauna, human settlements, economy etc.).
The component parts of the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic geographical macro-system are proportional, symmetrical, and concentrically disposed towards the Carpathians. From the territorial point of view, we can distinguish seventeen geographical regions: the Eastern Carpathians, the Curvature Carpathians, the Southern Carpathians, the Banat Mountains and the Western Carpathian Mountains, the Transylvanian Plateau (Depression), the sub-Carpathians, the Hills of Banat, the Hills of Crișana and Sylvania, the Moldovan Plateau, the Getic Plateau, the Mehedinți Plateau, the Dobrogea Plateau, the Western Plain, the Romanian Plain, the Delta, and the coastal platform (Map 1).5
The diversity of the relief directly influences human activities carried on its surface. The Carpathian Mountains form the backbone of a geographical macro-system. The Carpathians are part of the longest mountain chain in Europe6 and are made up of two areas, the Beskid and the Danube-Pontic. They form a mountain range 1,500 km long and up to 180 km wide. The Carpathians are mountains of medium and low height, with an average height of 840 m, while peaks of over 2,000 m are rare and those exceeding 2,500 m are exceedingly rare. The average altitude oscillates in the east between 1,100 m and 1,300 m, 1,500–1,700 m in the south, and in the west between 800 m and 1,000 m. The circular shape of the Carpathians, enclosing the Transylvanian Depression, imposed a circular radial structure on the Carpathian-Danubian territory that influenced the organization of the socio-political and economic system of the region throughout its history. Thus, around the Carpathians, there is a large staircase of plateaus and plains, bounded by the medium quaternary of three rivers: the Tisza, the Danube, and the Dniester.
The Carpathian passes and passages are not major forms of relief, but by facilitating circulation with the Carpathian regions they constitute an important feature of the evolution of habitats in the region.7 The highlands include forested hills, depressions, and valleys that were deforested and cultivated, with some maintaining meadows and patches of woods. The hills, owing to fertile soils, grasslands, forest, and fauna resources, have been appreciated by the people factor since ancient times. From a strategic point of view the hills used to be a defensive zone, located between the mountain and the steppe regions; such as, for example, in the case of the Eastern Carpathians and the Ponto-Caspian steppes.8 The plains are the lowest land area, with little or no slope. These plains stretch from the Trotuş and Delta to the Oaș Mountains, with a small break at the Danube Gorge. The Romanian Plain is linked with the Southern and Curvature Carpathians bounded by the Lower Danube Plain in the south and divided into the Gaetic Plain and the Eastern Plain (of Bugeac). In the north, the maximum elevation is approximately 250 m, and the average elevation of the Northern Plain is approximately 200 m, reduced to the south and east to a mere 10 m and 5 m respectively.
The Tisza Plain (the Western Lowland, or Banat-Crisana), a component part of the Pannonian Basin, is influenced by the Western Mountains, the Banat Mountains, and the Tisza River.9 The hydrographical network of the region is made up of rivers, lakes of various types, ground-waters, and the Black Sea. Most rivers originate in the Carpathian Mountains, collect in the Danube, and flow to the Black Sea, thus forming the Carpathian-Danubian network.10 The rivers that cross the Carpathian-Danubian basin are grouped into several hydrographical networks: intraCarpathian, extra-Carpathian, and trans-Carpathian. They have their sources mostly in the Carpathian and sub-Carpathian regions.
The number of lakes in this area is quite large and they have various origins: ice, volcanoes, natural dams, or human activity. At the same time, we can distinguish several categories of natural lakes: mountainous, hill, plateau, plains, and sea. The climate is one of the geographical factors that has a significant influence on the evolution of the natural and the anthropic environment of each region. The CarpathianDanubian space is located approximately halfway between the Atlantic side of the continent and the conventional limit with Asia, which provides a temperate continental climate with four clearly marked seasons and a continuous change in the length of day and night. The location of the region at the junction of the western, eastern, northern, and southern climate brings warmer wet air from the west. In the winter, drier, frostier air comes from the east and in the summer, hotter and drier air. From the north comes cold and wet air, and from the south, the air brings drought in summer and warm air with rain in the winter.11 The diversity of the landscape, especially that of the Carpathian chain, greatly influences the movement of air masses and thus generates large climatic differences (Map 1). The problematic of the proposed subject is both pertinent and important, for this project addresses and completes different aspects of the history of the CarpathianDanubian space in the eighth and the ninth centuries. Over the years it has lost none of its relevance; on the contrary, it has generated new and novel interpretations, visions, and, solutions for a number of issues concerning the lifestyle of the inhabitants to the north of the Lower Danube in the early Middle Ages.
In 1978 Dan Gh. Teodor states:“The evolution of civilization in Moldova during the seventh and the ninth centuries was presented in the Romanian literature incompletely, due to the large number of archaeological findings from this era, it remained unpublished for a long time.” From then until today many things have changed, but the problem of publication of archaeological materials remains actual and common to all states.12 The proposed issues are currently important, as they are not sufficiently addressed in contemporary historiography. Also, we should note that the geographical area proposed for research, has been the focus of attention from the great powers from the medieval period to the present, which has resulted in a different historical consideration and interpretation of historical and archaeological realities of these regions. The given subject of study, although it began to be intensely studied in the 1950s, still remains relevant and is complemented by new archaeological discoveries. In these circumstances, there is a need for a review and an overview of the history of the Carpathian-Danubian space in the eighth and ninth centuries based on a complex analysis of the historical sources available today.
The lack of a work of synthesis covering the major archaeological discoveries on the territories between the Tisza and the Dniester, referring to this time, together with the numerous contradictions in the previous publications have confirmed the importance of what follows; a synthetic treatment regarding the history of the regions to the north of the Lower Danube during the eighth and ninth centuries.13 The purpose of this book is to re-examine the history of the Carpathian-Danubian region during the eighth and the ninth centuries. Thus, the central task is to provide an overview on the historical realities to the north of the Lower Danube over two centuries. Writing this book began from the desire to develop a synthetic study through which we will reconstruct the history of the Carpathian-Danubian region during the eighth and ninth centuries based on narrative, archaeological, and numismatic sources.
The diversity of issues presented by such a study requires analysing the following topics in succession: the historiography of the problem, the particularities of the human habitat, the reconstitution of economic occupations, the establishment of the features of spiritual life, the evolution of social relations, the chronological and ethnic affiliation of discoveries, the reconstitution of the political history of the region, and so on. The achievement of this goal, the objectives, and the proposed plan rely on examination of the composition of the repository of sites and archaeological findings from the Carpathian-Danubian regions during the eighth and ninth centuries. Thus, I will try to point out some issues related to the eighth and the ninth centuries, seeking to contribute thereby to the fixing of an image that would allow for an updated scientific interpretation of the early Middle Ages in the regions to the north of the Lower Danube (Map 1).
The study presents a reconstruction of the socio-economic, ethnic, cultural, and ultimately political history of the aforementioned area in the eighth and ninth centuries based on the analysis of the narrative and archaeological sources known so far. In this book, for the first time, the archaeological remains from the Carpathian-Danubian regions (Banat, Crișana, Maramureș, Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, including Bukovina and Bessarabia) are presented as organic unities, which, despite representing inherent parts of a well-defined geographical area over several decades, have previously been dealt with separately, without generalizations performed at the macroregion level (Map 1). Thus, the work fills a substantial gap in the historiography and puts in a new light the historical and the archaeological issues relating to the eighth and ninth centuries. In terms of technique and methodology, the realization of the work represents a critical and comparative analysis of the narrative, archaeological, and numismatic data regarding the Carpathian-Danubian regions in the eighth and ninth centuries.
This work claims a broad and multifaceted analysis of data and historical phenomena in a clearly defined geographical and chronological framework, as well as the application of the methods of critical and comparative analysis of historical sources, statistical, cartographical, stratigraphic, and chronological data. The application of the above-mentioned methods has made it possible to reveal the general and special features of human habitats in the Carpathian-Danubian space during the eighth and ninth centuries. In the absence of written sources that directly relate to the eighth and the ninth centuries, the main source base used is the results of archaeological investigations, which for decades have accumulated information about the lifestyle of the population in the Carpathian-Danubian space in the given period. Through modern methods of collecting and analysing historical data we have compiled the register of discoveries, comprising the majority of archaeological sites (settlements, hillforts, cemeteries, graves, and funerary findings of uncertain nature), as well as numismatic findings from the proposed area for the investigation chronologically assigned to the eighth and the ninth centuries.
The repository was drawn up alphabetically and separately for each country (Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine, and Hungary), and comprises a total of 2,595 archaeological points (Table 1, Chart 1, Map 2). The obtained data were afterward analysed from the statistical, typological, and cartographical points of view. The register of archaeological findings is the basis of this work. Recording them in a single database enabled us to perform a typological systematization (settlements, hillforts, cemeteries, caves, cemeteries, and singular graves), combining the analysis of archaeological materials with the historical synthesis and generalization, while mapping these sites revealed regional groupings of settlements in the eighth and ninth centuries. The mapping of these records was realized with the help of computer programs, based on the exact geographical coordinates of each locality (latitude and longitude). Every point on the map corresponds to a contemporary village. The localities with many archaeological points are collapsed into one single point. In situations where points are part of the different typological categories, they are visible on each map, and in the case of settlements, they have to be combined with the register of discoveries.
Based on published archaeological data we are able to analyse and describe the peculiarities of human habitat (construction typology, economic occupations, rites, and rituals, etc.) in the Carpathian-Danubian in the eighth and ninth centuries. By comparison, I have tried to highlight certain characteristic features of one or another region because then we can discuss issues regarding the cultural and ethnic affiliations of these discoveries. The importance of the subject lies in the elucidation of some significant and actual problems that have been insufficiently and incompletely researched to date.14 Different aspects of the material and spiritual life of the inhabitants of the Carpathian-Danubian regions in the eighth and the ninth centuries and their relations with their neighbouring peoples have been analysed successively and in a complex way.
For the first time, the archaeological findings from the Carpathian-Danubian space, including the territories between the Tisza and the Dniester, which are now the component parts of the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Serbia, and Hungary, have been thoroughly analysed (Map 2). I hope for this study to become a tool in advancing our historical knowledge of the region. The obtained results can be used in further research on the historical development of the territories to the north of the Lower Danube or in producing synthetic studies on the early Middle Ages in Europe.
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