The Early Slavs

Eastern Europe from the Initial Settlement to the Kievan Rus

Pavel Dolukhanov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138144224
• eBook ISBN: 9781317892212
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Europa del Este

The history of the early Slavs is a subject of renewed interest and one which is highly controversial both politically and historically. This pioneering text reviews the latest archaelogical (and other) evidence concerning the first settlers, their cultural identities and their relationship with their modern successors. Dr Dolukhanov explores the various historiographical debates before offering his own interpretations.

Chapter 1

The Slavs and Archaeology in Russia

Addressing over and over again the Soviet archaeological publications of past years, I could not fail to be captivated by the magnitude and high standards of archaeology in the former Soviet Union. At the height of its development (particularly from the 1950s to the 1980s), the network of archaeological institutions established in the USSR had no direct analogies anywhere in the world. Several hundred professional archaeologists in Russia and other Soviet republics, gathered in centralized and adequately budgeted institutions, carried out systematic archaeological investigations in all parts of that huge country. The results of these studies were regularly published in numerous periodicals and monographs. One of the last achievements of Soviet archaeology was the publication, in numerous volumes, of The Archaeology of the USSR, under the general editorship of Professor B.A. Rybakov, the long-time director of the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow. At the time when these volumes started to appear, I, like many of my former colleagues, was rather critical of their scholarly values; now, at a distance, I can truly estimate their significance as state-of-the-art summaries of the latest achievements in various areas of Russian archaeology.

Yet in dealing with Russian and Soviet archaeological publications, one should necessarily take into account the methodological and philosophical features that resulted from the specific conditions in which scholarly thought was developing in that country. Since its early stages, archaeology in Russia was strongly nationalistic. Archaeology as scholarship in Russia dates back to the early eighteenth century – the reign of Peter the Great. The policy of the czar was directed towards the ‘opening up of a window to Europe’, that is, the closer political and cultural integration of Russia into Europe. Hence, the interest in the cultural heritage of Russia in general, and archaeology in particular, was largely dictated by the political necessity of finding the evidence that Russia is, and always was, part of Europe.

The first archaeological excavations in Russia were carried out in 1710 by a German priest, Willhelm Tolle. He excavated burial mounds at Ladoga. This assemblage, situated east of St Petersburg, remains one of the most important Slavic sites. It provides evidence for the presence of Vikings in that part of Russia from at least the ninth century AD. It may not be by chance that, by comparing the excavated material with the antiquities of Northern Germany and Scandinavia, the excavator concluded that these materials belonged to ‘Gothic tribes’.

Peter the Great was the first Russian ruler to comprehend the importance of archaeological finds. In one of his decrees, the czar stipulated that ‘all ancient objects … found in the ground or under water’ should be collected and handed over to the authorities. These collections served as a base for the first museum to be opened in Russia in 1715, the Kunstkammer (now the Museum for Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences). Acquisitions made by Peter the Great formed the first archaeological assemblage to be recorded in Russia. These were ‘golden objects’ from the Scythian barrows in Siberia which formed the famous ‘Siberian collection’ (Rudenko 1962). Since that time, the Scythian (and Sarmatian) antiquities have remained one of the main priorities in Russian archaeology.

For a long time, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the efforts of Russian archaeologists concentrated on the classical sites in the Black Sea area. These were Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast. Their excavators included L.E. Stefani, V.V. Latyshev, M.I. Rostovtseff and many other scholars. No less impressive were the excavations of Scythian and Sarmatian mounds (kurgans) by I.E. Zabelin, S.A. Zhebelev and others. The excavations of these sites enjoyed considerable official support; there was no shortage of funds. The most spectacular finds were displayed at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, as well as in Moscow and provincial museums. These finds were included in the curricula of classical colleges (gimnazii). Implicitly, official support for classical archaeology in Old Russia stemmed from the ‘Third Rome’ ideology, according to which Muscovy regarded herself as the legitimate successor to the Byzantine heritage and, therefore, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox world.

The next important area of pre-Revolutionary archaeology in Russia (or even the main priority, according to the Russian Archaeological Society, established in 1851) was the excavation of Slavic antiquities. The first excavations, mostly of burial mounds, were conducted in the early 19th century in the Novgorod district (N.A. Ushakov, A.I. Kulzhinsky), near Moscow (A.D. Chertkov, F.N. Kitaev) and near Ryazan’ (M.N. Makarov, A. Tikhomirov). Later, in the 1870s, N.E. Brandenburg excavated Slavic barrows south of the Ladoga Lake. A.A. Samokvasov, and particularly D.Ya. Spizyn, studied the Slavic sites in central Russia.

Summing up the main problems dealt with by Slavic archaeology in pre-Revolutionary Russia, Lebedev (1992: 152) singled out the following:

    –  territories, held by various Slavic tribes, as evidenced by the particulars of archaeological finds, and, especially, burial rites;

    –  the level in the development of material culture;

    –  spiritual culture, as evidenced by archaeological materials and supplemented by the data of language and folklore;

    –  cultural, economic and political links with the outside world (both in the west and the east).

Implicitly, Slavic archaeology in Russia was influenced by pan-Slavic nationalism, particularly since the 1860s. At that time, Russian intellectuals who adhered to the Slavophile movement, for example, N.Ya. Danilevsky, (1822–65) often expressed the views that Slavic peoples belonged to a ‘new and superior type of world culture, which would eventually result in their unification and domination over the rest of Europe’. The nationalist implications stood out particularly strongly in the ethno-cultural approach which became a leading paradigm in pre-Revolutionary Russian archaeology. It is highly significant that, as Klejn (1991) notes, the concept of archaeological culture, as an equivalent of ethnicity, emerged both in Russia and Germany at about the same time – in the mid-nineteenth century. In the latter case, this concept stemmed from the ‘romanticist–nationalist school’ of German philosophy. Philosophical foundations of a similar concept in Russia are less obvious.

The ethno-cultural concept was introduced in Russia by two prominent archaeologists: V.A. Gorodtsov (1860–1945) and A.A. Spitzyn (1858–1931). Both scholars played a positive role in the history of Russian archaeology. In his study on the prehistoric pottery, Gorodtsov (1901) was the first to put forward the principles of numerical taxonomy. He was equally well ahead of his time when he advocated a ‘deductive-classificatory approach’, which included the ‘type’ as a basic unit. Applying his methodology to Bronze Age burial sites of southern Russia, Gorodtsov identified three chronologically consecutive ‘cultures’: Pit-Grave, Catacomb and Timber Grave. These concepts remain in use to this day. Later, in his synthetic works (Gorodtsov 1908), he suggested a universal model of cultural development viewed as a succession of ‘archaeological cultures’. At about the same time, A.A. Spitzyn (1899) identified several archaeological cultures in the Eneolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages of European Russia: Volosovian, Tripolian, Zarubintsian and Chernyakhovian.

It should be stressed that neither Gorodtsov nor Spitzyn ever abused the ethno-cultural paradigm. They used it primarily as an instrument for the classification of vast amounts of archaeological material accumulated by that time. Only later did both scholars attempt to interpret cultural units in ethnic terms. Spitzyn identified two types of Slavic burial site in northwestern Russia (‘long barrows’ and ‘conic mounds’) that he ascribed to two ‘cultural groups’ of early Slavs. He also singled out the sites that he viewed as belonging to the Finns.

Gorodtsov, in his synthesis of the south Russian Iron Age, identified the Scythian, Sarmatian and Gothic antiquities. He regarded the cultural area of ‘urnfield’ in central and eastern Europe as belonging to a hypothetical ‘Slavic-Germanic family’. Discussing the origins of Slavonic ethnicity, Gorodtsov rightly stressed the importance of urban centres which had not been properly studied at that time. He viewed the Dyakovian Iron Age culture as being at the heart of the central Russian cultural tradition. He also identified Finnish antiquities, where he saw the cultural elements traceable in the ethnographical records of Finland and Estonia. In all cases these concepts were in line with the contemporary level of European archaeology and were devoid of pronounced nationalistic bias.

In contrast, the nationalistic underpinnings were more obvious in the pronouncements made by V.V. Chvojka (Khvoika), a Ukrainian archaeologist of Czech origin (1850–1914). At the turn of the century, he (Chvojka 1901, 1913) discovered the Tripolye culture, as well as the so-called ‘polya pogrebenij’ (urnfields), later recognized as Zarubintsian and Chernyakhovian Iron Age cultures, in forest-steppic Ukraine. Chvojka interpreted the entire cultural sequence of Tripolye–Zarubintsian–Chernyakhovian as reflecting consecutive stages in the development of Slavic ethnicity. Thus he laid a foundation for the discussion which flared up much later, in the 1950s–1970s that had strong nationalistic undertones.

Since the 1920s, Marxist historical materialism became the leading epistemology of Soviet archaeology. The preoccupation with social problems greatly determined the concentration of Soviet archaeologists on social problems. The Marxist ideology was introduced to Russian archaeology by N.Ya. Marr (1864–1934), who was a prominent linguist and archaeologist even before the Revolution. Based on his original interpretation of the linguistic evidence, Marr put forward a ‘Japhetic theory’, according to which all languages passed through identical stages of evolution. He argued that languages belonged to an ideological superstructure and were, therefore, class-related.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet archaeologists (Ravdonikas, Efimenko, Boriskovsky and other scholars) proclaimed the identification of ‘socio-economic formations based on the study of the material remains’ as a principle aim of archaeology. In accordance with the ‘stadial concept’, Prehistory and Early History were viewed as a sequence of ‘socio-economic formations’. At that time, the Japhetic theory was considered as a Marxist ideological basis of Soviet archaeology: the stages in the evolution of language were broadly equated with social changes.

One of the immediate consequences of the adoption of the Marxist ideology by young Soviet archaeologists was the total rejection of the cultural-ethnic concept. All interpretative theories of Soviet archaeologists at that time were based on the autochthonous development, both ‘migrationism’ and ‘diffusionism’ being denounced as ‘bourgeois nationalism’ and ‘racism’. The problems of ethnicity were generally ignored, primitive and often naive social reconstructions being suggested instead. For example Krichevsky (1940) viewed the early agricultural Tripolye society as featuring matriarchal clan society and primordial communism, while Bronze Age burial mounds in southern Russia were seen as indices of patriarchal pastoral societies (Kruglov and Podgaetsky 1935).

Soon after the war, Soviet archaeologists gradually abandoned the stadial theory. Stalin inflicted the final blow when he denounced Marrism as a ‘vulgar Marxism’ (Stalin 1950). The cultural-ethnic concept was gradually rehabilitated. At that stage, the equation of archaeological entities with ethnicities became even more straightforward than in the earlier Gorodtsov and Spitzyn works. Thus Bryusov, one of the leading Soviet archaeologists, wrote: ‘archaeological cultures … reflect the originality of technology, economy, mode of life and other aspects of certain ethnic tribes or, rather, groups of related tribes, in their specific historic development’ (Bryusov 1956: 20). Yu.N. Zakharuk took a step further when he equated archaeological cultures not only with ethnic, but also with linguistic entities. He wrote: ‘an archaeological culture is an aggregation of chronologically and spatially inter-related archaeological sites (assemblages) of a certain type, which reflect the spread and a certain stage in the historical development of a group of related tribes speaking dialects of the same language’ (Zakharuk 1964: 39). Another Ukrainian archaeologist, Braichevsky, was still more categorical when he wrote: ‘we regard archaeological culture as an association of archaeological phenomena which correspond to a certain ethnic identity. And we cannot identify as a culture an assemblage which does not correspond to a definite ethnic entity’ (Braichevsky 1965). In the 1960s, Soviet archaeologists totally abandoned concepts of autochthonic development. Step by step, they returned to the ideas of diffusions and migrations. But, as Klejn (1993) notes, it is significant that both diffusions and migrations were mostly centrifugal.

Based on the direct equation of archaeological ‘cultures’ with ethnicities, Soviet archaeologists hypothesized on the origins of the Slavs, Scythians, Sarmatians and other major ethnicities in the area of the former Soviet Union. Very often these hypotheses had a strong nationalistic underpinning.

In recent years, particularly since the political collapse of the Soviet Union, one may witness a total rejection of Marxism by Russian archaeologists. The side-effect of this was the rise of nationalism that was tacitly omnipresent in Russian archaeology since the 1950s. The ethnic-cultural paradigm is a convenient instrument commonly used in the nationalistic-oriented concepts.

The popularity of L.N. Gumilev’s works is a typical and dangerous phenomenon in the Russia of the late twentieth century. These works, where literary fantasies substitute hard archaeological evidence, are often openly racist. Gumilev (1980) views ethnos as a part of the biosphere, which passes though the stages of development depending on the presence or absence of a ‘passionate personality’. The interaction of two ‘positive ethnical systems’ may lead to the emergence of ‘destructive anti-systems’. Particularly harmful, according to Gumilev (1980: 474–5), were the contacts between the Jews and the Greeks in the Hellenistic world. Equally destructive were the interactions of the Kushans with the Indian civilization, the Hunnu with the Chinese civilization, etc. Gumilev’s concepts are now widely exploited by ultra-chauvinistic groups in Russia.

National archaeological schools in non-Russian republics of the USSR, in Leo Klejn’s words, were constantly manoeuvering between ‘Scylla of indictment in nationalism and Charybdis of submission to Russification’. The cultural-ethnical approach remained the leading paradigm in these national archaeological schools. This often takes naive forms: local archaeologists tend to identify their nations with ‘glorious peoples’ of the past, for example the Moldavians seek to identify themselves with the Dacians, and the Azeris with the ancient Albanians (Klejn 1993). Archaeological arguments in the cultural-ethnic sense were, and are, often used in ethnical conflicts, substantiating the claims on the territories under dispute. Thus, both Georgian and Armenian archaeologists assert claims to the ‘Urartian heritage’. The cultural and political significance of the Turcic expansion are differently viewed in the neighbouring Middle Asian republics.

In contrast to the cultural-ethnic paradigm, the present writer, following the lead of several British colleagues, notably John Chapman, prefers to use different units of analysis with less straightforward ethnical connotations (Chapman and Dolukhanov 1993). The use of elements of network analysis developed in sociology proves to be particularly instrumental. Networks, which are viewed as unbounded fields of social relations, in which inter-personal links are more important than any definition of group membership, provide a flexibility essential in the analysis of social groupings. The following advantages of network analysis are especially noted: (Noble 1973) (1) it is applicable to any groupings of males and females; (2) it permits an infinite series of interconnected relationships; (3) it allows the emergence of foci of relationships over time but does not treat them as static; (4) it treats humans as operating in broad fields of social relationships rather than in culture-determined analytical contexts. Network analysis is further strengthened by Michael Mann’s theory of social power (Mann 1986). He viewed society as a multitude of overlapping and intersecting socio-spatial networks of power, through which individuals and groups mobilize social power to effect control over people and resources. Mann identified four interdependent sources of social power: (1) ideological; (2) economic; (3) military and (4) political. The most significant implication is that all these networks or arenas of social power in proper circumstances may result in the formation of archaeologically perceptible entities which Russian and many western archaeologists still prefer to call ‘cultures’. Ethnicity is but one of the multiple variants of arenas of power which emerge under specific conditions and include social networks of varying intensity. In my previous work (Dolukhanov 1994) I defined ethnicity as a dynamic socio-cultural system which develops at a certain level of social complexity and features peculiarities in transmission and storage of cultural information, social behaviour, psychology, ideology and in corresponding semiotic and symbolic systems.

The reconstruction of past languages forms an essential element in the studies of past ethnicities. In this respect the definition of language, as primarily a semiotic system, which I found in the works by Roman Jakobson, the Russian-born linguist (1896–1982), seems to me highly instrumental. Jakobson wrote: ‘Evidently, language is a constituent of culture, but in the ensemble of cultural phenomena it functions as their superstructure, groundwork and universal medium of communication’ (1973: 34–5). In the same paper Jakobson went still further and made yet another significant observation. He found analogies in linguistics and economics: ‘Talcott Parsons treats the monetary system as “a code” in the grammatical-syntactical sense. He avowedly applies to the economic interchange the theory of code and message developed in linguistics’ (1973: 43). In other words, Jakobson, using the terms of modern information theory, viewed the communication of verbal messages as a part of semiotic information transmitted in social networks. These are basic theoretical premises on which the present work is based.

Chapter 2

Geographical Setting

Geology and landforms

The events which will be the subject of this book occurred mainly within the confines of the East European (or Russian) Plain. This geographical unit corresponds to one of the main stable blocks of the planet Earth – the East European platform (Fig. 1). Like similar structures in other parts of the world, the East European platform comprises two stages: an ancient crystalline basement and the cover of sedimentary rocks of various...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Transliteration of Cyrilic Names
• 1. The Slavs and Archaeology in Russia
• 2. Geographical Setting
• 3. The Initial Settlement
• 4. Postglacial Farmers and Hunters
• 5. The Beaker Folks
• 6. The Age of Change
• 7. The Slavs, Balts and Finns
• 8. The Slavs in Europe
• 9. The Vikings and the Rus
• Conclusions
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index