Slavs in the Making: History, Linguistics, and Archaeology in Eastern Europe

by Florin Curta

Slavs in the Making takes a fresh look at archaeological evidence from parts of Slavic-speaking Europe north of the Lower Danube, including the present-day territories of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.Nothing is known about what the inhabitants of those remote lands called themselves during the sixth century, or whether they spoke a Slavic language. The book engages critically with the archaeological evidence from these regions, and questions its association with the "Slavs" that has often been taken for granted. It also deals with the linguistic evidence—primarily names of rivers and other bodies of water—that has been used to identify the primordial homeland of the Slavs, and from which their migration towards the Lower Danube is believed to have started. It is precisely in this area that sociolinguistics can offer a serious alternative to the language tree model currently favoured in linguistic paleontology. The question of how best to explain the spread of Slavic remains a controversial issue. This book attempts to provide an answer, and not just a critique of the method of linguistic paleontology upon which the theory of the Slavic migration and homeland relies.The book proposes a model of interpretation that builds upon the idea that (Common) Slavic cannot possibly be the result of Slavic migration. It addresses the question of migration in the archaeology of early medieval Eastern Europe, and makes a strong case for a more nuanced interpretation of the archaeological evidence of mobility. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in medieval history, migration, and the history of Eastern and Central Europe.

Genres: History

352 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 28, 2020

About the author

Florin Curta is Waldo W. Neikirk Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Florida. His books include: The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube region, c. 500-700 (2001), which received the Herbert Baxter Adams prize of the American Historical Association; and Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250 (2005). He is also the editor of East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (2005) and Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis (2006). He is currently completing a monograph on Moravia and Bulgaria in the ninth century.

Reviews

[Milan]

I haven’t seen such amount of stupidities and falsifications in one place. Serbs, for example, are 40% I2a people which has been present in Lepenski Vir/Iron Gates and Vinca since the Ice Age. The most of ancient people lived in Vinca and they are indigenous people in Europe. Their language was spoken in continuity since then up to today and now its name is Serbian language. From this language evolved all Slavic languages. Sanskrit is a localised version of Serbian language brought by Aryans to S. Asia and India 4000 years ago. Serbian language influenced all European languages. It is much older than Hebrew, Latin and ‘ancient’ Greek not mentioning English (formed in 12th c.AC) and German (14-15th c.AC.). The assertion - “The heavy influence of Germanic on Slavic is almost exclusively lexical, which has been interpreted as an indication of unequal relations, with speakers of Slavic imitating the supposedly prestigious language patterns of speakers of Germanic.” is simply moronic. There is no ONE single account from anyone that so-called Slavs (i.e Serbs because the term ‘Slavs’ did not exist yet) migrated to Balkan in the 7th c.AC. This is one of the biggest hoaxes in the world history. Ancestors of modern Serbs lived in Balkan for more than 12000 years. From Serbian speaking tribes evolved recently other sc. Slavic nations – Bulgarians, Romanians (a nation only 160 years old) and other after their migration from Vinca in all directions. Serbian speaking tribes (Pelasgians) were indigenous in today’s Greece much before (future) Greeks came. Slavic tribes lived in today’s Germany while Germans lived in today’s France. Many Serbs were later Germanised (for e.g. Prussians). All places and cities in East Germany were founded by Serbs and previously had Serbian names (e.g. Berlin, Brandenburg, Lubeck, Dresden, Leipzig, etc).