Archeology and the Bavarian Genesis

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Archeology and the Bavarian Genesis

When the Merovingian Frankish forces expanded Eastward, an atypical direction of movement during these relocations of peoples, to incorporate all of the Alps in the

Merovingian realm, from where they intervened in the Ostrogothic war with the Byzantines,they had already incorporated on their Northern flank, in Raetia II and in Noricum, a new

people, the Bayuvarians. These Bavarians were not an old people but an ethnicconglomerate of Germanic tribal splinter groups, which from mid-fifth century, around 476,

onward, had coalesced between the Danube and the Alps from the rivers Lech/Iller in the

West to the river Enns in the East. Their presence is indicated in the military structures andfortifications of the Roman limes auxiliaries and is supported in the mixed Roman and

Germanic equipment inventories of the adjoining cemeteries throughout this area. These

inventories of personal ornaments and ceramics date into the fifth century and reveal thatthe troops stationed in the frontier fortifications belonged to Elbian and Bohemian tribes as

well as to those originating further East, interspersed with an occasional Frank. Theinventories also reflect the presence of some nobles and of women. These inventories,

however, are not reflected further inland. The archeological evidence indicates further, thatsince the third century a nameless Elbian Germanic group had moved into Bohemia

characterized by a particular pottery style, named after the type station Prestovice, as wellas by cremation burials, and that a century later the pottery identifying this group was

established along the Northern bank of the Danube from the river Lech to Soviodurum /Straubing, where the cemetery Friedenhain serves as type station for the pottery, and also

North of the Raetian limes. During the fifth century the Bohemian cemeteries containing theElbian pottery had broken off, indicating that the population using the cemeteries had left

the area for a new location to the West. From this new area warriors were recruited for theRoman auxiliaries. In Roman service they gave up cremation in favor of inhumation, a

switch which was characteristic for all Germanic forces entering Roman service. The findsare evidence that the Roman frontier was still effective during the fifth century, though, in a

process which had begun centuries earlier, the defenders, semi-free laeti , resembled para-military forces whose duties combined military and agricultural service, probably in a

federated arrangement, out of which evolved a military peasantry. In time, as the garrisons

decreased in size, the civilians moved into the forts, abandoning all lands but the villagesand fields and pastures which supported the fort, were guarded by it and provided itsmodest supplies. In some instances, as at Soviodurum /Straubing, their ceremonies show

continuous use into the seventh century. South of Straubing such a cemetery developedinto the largest Bajuvarian row-grave field.

The composition of the grave inventories showed that the objects and ornaments of thedeceased men and women reflected a multicultural stylistic assembly. The great number of

burials in these grave fields, at Altenerding near Munich more than 2,000, and the

continuity of the occupation over two centuries, beginning in the last decades of the fifthcentury, indicates that these areas were not devoid of inhabitants, that these varied

Germanic populations had become sedentary in the provinces and that a population

synthesis was taking place. That Roman and Germanic populations shared the land isindicated by the continuity of Roman pottery traditions into the seventh century. Thesuperiority of Roman wheel thrown pottery slowly displaced the Elbian hand made,

technically inferior, Friedenhain/Prestovice pottery of the Germanic troops and farmers.Towards the end of the Roman period Thuringian and Alamanic populations were allowed to

cross into these provinces as well. A cemetery at Straubing/Sorviodurum with over 800graves shows inventories of ornaments deriving from the Frankish-Alamanic West, the

Thuringian and central German North and the Eastern Danubian, Ostrogothic and ItalicSouth. It points to the wealth and farflung connections of this population. Ten artificially



deformed female skulls belong to the earliest period. The grave field was used from c.500 toc.700 and emphasizes the continuity of the population and the gradual transition of the

material culture from Roman to Bavarian times. The evolution of the Bavarians took placealong the Danube frontier.

Quite evidently a popular “arrival theory” of an ethnically cohesive people cannot be

maintained. In time, Alamans, Juthungians, Elbians, Marcomans, Danubian Suebians,Skirians, Rugians, Thuringians especially after 555/56, Langobards and fragments of otherGermanic peoples, including Goths, other Easterners and Romans participated in this

ethnogensis around a core of people from Bohemia, the “men from Baias”, who also

provided the name ‘Bai-waren.’

Roman remnant Populations

The unsettled conditions along the Danube frontier had thinned out the population eitherthrough destruction, abduction, or through migration. A prolonged exodus had been in

progress for many years. St. Severin, formerly a high ranking civil servant from Italy, was awitness to these developments and the Vita Sancti Severini composed in 511 by Eugrippus,

who makes him out to be a saint, not only shows Severin's active religious and political life

but comments extensively on the confusing and disorderly events which surrounded himfrom c.456 to the year of his death in 482. Among the many peoples mentioned in the Vita,the name of the Bavarians is missing. St. Severin had bought the freedom of many Romans,

among whom were Celtic Raeti and Vindelici , organizing the import and the distribution of food and clothing among the poor, and helped evacuate people to safer places along the

Austrian Danube. In 488 the Roman populations living in the provinces of Raetia andNoricum received final orders from the central authority to leave their homes and estates.

The order actually came from Odoaker, who in 476 had stopped paying the border garrisonsand in 487 had made war on the Rugians, taking the Royal family captive and executing

them, then in 488 he sent his brother Hunwulf to destroy the Rugians on the Danube. After476 the Rugians had assumed the administration of the Romans who as protectors of

supplies sought their own protection from the miltiary Rugians against other Germanic,

mainly Alamanic and Thuringian raiders. In part to deprive the Rugians of their provisionsHunwulf ordered the Romans to vacate the provinces and to return to Italy. Theoderic and

his Ostrogoths were approaching Italy and a faction of the Rugians was allied to him.Theoderic used the kinship with the Rugian Royal family to kill Odoakar personally.

Who were these "Romans"? Some of them had originated in Italy. Others were members of

the Romanized native, Celtic population. And still others were members of the Germanic

border defence forces who at the end of their enlistment had not returned to their areasNorth of the limes, because they had become alienated from their Germanic heritage and

had become Romanized, had founded families, acquired property, practiced a trade andbecome Christians. These Romans must have learned to deal with the unstable conditions

for, and as is so often the case in similar situations, not all the Romans followed the order towithdraw to Italy. This is demonstrated by the continuity of the name of the city of

Regensburg/Castra Regina, as well as the uninterrupted use of the Roman cemetary intothe early Middle Ages. That poorer sections of the population would stay behind seems

natural, but that a small upper stratum of Romans also seems to have stayed behind - thecontinued use of the villae rusticae - is more suprising but, as in Gaul, is represented,

though only thinly, in the military, the Church and the administration and in the largertowns. The transmission of toponyms, terminology for tools and the names of fruit and

vegetables over the centuries indicates that communities and populations survived in somefashion.



In general, for a certain period the remnant populations of Romans under Bavarian,Alamanic and even Frankish rule were not on the same full-free footing as their conquerers,

but belong to that group of the lesser-free who were subjected to judicial and economicdiscrimination. Though tributary to the Duke, the upper social strata soon found themselves

in his entourage. In the sources the Romans begin to be referred to as Latini . During theseventh and eighth centuries there are references to two sub-groups of Romans: Romani

tributales and Roman exercitales, Latini who have to pay taxes and those who have torender military service. Especially around Salzburg, the former were personally free buteconomically dependent land owners located on ducal lands for which they had to pay

tribute. They were eventually absorbed by the free peasantry. The latter, also at Salzburg,

began as the miltiary and administrative garrison. This membership preserved them fromsocial discrimination and eventually allowed their social rise. Their language will have

continued for centuries as the vernacular in many of the Alpine valleys which harboredLatini and had come under the protection and rule of the Bavarian Dukes. These Roman

remnants were never represented by large numbers, so that a comparison with their role inGaul would not really be fruitful.

When the order for the official withdrawal of Roman forces and civilians came, it was not

unexpected and merely underscored the fading of the political and economic strengths of

the official administration of the provinces by Rome. Around Regensburg and the Raetianlimes, it did not create a deep rupture. In 451 Attila's forces, just as the earlier East-Westmigration of Quadi/Suebi, Vandals and Alans, must have reached Gaul by a more northernly

route. Nor was there a vacuum - the border army seems to have integrated with thepopulation - as life in and around the forts continued and gradually assimilated the new

Germanic arrivals. In the area along the Austrian Danube an insular situation had comeabout as the Roman population has resisted the Germanic arrivals and their own

Germanization more forcefully. Upon their withdrawal to Italy in greater numbers, theremaining Roman influence was correspondingly weaker, so that the abrupt changeover was

noticeable. The lack of continuity of place names illustrates the weakening of populationcontinuity. However, there are such key indicators as church construction, finds of base

metal coins, of late everday Roman objects and pottery which demonstrate that a modfied

form of "Roman" life continued for decades.

Around 500, the population fragments to be known as Bavarians were a part of Theoderic'sOstrogothic and mainly defensive Prefecture of Italy and were carried on a list of peoples

prepared c.520. They may well have been located by Theoderic along the the Danube as hisfoederati with their center at Castra Regina /Regensburg, and have consolidated under

Theoderic's supervision, for the blending seems to have taken place smoothly in territorial

parameters determined by the Northern river frontiers of an Ostrogothic crucible and thetribal dispositions. The prevailing and recent argument is that in accordance with late

Roman practices in the Transalpine provinces duces had the miltiary command and thatTheoderic, by appointing such a dux , established the Dukedom and named its first Duke. To

the North the Thuringian Kingdom provided a vague border. Theoderic's extensive politicaland familial relationships with the Thuringians to the North do not seem to have suffered

from Bavarian interfernece. To the East Theoderic had been named King of the Herulians,Radolf, his son-in-arms and thereby extended his defensive system of alliances to include

this people. In 508 the Langobards to their East had put an end to this defensive alliancewhen they defeated the Herulians and incorporated their lands in Bohemia, Northern

Noricum and Pannonia. For Theoderic, the loss of his Herulian allies not only weakened theprotective system of alliance but removed the obstacle to Langobardic Westward expansion.

Theoderic's own overextended military forces could not provide an adequate defence, sothat it would have been in Theoderic's political interests to secure the area between the Alps

and the Danube and to convert the power vacuum into a dependable political and economic



entity, strong enough to defelct any Langobardic ambitions. The construction during thistime of new villages in Bavaria, not based on Roman antecedants, by different ethnic groups

- Ostrogoths, Alamans, Thuringians and Langobards - suggests a stabalization andrevitalization of the seriously weakened economic and social conditions. The archeological

evidence further indicates extensive cultural contacts with the Ostrogoths. Their typicalfibulas and belt buckles are found as far North as the Danube throughout Raetia.

Ostrogothic skull deformations among the skeletal remains suggest that these weredescendants of Ostrogoths who had been associated with the Huns as a tribute peopleduring Attila's reign. The Roman communities in Augusta Vindelicum /Augsburg, Castra

Regina /Regensburg, Batavis /Passau, and Lauriacum /Lorch, were not affected by this

formation of a new people. From Regensburg the Bavarians incorporated the Northern landsdrained by the rivers Naab, Regen, and Altmuhl and bordered by the Bohemian mountains

in the East and the Frankonian Jura in the West. The interesting question has been raised,why in view an extensive archeological homogeneity, and in view of their varied ethnic

composition these people had not also become Alamans. One reason will derive from theOstrogothic delimitation within which the Bavarians came into being. The great number of

Ostrogothic fibulas would demonstrate the cultural force which the Goths exerted in thisarea. Cassiodorus may have been the first to mention the Baiuvarii in his history of the

Goths, the Origo Gothica, written between c.526 and c.533, because Jordanes does so in his

version of that history, the De origine actibusque Getarum of 511. Jordanes, however,applied the knowlege of his own time to a description of tribal locations eighty years earlier.Once again the final name of a people was given to them by others.

Herbert Schutz, The Germanic Realms of Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400-750 (Oxford,2000), pp.281-292

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Archeology and the Bavarian Genesis