Re: Kossack's Conclusions

From: george knysh
Message: 55432
Date: 2008-03-17

Very good stuff. Thank you, Torsten.

--- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen"
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Georg Kossack:
> Archäologisches zur frühgermanischen Besiedlung
> zwischen Main und
> Nordsee, pp. 103-104
> in Kossack, Hachmann, Kuhn:
> Völker zwischen Germanen und Kelten
>
> "
> CONCLUSIONS
> The events in western North Germany must have taken
> a different
> course. A uniform, all-extensive movement can hardly
> be assumed here,
> nor can exclusively an Elbe-Germanic/Suebian
> population as carrier of
> these enterprises.

****GK: Does Kossack agree with Hachmann that "Early
Germanic" culture(=Elbe-Germanic?) spread into the old
Jastorf area from a point further south in the last
half of the 1rst c.BCE? Or did it spread there at the
same time as in "western North Germany", viz., from
ca. 0-> CE?****



Further, the area, in which the
> early Germani are
> making themselves discernible with independent forms
> of expression,
> was during the Late Latène period not at all so
> uniform as the area of
> the Late Celtic oppida, remarkably not even where
> central market
> places on the Celtic pattern might have acted as
> levelers. This
> heterogeneity must thus have deeper causes, insofar
> as the various
> groups differ not just formally wrt material things,
> but also in the
> structure of their culture. What indeed would
> connect the marsh
> farmers on the coast with the population of the
> islands between Ems
> and Weser, sticking strangely rigidly to old
> traditions, or that
> population with that of the northern edge of the
> mountain area of
> Brabant and on the Lower Rhine, and finally all of
> these with the
> groups the Schiefergebirge, the iron smelters in
> Siegerland, the
> inhabitants of the fortified places, and the salt
> producers and
> farmers in the Wetterau. They are all
> archaeologically neither Germani
> nor Celts. They offer a palette of cultures partly
> prehistoric, partly
> of early history, of which the former in the north
> no longer
> participated in the core area of the Suebian
> Germani,

****GK: Are these the quintessential Germani for
him?***

while the others
> in the south no longer in all aspects belonged to
> the oppida culture
> of the late Continental Celts.

****GK: This would be Hachmann's non-Celtic
"Celticized" culture (also non-Germanic) where
Przeworsk appears as a "foreign" element in the latter
part of the 1rst c. BCE?****


As full of contrasts
> the details of the
> cultural evidence is, that is how differentiated one
> should probably
> also imagine the populations to be in Western
> Germany north of the
> river Main. After all, none of these groups have
> been capable of
> resisting Suebian incursions and Roman wars in such
> a manner as to be
> able to decisively shape the culture in imperial
> times. Only the early
> Germanic layer gives them like a sourdough an effect
> beyond the
> lifespan apportioned to each of them individually.
> How it happened in
> details remains unclear above all in the North
> German lowland west of
> the Weser, since we know neither the significance of
> Jastorf-like
> foreign objects in the area of the totality of the
> Harpstedt-Nienburg
> culture [the archaeological correlate of the NWBlock
> language, TP],
> nor their relationship to the culture of this area
> in imperial times,
> which seems to begin here much later than elsewhere.
>
>
> Speculation begins the moment one tries to squeeze
> the archaeological
> state of affairs into the historical framework
> outlined by the written
> sources. In that we must take as a starting point
> the dating of the
> Early Germanic layer to the time around and after
> the birth of Christ,
> ie. in the period in which the Roman occupation of
> areas east of the
> Rhine is practically over. In the end, it was not
> victorious, as the
> defeat of Varrus' legions shows us, but with dire
> consequences,
> inasmuch as the autochthonous population immediately
> east of the Rhine
> was either relocated or considerably weakened or
> even exterminated.
> Seen archaeologically, this work of destruction is
> directed first and
> above all against the native settler groups in the
> extent of the
> Celtic oppida culture and its northern neighbors.
> Seen linguistically,
> against communities, the name material of which is
> not or not
> necessarily Germanic, although the written sources
> themselves probably
> since Poseidonios call them Germani.

****GK: So his view is that Posidonius' "Germani" of
80 BCE would be in effect Nordwestblock et al.?****


The occupation
> lines, denoted by
> temporary or permanent winter camps for the troops,
> are remarkably
> consistent with those zones where the Early Germanic
> layer is
> discernible at the earliest time: in the Lippe
> valley and from the
> Wetterau towards the North all the way to the river
> Weser ... . The
> question has therefore been raised whether the Roman
> incursions in
> part were only a response to those Germanic
> east-to-west movements.
> But that would entail that the Early Germanic finds
> in North West
> Germany should be dated in the time before Drusus,

****GK: I.e. to the period prior to 11/9 BCE.****

> which however
> hardly would be possible in the chronology
> represented here which has
> decisive importance for our conclusions. It is
> however possible to see
> the expansion of our finds as an indirect
> consequence of such
> movements, in the sense that the Germani prevailed
> only when on the
> one hand the autochthonous population was
> biologically and culturally
> weakened, and on the other hand Varus' defeat not
> only consolidates
> their reputation, but also gives them an opportunity
> to seize power.


****GK: So the spread begins after 9 AD acc. to
him.****
>
It seems consequently that this defeat, which
> traditionally has been
> seen as a liberation of a country that was Germanic
> since way back
> when, should be allotted much greater significance
> for the early
> history of our fatherland. Apparently only then
> begins all the way to
> the Rhine and the Main rivers a permanent Germanic
> colonization, where
> the destructive force of the Roman troops had
> created a vacuum, only
> now do Germanic cultural phenomena achieve a
> breakthrough.

****GK: Is the implication that Przeworsk here was
also a victim of the Roman pushes?****

Arminius'
> victory and later the recall of the legions stop, as
> we know, the land
> east of the Rhine from becoming a Roman province.
> But just as
> important it also seems to be that only through
> these events did the
> country at all become 'Germanic', after Rome itself
> had prepared the
> way for it by destroying the last bulwark against
> the Germani, namely
> the autochthonous population of the country.
> "
>
> Torsten
>
>
>



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