Re: The Wends and the Venedi

----- Original Message -----

From: Steve Woodson

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, January 24, 2000 3:29 AM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: The Wends and the Venedi.

The majority of the Przeworsk area is located between the Vistula and Elbe rivers. This is the area identified by Tacitus, in his Germania, as settled by various Germanic tribes generally considered Vandalic. It remained this way until the East Germanic peoples began their migrations.
     As they abandoned an area they were replaced by the Slavs and Balts. The Vandalic peoples were in the area until the 4th/5th centuries. Some probably remained. When the Slavs moved into Silesia (after the Silings) they met a people they called the Niemcy. This was an old Slavic name for Germans. The area where they found them is called Nimptsch and is located near Mt. Zobten. Mt. Zobten was one of the Germans most sacred places, mentioned by Tacitus as being in the land of the Naharvali.
    I know there is much difference of opinion about whether the Przeworsk culture is Germanic or Slavic. Maybe it is both. Culture sites have been found on the east bank of the Vistula. Border areas were surely culture exchange areas. But I think it is primarily Germanic.
    What about the preceeding Lausitz culture? Germanic? Slavic? Maybe neither.
Remains show a short statured mediterranean/armenoid people beleived to have originally come from the southeast. Due to weather and outside pressure (Scythian, Celt, and Teuton) the area was abandoned around the third century B.C. It was into this void that the Germanic peoples moved.
    Piotr, this is your home area. I would appreciate your input.
    One last thing, Piotr. In your post you mention that the Veneti once were on the Baltic as traders. Do you know how extensive their settlements were?

The Przeworsk culture is being studied very vigorously by Polish archaeologists and its attribution to Germanic-speaking peoples is no longer regarded as controversial. Celtic cultural influence (or even an ethnic admixture) must have played a role in its formation, and since sites of the Przeworsk culture have been found as far east as the upper Dniester (Ukraine), it's quite possible that some Slavs living in that area adopted it as well. The Germani in question would have been members of the great Lugian alliance mentioned by Tacitus -- the early Vandals were apparently part of it. As I said, there's much ongoing research and we may expect new finds and new interpretations to crop up in the near future.

The Lausitz culture was in many respects a "cultural satellite" of the Hallstatt centre both in the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age; both of them were also subject to influence radiating from the Black Sea area via Pannonia (first Cimmerian, then Scythian and Thracian). The Lausitz culture also absorbed some elements of the Trzciniec culture of eastern Poland (with Ukrainian links) The Lausitz culture package is rather heterogeneous, with many local varieties. I don't think it can be associated with a single linguistic community. In its southern part (also in the sub-Carpathian belt of southern Poland, as the hydronymy of that area suggests) it included peoples related to various historically known Carpathian and Pannonian groups (Dacians, Illyrians). We know too little about the ethnic composition of northern Europe in the late Bronze Age to be sure who lived where. With the beginning of the Iron Age came the expansion of the Celts; the Germani (and/or some lost IE tribes related to them) may have occupied the coastal belt in the north, and the western Balts had certainly established themselves on the eastern Baltic by 500 BC.

As for Venetic (or, say, north Italic) presence in northern Europe, the whole question is highly speculative, but settlements which COULD be attributed to them include the so-called Pomeranian culture of the Hallstatt C/D period. This culture originated on the Baltic coast from the Vistula delta to the River Parsęta in the west, but it soon spread across western Poland towards Silesia and smaller local centres developed also in eastern Poland. If the Veneti settled mainly along the Amber Road, one would expect to find their traces scattered from Gdansk to Venice: on the lower Vistula, the upper Oder and the upper Elbe, in eastern Bohemia and Bavaria. Perhaps the northern Veneti lingered on after the expanding Celts and Germani had severed their links with the Adriatic; at any rate the northern part of the Pomeranian culture succumbed to the Goths in the 2nd c. BC. This would explain the ancient name of the Bay of Gdansk and the Germanic word for "a foreigner", later applied to the Slavs.

Don't give this hypothetical scenario more credit than it deserves.

Piotr