From: Steve Woodson
Message: 1232
Date: 2000-01-29
> This question of the Slavic, Baltic and Germanic relations is certainlyMartin,
> very interesting. And complex too. Archaeology of North-Eastern Europe
> has suffered much in the times of the cold war, either because of
> little interest, or because of misguided interest - as it was the case
> with Davydovna Gurevich excavating East Prussia and then distorting her
> data in favor of Soviet inspired pro-Slavic (pan-Balto-Slavic?)
> propaganda.
>
> The Baltic, Slavic and Germanic relations along the Eastern Baltic
> coast are still disputed. Vistula is certainly a juncture point where
> these three most frequently interacted. Considering the Veneti in those
> areas as Baltic traders, the posibility of Baltic origin is often
> ignored, possibly because of the scarce data available on
> Baltic-Germanic relations in the area. With the appearance of Goths
> near the Vistula, their origin, I believe, is sometimes attributed to
> either Gothland (the island) or somewhere further, Sweden perhaps. It
> is interesting that from the cultural aspect, the Gothland and the
> Eastern Baltic coast can be linked. The burrial mound culture of
> Gothland and the burrial mound culture of Samlandia (E. Prussia) with
> their concentric stone circles are almost identical. It is still hard
> to determine wherefrom this culture spread. The majority of these
> monuments are found in Western Lithuania and in Courland(Lat.). It may
> allude to some close Balto-Germanic cultural relations in regard to the
> early Goths and Prussians and Couronians. You can even take into
> account the linguistic closeness of Prussian to Gothic.But no certain
> conclusions can be drawn from this yet, because geographical Prussia
> has not yet been excavated by modern archaeologists thoroughly enough.
>
> In fact the very chornology of the Eastern Baltic is lergely disputed.
> There was a publication by Ochmansky, refering to the posibility of
> "Vened" substrata in Lithuania, mainly by toponymic and hydronimic
> data. Gimbutas has attributed the arrival of the Indo-Europeans in tha
> area to the spread of the Kurgan culture, but there isn't as much
> evidence for it as one would like. New interpretations propose that
> the first migration waves included Indo-Europeans and that in fact that
> the burrial-mound culture evolved from the Narva culture which was
> spread across the coastal areas of Latvia and Estonia. Again, this does
> not correlate with the findings in Prussia and Western Lithuania -
> where the Zucewo (Haffkuesten Kultur) was dominant. With so many
> uncertainties, the spread of the Indo-Europeans in the area cannot be
> firmly determined. Once the traditional ideas about Baltic migrations
> are disputed, the linguistic classification of East-Baltic as primary
> and West Baltic as peripheral can become no longer valid. It is quite
> possible that it was the Western Balts that were the first to firmly
> establish themselves in the area. I won't go so deep as to discuss the
> question of substrata (Fino-Ugric, Vened) influence among the Eastern
> Balts which must be responsible for the presence of Illative and
> Allative cases in those languages. In teh context of this discussion,
> it is more worthy to note the situation with the Wetern Balts. Old
> Prussian preserved many more archaic features than other Baltic
> languages. In all cases up until the late middle ages it is the Western
> Balts who seem the most firmly grounded, both materialistically and
> culturally. As noted by letters of Theodoric, the Prussians had
> established some form of trade with Europe in the 6th century. Perhaps
> their contact with the Goths was never broken in the first place.
> Taking note of the Roman loot found in Prussian burrial sites, it is
> quite possible that they participated in the Gothic raids on the Roman
> Empire.
>
> I guess I have no conclusion. The question of Germanic-Baltic relations
> prior to the 13th century crusades has not been analyzed by historians
> well enough. Neither has the question of Vened presence amoung the
> Balts been properly adressed by historians or otherwise. That is a big
> gap, but seems interesting enough to be explored in the future. Please
> excuse me for my superficial knowledge of the subject. Amoung the few
> books that I have about Baltic archaeology, I find many contradictions
> in the proposed hypotheses. I believe I simply wanted to bring to
> attention another set of factors that may cross roads with the
> questions pertaining to Venetic presence in Northern Europe and
> Germanic-Slavic relations in the same area.
>
> Martin
>
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