--- Tore Gannholm <
tore.gannholm@...> wrote:
> Just a small comment. The Goths are considered
> having entered the Vistula
> area about the 3rd century B.C. I presume you have
> read Kokowski Leiber
> "Sch�tze-der-Ostgoten". Also the Swedish
> archaeologists like professor
> Oscar Almgren says there was a exodus from Gotland
> between 300-150 B.C.
> However they didn't know to where.
******GK: I haven't read Kokowski yet. The arrival of
Germanic elements even further south and
southeastwards in the "post-classical Scythia" period
(i.e. beginning in the 3rd c. BC) has of course been
known for some time. That is when the Bastarnae are
assumed to have reached Moldavia. The cultures
associated with them are the Late Pomorian and
Yastorf. These cultures were also important components
of the (eventually) proto-Slavic Zarubynets'ka culture
just south of the Prypiat' basin.== Now if the most
recent Swedish literature (I've given a link to a 2001
publication yesterday) is right, viz. that under
constant influence from and interplay with Scandinavia
going back to 1000 BC at least some area of the
Pomorian (South Baltic shore) culture (itself a
successor to the Lusatian cultural
complex)transmogrified into the Welbark (Wielbarska)
culture associated with the historical Goths and
Gepidae, the only problem would be to decide at what
point of this process we could begin to view these
populations as "Goths". 1000BC? 500 BC? 300 BC? 200
BC? 1rst c AD? An open question I would think, though
the closer one gets to Augustan times the better the
case.******
>
> (TG)Polish archeologists, foremosst Wolagiewicz,
have
> carefully studied the
> Gotic gravefields in the Weichsel area and found
> that the oldest
> gravefields to back to the second century B.C.
******GK: Wolongiewicz is indeed the foremost
authority on the Wielbarkska culture. If the oldest
graves are indeed there by 100 BC and slightly earlier
then this might be a good "starting point" for the
Goths we know.*****
>
>(TG) In the Roman geographer Strabons writings it
says
> that the Goths belonged
> to an association of Germanic tribes that was under
> the Marcomanner Marbod
******GK: Could you provide us with a reference? I
don't remember this from Strabo but it may have
slipped my mind.******
> .(TG) In Tacitus "Annales" one can read that the
> markomanner Catualda, before
> he in year 19 demoted Marbod in Bohemia lived as a
> refugee among the Goths.
> The Goths had already than built up a position that
> shows that they were
> no new immigrants.
*****GK: Actually this narrower point is a
non-sequitur, since we know very well how very recent
arrivals can instantly build up "a position": e.g. the
Goths themselves in Scythia, the Avars, the Huns, the
classical Scythians, etc etc.******
>
> Professor Birger Nerman had no objection to the idea
> that the Gotic home
> the island Skandia could be Gotland.
*****GK: Why not?(rhetorical)*****
> Tore
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