> Worrying about how to connect sense 1 "low; sacred waterhole" and
> sense 2 "take (prisoner)" this, another Boutkan article, came to
> mind:
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/61680
> where *slag- has both senses:
> 1 something wet
> 2 defeat
> and also connecting elsewhere, with mining. So the slag and
> scalawags and slackers of society were sent to clean slag in the
> mines and furnaces. Cf the poor
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotini
> Tacitus Germania:
> http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/tacitus-germ-latin.html
> 'Cotinos Gallica, Osos Pannonica lingua coarguit non esse Germanos,
> et quod tributa patiuntur. Partem tributorum Sarmatae, partem Quadi
> ut alienigenis imponunt: Cotini, quo magis pudeat, et ferrum
> effodiunt.'
> https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~wstevens/history331texts/barbarians.html
> "The Cotini and the Osi are not Germans: that is proved by their
> languages, Celtic in the one case, Pannonian in the other, and also
> by the fact that they submit to paying tribute. The payments are
> exacted from them, as foreigners, by the Quadi and by the Sarmatians
> respectively - of which the Cotini have all the more reason to be
> ashamed inasmuch as they work iron mines."
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_in_Antiquity#Ceramics_and_metallurgy
'Characteristic of the Roman times iron industry were huge centers of metallurgy. One such concentration of ironworks, in ÅwiÄtokrzyskie Mountains, which already produced iron on an industrial scale in 1st century AD, in 2nd and 3rd centuries became Barbaricum's largest. It may had been responsible for the majority of the iron supplied for barbarian weapon production during the Marcomannic Wars. The iron product was obtained in rather small, single use smelting furnaces. One furnace's iron output was from a few to 20 kg, which required 10 to 200 kg of ore and the same amount of charcoal. The satisfaction of so much need for charcoal caused significant deforestation of the areas surrounding the iron centers. Not only turf, but also hematite ores were utilized, which involved building mines and shafts to provide access. The furnaces in ÅwiÄtokrzyskie Mountains were grouped into large complexes, located in forested areas, away from human settlements. There could have had been as many as 700,000 smelting furnaces built in that area; one big concentration of the Przeworsk culture's spent furnaces (2nd-3rd centuries) was located in Nowa SÅupia, Kielce County. The second largest iron production center functioned at that time in Masovia, west of Warsaw, with the total number of furnaces there, in which only turf ores were used, estimated at up to 200,000. They were operated as very large complexes, with several thousand furnaces at a time located near populated areas, where intermediate products were processed further. Those two great concentrations of metallurgical industry produced iron largely for long distance trade; to fulfill local requirements and on smaller scale iron was obtained at a number of other locations.'
More likely they prepared for war. Ariovistus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_in_Antiquity#Archeological_cultures_and_groups
'... there was the long-lasting (270 BC - 170 AD) mixed Púchov culture, associated based on Roman sources with the Celtic Cotini, whose northern reaches included parts of the Beskids mountain range and even the Kraków area.'
So the Cotini might have been deported to the ÅwiÄtokrzyskie Mountains to work the mines there. Perhaps Tacitus should be understood so that the Cotini worked in those mines in order to extract iron for tribute to the Sarmatae and Quadi.
Torsten