Session: #35

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
2. [Re]integration
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Where’s My Tribe? Developing New Approaches to Connectivity, Mobility and Community in Early Medieval Europe after the Ethnic Paradigm
Content:
Similarities and differences in burial practices across Europe in the 5th to 8th centuries have traditionally been understood through a paradigm centering origin and ethnicity. Distributions of different material culture types in graves were interpreted as distinctive of particular ethnic groups. These in turn were linked to names in written sources, such as Saxons, Franks, or Gepids, and traces of their historically attested migrations were sought in cemeteries, fueling the creation of ethno-nationalist origin myths.

Questioning of historically based frameworks and chronologies is now well-established and widespread in western and central Europe, from both theoretical and empirical directions. Most recently, results from new scientific methods, especially stable isotope and aDNA analyses, are allowing us to distinguish individual mobility from group movements and significantly disrupting previous migration models. Meanwhile studies of burials as assemblages or ritual processes have brought greater recognition of both variability and connectivity at a wider variety of scales. Local creativity has become more visible as the search for the regionally typical has declined. Simultaneously there is a return to large-scale comparative studies, aimed at understanding mortuary material in its broader European context. This links to criticism that in many areas the ethnic labels by which we have traditionally separated burials have created artificial boundaries between generations as well as sites and regions.

We welcome papers which take comparative approaches to mortuary remains and funerary practices from across Europe in the Early Middle Ages - including connections to Late Roman practices. Papers might consider how we trace and understand shared and distinct burial rites at different scales, or what paradigms we can now use to conceptualize group identities from local to large. What is the impact of new scientific approaches? Do ethnic interpretations have any continuing role, and how do we keep them free of ethno-nationalist connotations?
Keywords:
Early medieval, Funerary practices, Ethnicity, Migration, Mobility
Session associated with MERC:
yes
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:

Organisers

Main organiser:
Emma Brownlee (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Alison Klevnäs (Sweden) 2
Astrid Noterman (Sweden) 2,3
Affiliations:
1. University of Cambridge
2. Stockholm University
3. CESCM