Session: #395

Content:

Recently, new data from archaeogenetic research suggest a demographic shift at the beginning of the Early Middle Ages in Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe. This is supported by new analyses of subsistence (via isotopes and lipids). Archaeologists have noted these changes much earlier, not only in specific parts of material culture (e.g. pottery) but more recently also in large archaeological datasets analysed by machine learning methods. Also, a linguistic change in this period is traditionally posited from linguistic research. All these developments are inevitably linked to a long-standing debate in anthropology, history and archaeology: the migration of the Slavs. According to some written sources (e.g. Procopius, Jordanes), the appearance of Slavic-speaking groups or people with specific habitus (housing, subsistence, social system, economy etc.) should have been the final dramatic act in the highly dynamic Migration Period. Indeed, at some point, a vast part of Europe became Slavic-speaking rather than Germanic-speaking. However, the question of how and when this change actually took place remains unresolved. Indeed, local indigenous communities may have 'become' Slavic not through migration but through language shift and acculturation.
While this debate has recently slowed down due to a lack of new data and the reinforcement of existing positions, new information from other methods is reopening it. In this session, we are looking for papers that bring new archaeological, historical, linguistic, genetic or bioarchaeological data to the discussion of the putative migration and ethnogenesis of the Slavs. We try to reflect the old stories in the light of new scientific data. The integration of results from all disciplines is necessary to grasp this complex question and also to guide further research in related fields.

Session: #395

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