Florin Curta

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Curta, Florin (1998). Making an Early Medieval Ethnie: The Case of the Early Slavs (Sixth to Seventh Century A.D.). Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University. (Doctoral Dissertation)
  • Curta, Florin (2001). The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511496295. ISBN   9780521802024.
  • Curta, Florin (2001). "Limes and Cross: The Religious Dimension of the Sixth-century Danube Frontier of the Early Byzantine Empire". Старинар. 51: 45–70.
  • Curta, Florin (2006). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-81539-0.
  • Curta, Florin (2011). The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050: The Early Middle Ages. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. doi:10.1515/9780748644896. ISBN   9780748644896. JSTOR   j.ctt1r23dk. S2CID   163031847.
  • Curta, Florin (2019). Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–1300). Brill's Companions to European History, vol. 19. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ISBN   9789004395190.
  • Curta, Florin (2020). Slavs in the Making: History, Linguistics, and Archaeology in Eastern Europe (ca. 500-ca. 700). London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203701256. ISBN   9780203701256. S2CID   225265576.
  • Curta, Florin (2021). The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe. Brill. ISBN   9789004456983.
  • Curta, Florin; Stamati, Iurie (2021). Women Archaeologists under Communism, 1917-1989: Breaking the Glass Ceiling. Springer Nature. ISBN   9783030875206.
  • Curta, Florin; Paliga, Sorin (2023). Slavii în perioada migraţiilor (in Romanian). Cetatea de Scaun. ISBN   9786065375840.
  • Edited volumes

    • East Central & Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
    • Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005.
    • The other Europe in the Middle Ages. Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008.
    • Neglected Barbarians. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011.
    • with Bogdan-Petru Maleon, The Steppe Lands and the World Beyond Them. Studies in Honor of Victor Spinei on his 70th Birthday. Iași: Editura Universității "Alexandru Ioan Cuza", 2013.

    Related Research Articles

    The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Northern Asia, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia, and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europe.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Pannonian Avars</span> Alliance of various Eurasian nomads – 6th to 9th centuries

    The Pannonian Avars were an alliance of several groups of Eurasian nomads of various origins. The peoples were also known as the Obri in chronicles of Rus, the Abaroi or Varchonitai, or Pseudo-Avars in Byzantine sources, and the Apar to the Göktürks. They established the Avar Khaganate, which spanned the Pannonian Basin and considerable areas of Central and Eastern Europe from the late 6th to the early 9th century.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Migration Period</span> Period from the fourth to the sixth centuries

    The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman kingdoms.

    Several theories, in great extent mutually exclusive, address the issue of the origin of the Romanians. The Romanian language descends from the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken in the Roman provinces north of the "Jireček Line" in Late Antiquity. The theory of Daco-Roman continuity argues that the Romanians are mainly descended from the Daco-Romans, a people developing through the cohabitation of the native Dacians and the Roman colonists in the province of Dacia Traiana north of the river Danube. The competing immigrationist theory states that the Romanians' ethnogenesis commenced in the provinces south of the river with Romanized local populations spreading through mountain refuges, both south to Greece and north through the Carpathian Mountains. Other theories state that the Romanized local populations were present over a wide area on both sides of the Danube and the river itself did not constitute an obstacle to permanent exchanges in both directions; according to the "admigration" theory, migrations from the Balkan Peninsula to the lands north of the Danube contributed to the survival of the Romance-speaking population in these territories.

    The Vistula Veneti, also called Baltic Veneti or Venedi, were an Indo-European people that inhabited the lands of central Europe east of the Vistula River and the Bay of Gdańsk. Ancient Roman geographers first mentioned Venedi in the 1st century AD, differentiating a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from those of the neighbouring Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine historians described the Veneti as the ancestors of the Slavs who, during the second phase of the Migration Period, crossed the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">South Slavs</span> Subgroup of Slavic peoples who speak the South Slavic languages

    South Slavs are Slavic people who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, Hungary, Romania, and the Black Sea, the South Slavs today include Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes.

    The Early Middle Ages in Romania started with the withdrawal of the Roman troops and administration from Dacia province in the 270s. In the next millennium a series of peoples, most of whom only controlled two or three of the nearly ten historical regions that now form Romania, arrived. During this period, society and culture underwent fundamental changes. Town life came to an end in Dacia with the Roman withdrawal, and in Scythia Minor – the other Roman province in the territory of present-day Romania – 400 years later. Fine vessels made on fast potter's wheels disappeared and hand-made pottery became dominant from the 450s. Burial rites changed more than once from cremation to inhumation and vice versa until inhumation became dominant by the end of the 10th century.

    The Croats trace their origins to a southwards migration of some of the Early Slavs in the 6th- and 7th-centuries CE, a tradition supported by anthropological, genetic, and ethnological studies. However, the archaeological and other historic evidence on the migration of the Slavic settlers, on the character of the native population in the present-day territory of Croatia, and on their mutual relationships suggests diverse historical and cultural influences.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Antes people</span> Early Slavic people inhabiting parts of Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages

    The Antes or Antae were an early Slavic tribal polity of the 6th century CE. They lived on the lower Danube River, in the northwestern Black Sea region, and in the regions around the Don River. Scholars commonly associate the Antes with the archaeological Penkovka culture.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Serbia in the Roman era</span> Historical period in Serbia

    Much of the territory of the modern state of Serbia was part of the Roman Empire and later the Eastern Roman Empire. In particular, the region of Central Serbia was under Roman rule for about 800 years, starting from the 1st century BC, interrupted by the arrival of the Slavs into the Balkans during the 6th century, but continued after fall of the First Bulgarian Empire in the early 11th century and permanently ended with the rise of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the late 12th century. The territories were administratively divided into the provinces of Moesia, Pannonia and Dardania. Moesia Superior roughly corresponds to modern Serbia proper; Pannonia Inferior included the eastern part of Serbia proper; Dardania included the western part of Serbia proper. After its reconquest from the Bulgarians by Emperor Basil II in 1018, it was reorganized into the Theme of Bulgaria.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Early Slavs</span> Group of tribal societies, 5th–10th c.

    The early Slavs were speakers of Indo-European dialects who lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe and established the foundations for the Slavic nations through the Slavic states of the Early and High Middle Ages. The Slavs' original homeland is still a matter of debate due to a lack of historical records; however, scholars generally place it in Eastern Europe, with Polesia being the most commonly accepted location.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Penkovka culture</span> Archaeological culture of late antiquity in Eastern Europe

    The Penkovka culture is an archaeological culture in Ukraine, Moldova and reaching into Romania. Its western boundary is usually taken to at the middle Prut and Dniester rivers, where contact with the Korchak culture occurs. Its bearers are commonly identified as the Antes people of 6th-century Byzantine historiography.

    Daurentius or Dauritas was a Slavic (Sclaveni) chieftain in the 6th century. He seems to have been the supreme chief of a Slavic tribal confederation, which "fellow chiefs" were or subordinated to him, or of the similar tribal rank and status as Daurentius.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavic migrations to the Balkans</span> Overview of Slavic migrations to Southeast Europe

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    The Balkan–Danubian culture was an early medieval archaeological culture which emerged in the region of the Lower Danube in the 8th century and flourished until the 11th century. In Bulgaria it is usually referred to as the Pliska–Preslav culture, while in Romania it is called the Dridu culture. It is better represented in the territory of modern-day Central and Northern Bulgaria, although it probably spread north of the Danube as well due to the continuous extension of the First Bulgarian Empire over the territory of present-day Romania. The Balkan–Danubian culture is described as an early Slavic-Bulgar culture, but besides Slavic and Bulgar elements it also possesses some Romance components. However, this only appears in the southern regions of what is now southern Bulgaria, all of which were heavily influenced by the Byzantine Empire. Famous examples of this architecture are the early Bulgarian capitals of Pliska and Preslav, in addition to the Palace of Omurtag and the Murfatlar Cave Complex. Some scholars partition this culture in two subgroups. Because the Byzantine influence was stronger in the south, the northern finds are entirely Slavic with some Turkic impression.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Samo's Empire</span> Early Medieval West Slavic tribal union

    Samo's Empire is the historiographical term for the West Slavic tribal union established by King ("Rex") Samo. It existed between 623/631 and 658 in Central Europe. The extent of Samo's power before and after 631 is disputed.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Christianization of the Slavs</span> Aspect of European history

    The Slavs were Christianized in waves from the 7th to 12th century, though the process of replacing old Slavic religious practices began as early as the 6th century. Generally speaking, the monarchs of the South Slavs adopted Christianity in the 9th century, the East Slavs in the 10th, and the West Slavs between the 9th and 12th century. Saints Cyril and Methodius are attributed as "Apostles to the Slavs", having introduced the Byzantine-Slavic rite and Glagolitic alphabet, the oldest known Slavic alphabet and basis for the Early Cyrillic alphabet.

    The Saragurs or Saraguri were a Turkic nomadic tribe mentioned in the 5th and 6th centuries. They may be the Sulujie mentioned in the Chinese Book of Sui. They originated from Western Siberia and the Kazakh steppes, from where they were displaced north of the Caucasus by the Sabirs.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Ipotești–Cândești culture</span> Eastern European archaeological culture

    The Ipotești–Cândești culture was an archaeological culture in Eastern Europe. It developed in the mid-6th century by the merger of elements of the Prague-Penkovka and Prague-Korchak cultures and local cultures in the area between Prut and Lower Danube. It stretched in the Lower Danube over territory in Romania and Moldova. The population of the area was mostly made up of Early Slavs. There are views that it derived from the Chernyakhov culture and represented a group of the Antes, but also mixed with Sclaveni. The houses were identical to the Slavic huts of the Prague-Korchak and Penkovka areas. The sites in Romania are known as Ipotești-Candești-Ciurel or Ipotești-Ciurel-Cândești.

    <i>The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region</i> Book about the origins of east Slavic peoples

    The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500-700 is a work about early Slavic history by Florin Curta and published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press. It introduces a new approach about the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, especially in Southeastern Europe, advancing a hypothesis that the early Slavic identity was an invention of the Byzantine Empire on the Danubian Limes, and with Slavic language it spread without mass migration from Slavic Urheimat.

    References

    1. "Interview with Florin Curta". Medievalists.net. January 2007. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
    2. 1 2 "Florin Curta". history.ufl.edu. University of Florida. Retrieved April 11, 2019.
    3. Holt, Andrew (December 25, 2014). "An Interview with Dr. Florin Curta on Communism, Faith, and Academia". apholt.com.
    4. 1 2 Di Hu, "Approaches to the Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Past and Emergent Perspectives", Journal of Archaeological Research, 21(4), 2013, pp. 389–390
    5. Johannes Koder, "On the Slavic Immigration in the Byzantine Balkans", Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone: Aspects of Mobility Between Africa, Asia and Europe, 300–1500 C.E., 2020, pp. 81–100
    6. Florin Curta, The Early Slavs. Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe by Paul M. Barford (review), European Journal of Archaeology, 6(1), 2003, pp. 99–101
    7. Florin Curta, "The early Slavs in Bohemia and Moravia: a response to my critics", Archeologické rozhledy, 61 (4), 2009, pp. 725–754
    8. 1 2 3 4 Kara, Michał (2022). "Archaeology, mainly polish, in the current discussion on the ethnogenesis of the Slavs". Slavia Antiqua. Rocznik poświęcony starożytnościom słowiańskim (63): 75, 116–119. doi:10.14746/sa.2022.63.3.
    9. 1 2 3 Wolverton, Lisa (2003). "The Making of the Slavs: History and Archeology of the Lower Danube Region ca. 500-700 (review)". Journal of Interdisciplinary History . 34 (1): 92–93. doi:10.1162/002219503322645655. ISSN   1530-9169. S2CID   143226004.
    10. Mârza, Radu (2017). "Teaching Slavic History in Romania in 2017". Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 22 (2): 140–156. doi:10.21638/11701/spbu19.2017.211. ISSN   1995-848X.
    11. 1 2 Felix Biermann, "Kommentar zum Aufsatz von Florin Curta: Utváření Slovanů (se zvláštním zřetelem k Čechám a Moravě) – The Making of the Slavs (with a special emphasis on Bohemia and Moravia)", Archeologické rozhledy, 61 (2), 2009, pp. 337–349
    12. Boris Todorov, The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 by Florin Curta (review), Comitatus, 33, 2002, pp. 178–180
    13. Paul Stephenson, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 by Florin Curta (review), The International History Review, 24 (3), 2002, pp. 629–631
    14. Florin Curta, "The Making of the Slavs between ethnogenesis, invention, and migration", Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana, 2 (4), 2008, pp. 155–172
    15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Maslač, Domagoj (2022). "Slaveni u ranom srednjem vijeku i pogled Florina Curte" [Slavs in the Early Medieval Period and Florin Curta's View]. Rostra (in Croatian). 13 (13): 61–81. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
    16. Greenberg, Marc L. (2002). "Common Slavic: Progress or Crisis in its Reconstruction? Notes on Recent Archaeological Challenges to Historical Linguistics". International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics. 44–45: 197–209. ISSN   0538-8228.
    17. Curta, Florin (2024). "Migration and common Slavic: critical remarks of an archaeologist". Linguistica Brunensia. 72 (2): 41–56. doi:10.5817/LB2024-38774.
    18. 1 2 3 Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822, Cornell University Press, 2018, pp. 124, quote: "Predictably, his work was met by some severe criticism in general and in detail. I included a very favorable discussion of it in my paper about “Non-Roman Europe” at the Harvard Medieval Seminar in 2001, and it was not very well received by some of the senior scholars in the audience. The book may have its weaknesses, and I do not agree with all of its propositions, but its groundbreaking role should in any case be acknowledged."
    19. Mühle, Eduard (2022). "Reviewed work: Florin Curta, Slavs in the Making: History, Linguistics, and Archaeology in Eastern Europe (ca. 500–ca. 700). London: Routledge, 2021". Speculum. 97 (3): 819–820.
    20. 1 2 3 Pleterski, Andrej (2021). "Slavi e Valacchi alle porte dell'Italia nel contesto dell'etnogenesi degli Slavi" [Slavs and Vlachs at the gate of Italy in the process of ethnogenesis of the Slavs](PDF). Quaderni friulani di archeologia (in Italian). 31 (1): 253–254, 266–268.
    21. Pleterski, Andrej (2009). "The inventing of Slavs or inventive Slavs? O ideovém světě a způsobu bydlení starých Slovanů". Archeologické rozhledy. 61 (2). Praha: Archeologický ústav AV ČR: 331–336.
    22. Tomáš Gábriš, Róbert Jáger, "Back to Slavic Legal History? On the Use of Historical Linguistics in the History of Slavic Law", Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 53 (1), 2019, pp. 41–42
    23. 1 2 Shuvalov, Petr V. (2008). "Изобретение проблемы (по поводу книги Флорина Курты)". Петербургские славянские и балканские исследования (in Russian) (2): 13–20. ISSN   1995-848X.
    24. Andrej Pleterski, "The Ethnogenesis of the Slavs, the Methods and the Process", Starohrvatska prosvjeta, 3 (40), 2013, pp. 8–10, 22–25
    25. Andrej Pleterski, "The Early Slavs in the Eastern Alps and Their Periphery", in The Slavs on the Danube. Homeland Found, Editors-in-Charge Roman A. Rabinovich and Igor O. Gavritukhin, Stratum plus, No. 5, 2015, pp. 232, quote: "Однако под влиянием англосаксонских антропологических теорий возникла и третья концепция, согласно которой славяне в Европе распространялись не как «биологический» феномен, а как культурная модель образа жизни с языковым компонентом данной культурной модели (Barford 2001; Curta 2001; 2008; 2010; 2010а; Džino 2008; 2009). Недостаток данной концепции состоит в том, что она в основном сосредоточена на механизме передачи культурной модели, и гораздо меньше — на ее происхождении. На другие слабые места в ее аргументации указывает Владимир Сокол — это недостаточное знание адептами концеп1 За дружескую помощь я благодарю Владимира Нартника. №5. 2015 ции конкретных материалов, что приводит к произвольным интерпретационным выводам (Sokol 2011)."
    26. Belaj, Vitomir; Belaj, Juraj (2018). "Around and below Divuša: The Traces of Perun's Mother Arrival into Our Lands". Zbornik Instituta za arheologiju / Serta Instituti Archaeologici, Vol. 10. Sacralization of Landscape and Sacred Places. Proceedings of the 3rd International Scientific Conference of Mediaeval Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology. Zagreb: Institute of Archaeology. pp. 75–76. ISBN   978-953-6064-36-6. The lexical content of the living culture of the ancient Slavs before their separation refutes Curta's conclusions. As if Curta before our eyes were writing a new historiographic myth about them (Belaj, V., Belaj, J. 2018). Negative answers to such considerations were not in short supply either. Suffice it to mention the 2009 and 2013 works by the Ljubljana scholar Andrej Pleterski, and the 2010 work by the Ukrainian scholar Maksim Žih. The latter mocked Curta: "in summary, we could say that F. Curta's works are frequently structured on the principle leading "from (an a priori) concept towards sources". We may add that Curta's way of thinking is suspiciously similar to the stadial theory of the Soviet scholar Nicholas Yakovlevich Marr9 (see: Belaj, V., Belaj, J. 2018) ... In addition to the fact that Curta's conclusions cannot withstand a logical critique, they are also based only on selected evidential material he necessitated in order to infer the conclusions he had already made in advance.
    27. Rejzek, Jiří (October 19–22, 2017), "Linguistic comments to Curta's making of the Slavs", Language contact and the Early Slavs (PDF), Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague , retrieved August 10, 2022, The controversial and provocative Curta's view of the Slavic ethnogenesis has been challenged by several historians and archeologists. As far as I know, linguistic arguments have not been used in the discussion too much, even though the new theory gave rise to several linguistic issues. If the Slavs "were made" by the Byzantines from different ethnic groups on the border of the empire, how to explain the affinity of Slavic and Baltic languages? Why should the Proto-Slavic serve as lingua franca in the Avar khaganate? Is it possible that the speakers of Proto-Slavic came from "nowhere"? How to explain the early presence of the Slavs and Slavic in Poland, Ukraine and Russia, far from the Byzantine Empire and out of range of the Avar khaganate?
    28. Vasary, Istvan (2006). "06.03.16, Vasary, Response to Curta". The Medieval Review .
    29. Curta, Florin (2006). "06.04.03, Curta, Response to Vasary". The Medieval Review .
    30. Romanchuk, Aleksey A. (2021). "Пределы конструктивизма: в качестве реплики на «Slavs in the Making» Ф. Курты" [The Limits of Constructivism: a Comment to the "Slavs in the Making" of F. Curta]. Stratum Plus (in Russian) (5): 435–444.
    31. Danijel Džino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia, BRILL, 2010, pp. 93–94
    32. Lindstedt, Jouko (October 19–22, 2017), "How the early Slavs existed: A short essay on ontology and methodology", Language contact and the Early Slavs (PDF), Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague , retrieved August 10, 2022, Despite Florin Curta (2015) declaring the prehistoric Slavs as a "fairy tale", they certainly existed at least in a linguistic sense: the Slavic language family is unexplainable without an earlier protolanguage, this Proto-Slavic must have had speakers, and "Slav" is the name that mediaeval sources mainly propose as the designation of those ... but there is also no reason to argue that they are totally unrelated groups of people. Linguistics shows the spread of the Slavic language in Eastern Europe in the second half of the first millennium CE; history and archaeology tell us about at least some major migrations in this same period of worsening living conditions (due to the Late Antique Little Ice Age and Justinian's Plague); population genetics shows the relatively recent common ancestry of most of the population in this area. These are distinct stories, but not unrelated stories, and the challenge is to construct an integrated view of the early speakers of Slavic on their basis, not to bury the Slavs under ontological doubts and methodological scruples.
    33. Michel Kazanski, "Archaeology of the Slavic Migrations", in: Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, Editor-in-Chief Marc L. Greenberg, BRILL, 2020, quote: "There are two specific aspects of the archaeology of Slavic migrations: the movement of the populations of the Slavic cultural model and the diffusion of this model amid non-Slavic populations. Certainly, both phenomena occurred; however, a pure diffusion of the Slavic model would hardly be possible, in any case in which a long period of time when the populations of different cultural traditions lived close to one another is assumed. Moreover, archaeologists researching Slavic antiquities do not accept the ideas produced by the "diffusionists," because most of the champions of the diffusion model know the specific archaeological materials poorly, so their works leave room for a number of arbitrary interpretations (for details, see Pleterski 2015: 232)."
    Florin Curta
    Born (1966-03-16) March 16, 1966 (age 58)
    Romania
    NationalityRomanian, American
    Occupation(s)Archaeologist, historian
    Academic background
    Thesis Making an Early Medieval Ethnie: The Case of the Early Slavs (Sixth to Seventh Century A.D.) (1998)