Roland Steinacher | |
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| Born | 22 September 1972 Innsbruck, Austria |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Doctoral advisor | Herwig Wolfram |
| Other advisors | Walter Pohl |
| Influences | Walter Goffart |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline |
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| Sub-discipline | Medieval Studies |
| Institutions | |
| Main interests |
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Roland Steinacher (born 22 September 1972) is an Austrian historian who is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Innsbruck.
Roland Steinacher was born in Innsbruck,Austria,on 22 September 1972. He received his PhD in history at the University of Vienna in 2002 under the supervision of Herwig Wolfram. Steinacher subsequently worked as a researcher at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. During this time,Steinacher was a research assistant for Walter Pohl at projects financed by the European Research Council. Steinacher received his habilitation at the University of Vienna in 2012. As fellow of the Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung,the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung,the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald and the Berliner Antike-Kolleg he worked in Berlin,Erlangen,Greifswald and finally spent another year as an assistant professor at the University of Tübingen. In October 2018 he was appointed Professor of Ancient History at the University of Innsbruck. [1]
Steinacher is primarily interested in ethnicity in Europe during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. [1] Steinacher adheres to Walter Goffart's theories on the Germanic peoples,whom Steinacher considers "nothing more but a vision of ancient literature". He believes that the Germani are a literary category without any basis in reality,which the Romans invented for political purposes. Steinacher utilizes scare quotes around the term "Germanic",and advocates replacing it with the term "barbarian". Steinacher contends that it is "impossible" to find any economic,social,religious,ethnic or political similarities the among "so-called "Germanic" peoples". According to Steinacher,there has "never" been a Germanic identity or Germanic culture. He stresses the fact that ancient sources after Caesar and Tacitus barely had a concept of "Germanic peoples" but continued to use the categories Celts and Scythians. [2] Steinacher doubts that there was much migration of actual ethnic groups during the Migration Period. [3] Instead he suggests that there were only military actions,a series of wars,partly Roman civil wars,as well as a long lasting movement of ethnic names. [4]
In his “History of the Vandals/Die Vandalen”,published in 2016,Steinacher fathomed African and Vandalic history as a basis for studying the transformation of the Roman world,its consequences and implications. The transforming Roman Empire in the West had Vandal Africa,Frankish Gaul,or Visigothic Spain as successive political entities. Barbarian groups using ethnic labels act as specialized military service providers who seized the opportunity of the dissolution of Roman political structures. They made themselves independent,operated without Roman titles and orders,and under favorable circumstances succeeded in establishing their own kingdoms,which they could now shape according to their needs. This was because the new military elites aimed at controlling the Roman system of taxation and agricultural production. The takeover of Roman provinces and cities made it possible to provide long-term sustenance for the barbarian soldiers. [5] Steinacher distinguished the Vandals as “Roman barbarians”stressing the need to understand 5th and 6th c. Africa as part of the late Roman world. [6] [7]
The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and early medieval Germanic languages and are thus equated at least approximately with Germanic-speaking peoples, although different academic disciplines have their own definitions of what makes someone or something "Germanic". The Romans named the area belonging to North-Central Europe in which Germanic peoples lived Germania, stretching East to West between the Vistula and Rhine rivers and north to south from Southern Scandinavia to the upper Danube. In discussions of the Roman period, the Germanic peoples are sometimes referred to as Germani or ancient Germans, although many scholars consider the second term problematic since it suggests identity with present-day Germans. The very concept of "Germanic peoples" has become the subject of controversy among contemporary scholars. Some scholars call for its total abandonment as a modern construct since lumping "Germanic peoples" together implies a common group identity for which there is little evidence. Other scholars have defended the term's continued use and argue that a common Germanic language allows one to speak of "Germanic peoples", regardless of whether these ancient and medieval peoples saw themselves as having a common identity.
The Heruli were an early Germanic people. Possibly originating in Scandinavia, the Heruli are first mentioned by Roman authors as one of several "Scythian" groups raiding Roman provinces in the Balkans and the Aegean Sea, attacking by land, and notably also by sea. During this time they reportedly lived near the Sea of Azov.
The Vandals were a Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century.
The Rugii, Rogi or Rugians, were a Roman-era Germanic people. They were first clearly recorded by Tacitus, in his Germania who called them the Rugii, and located them near the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Some centuries later, they were considered one of the "Gothic" or "Scythian" peoples who were located in the Middle Danube region. Like several other Gothic peoples there, they possibly arrived in the area as allies of Attila until his death in 453. They settled in what is now Lower Austria after the defeat of the Huns at Nedao in 454.
The Thuringii, Toringi or Teuriochaimai, were an early Germanic people that appeared during the late Migration Period in the Harz Mountains of central Germania, a region still known today as Thuringia. It became a kingdom, which came into conflict with the Merovingian Franks, and it later came under their influence and Frankish control. The name is still used for one of modern Germany's federal states (Bundesländer).
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. The term refers to the important role played by the migration, invasion, and settlement of various tribes, notably the Franks, Goths, Alemanni, Alans, Huns, early Slavs, Pannonian Avars, Magyars, and Bulgars within or into the former Western Empire and Eastern Europe. The period is traditionally taken to have begun in AD 375 and ended in 568. Various factors contributed to this phenomenon of migration and invasion, and their role and significance are still widely discussed.
Vandalic was the Germanic language spoken by the Vandals during roughly the 3rd to 6th centuries. It was probably closely related to Gothic, and, as such, is traditionally classified as an East Germanic language. Its attestation is very fragmentary, mainly due to the Vandals' constant migrations and late adoption of writing. All modern sources from the time when Vandalic was spoken are protohistoric.
The Bructeri were a Germanic tribe in Roman imperial times, located in northwestern Germany, in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia. Their territory included both sides of the upper Ems and Lippe rivers. At its greatest extent, their territory apparently stretched between the vicinities of the Rhine in the west and the Teutoburg Forest and Weser river in the east. In late Roman times they moved south to settle upon the east bank of the Rhine facing Cologne, an area later associated with the Ripuarian Franks.
The Vistula Veneti were an Indo-European people that inhabited the region of central Europe east of the Vistula River and the areas around the Bay of Gdańsk. The name first appeared in the 1st century AD in the writings of ancient Romans who differentiated a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from that of the Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine sources described the Veneti as the ancestors of the Slavs, who during the second phase of the Migration Period moved south across the northern frontier of the Byzantine Empire.
King Rodulf was king of the Heruli kingdom on the Middle Danube in the period around 500, and possibly of Scandinavian origin. He died in a battle with the neighbouring Lombards which led to the splitting up of the Heruli. He is probably the same Heruli king that Theoderic the Great wrote to in two surviving letters, in one of which Theoderic "adopted" him with a gift of arms. Less certainly, he is also sometimes equated to a King Rodulf that Jordanes mentions as having come from Scandinavia to Italy, to join Theoderic.
Peter John Heather is a British historian of late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Heather is Chair of the Medieval History Department and Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He specialises in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Goths, on which he for decades has been considered the world's leading authority.
Barbaricum is a geographical name used by historical and archaeological experts to refer to the vast area of barbarian-occupied territory that lay, in Roman times, beyond the frontiers or limes of the Roman Empire in North, Central and South Eastern Europe, the "lands lying beyond Roman administrative control but nonetheless a part of the Roman world". During the Late Antiquity, it was the Latin name for those tribal territories not occupied by Rome that lay beyond the Rhine and the Danube : Ammianus Marcellinus used it, as did Eutropius. The earliest recorded mention appears to date to the early 3rd century.
Walter Pohl is an Austrian historian who is Professor of Auxiliary Sciences of History and Medieval History at the University of Vienna. He is a leading member of the Vienna School of History.
Walter Andre Goffart is a German-born American historian who specializes in Late Antiquity and the European Middle Ages. He taught for many years in the history department and Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto (1960–1999), and is currently a senior research scholar at Yale University. He is the author of monographs on a ninth-century forgery, late Roman taxation, four "barbarian" historians, and historical atlases.
Guy Halsall is an English historian and academic, specialising in Early Medieval Europe. He is currently based at the University of York, and has published a number of books, essays, and articles on the subject of early medieval history and archaeology. Halsall's current research focuses on western Europe in the important period of change around AD 600 and on the application of continental philosophy to history. He taught at the University of Newcastle and Birkbeck, University of London, before moving to the University of York.
The Romans were a cultural group, variously referred to as an ethnicity or a nationality, that in classical antiquity, from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD, came to rule large parts of Europe, the Near East and North Africa through conquests made during the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire. Originally only referring to the Italic Latin citizens of Rome itself, the meaning of "Roman" underwent considerable changes throughout the long history of Roman civilisation as the borders of the Roman state expanded and contracted. At times, different groups within Roman society also had different ideas as to what it meant to be Roman. Aspects such as geography, language, and ethnicity could be seen as important by some, whereas others saw Roman citizenship and culture or behaviour as more important. At the height of the Roman Empire, Roman identity was a collective geopolitical identity, extended to nearly all subjects of the Roman emperors and encompassing vast regional and ethnic diversity.
The barbarian kingdoms, also known as the post-Roman kingdoms, the western kingdoms or the early medieval kingdoms, were the states founded by various non-Roman, primarily Germanic, peoples in Western Europe and North Africa following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. The formation of the barbarian kingdoms was a complicated, gradual and largely unintentional process, as the Roman state failed to handle barbarian migrants on the imperial borders, leading to both invasions and invitations into imperial territory, but simultaneously denied barbarians the ability to properly integrate into the imperial framework. The influence of barbarian rulers, at first local warlords and client kings without firm connections to any territories, increased as Roman emperors and usurpers used them as pawns in civil wars. It was only after the collapse of effective Western Roman central authority that the barbarian realms transitioned into proper territorial kingdoms.
The Vienna School of History is an influential school of historical thinking based at the University of Vienna. It is closely associated with Reinhard Wenskus, Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl. Partly drawing upon ideas from sociology and critical theory, scholars of the Vienna School have utilized the concept of ethnogenesis to reassess the notion of ethnicity as it applies to historical groups of peoples such as the Germanic tribes. Focusing on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the Vienna School has a large publishing output, and has had a major influence on the modern analysis of barbarian identity.
Concerning the origin of the Goths before the 3rd century, there is no consensus among scholars. It was in the 3rd century that the Goths began to be described by Roman writers as an increasingly important people north of the lower Danube and Black Sea, in the area of modern Rumania, Moldava, and Ukraine. They replaced other peoples who had been dominant in the region, such as especially the Carpi. However, while some scholars, such as Michael Kulikowski, believe there is insufficient evidence to come to strong conclusions about their earlier origins, the most commonly accepted proposal is that the Goths known to the Romans were a people whose traditions derived to some extent from the Gutones who lived near the delta of the Vistula in what is now Poland. More speculatively, the Gutones may have been culturally related to the similarly named Gutes of Gotland and the Geats of southern Scandinavia.
Aruth was a Byzantine official of Herul origin, active under Emperor Justinian. It is known that he was married to the unnamed daughter of Mauricius, son of magister militum Mundus. A renowned soldier, he led his fellow Heruli during the expedition to the Ostrogothic Kingdom led by Narses in 552. Upon the death of Fulcarius, he received great support to become the new leader of the Heruli. However, Narses eventually appointed fellow Herul Sindual in preference to him.
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