Romanus miser imitatur Gothum, et utilis Gothus imitatur Romanum ‘The poor Roman wants to be a Goth; the rich Goth wants to be a Roman’, or so Theoderic the Great of Italy once quipped according to the Anonymus Valesianus, a 6th-century chronicle first published by Henricus Valesius in 1636.
The author of this study observes a similar phenomenon in Germania Inferior ‘Lower Germany’, which became a Roman province in 85 CE, situated on the west bank of the Rhine River down to the North Sea. It was renamed Germania Secunda in the fourth century with its capital at Colonia Caudia Ara Agrippinensium, modern-day Cologne, and became the core of the Frankish kingdom after the middle of the fifth century. The Frankish chieftain Childeric I styled himself a Roman governor as late as 463 CE, but was effectively an independent ruler of the territory. Berber van der Meulen-van der Veen traces the process by which this former Roman province evolved into a “barbarian” kingdom over the course of four centuries, noting a marked “(dis)continuity” between the fourth and fifth (170). This ambiguously qualified term tacitly acknowledges the political disruption in the province which followed upon its abandonment by the Roman government in 411, but resists a more simplistic “invasion” or “conquest” scenario to explain its transformation into a separate polity under Frankish leaders. Frankish language only yielded slowly to spoken or demotic Latin among ruling elites over the following centuries, even as these Frankish rulers adopted the imperial language for the administration of their kingdom with the aid of Latin-speaking metropolitan bishops and former Roman officials and their heirs. The kingdom of the Franks became formally bilingual with the Oaths of Strasburg in 842, recognizing the emergence of an incipient Old French from Vulgar Latin and presaging the ultimate triumph of that language with the final attenuation of Germanic Frankish some time thereafter. Yet, demotic Latin, on its way to becoming Old French included many Frankish loanwords and idioms, thus replicating the centuries-long assimilation in material culture illustrated so persuasively in this volume.
Van der Meulen-van der Veen focuses upon the material aspects of the earlier period of cultural adaptation. In particular, she explores how personal adornment, domestic architecture and “foodways” developed in Germania Secunda in comparison with those of two adjacent regions: (1) Germania Superior further upstream with its capital at Mogontiacum—Mainz, and (2) Germania Magna to the east of the Rhine and north to the Elbe, also known as Germania Libera ‘Free Germany’, a huge territory that remained independent of Roman control, though not influence and exchange. The author observes three key archaeological features that reveal the appearance of new immigrant communities in Germania Secunda during the Late Roman period—(1) Sunken Feature Buildings (SFBs), traditionally known as Grubenhäuser ‘pit-houses’; (2) the cultivation of rye as a staple crop; and (3) other Germanic “house plan typologies”—each of which can be traced back to the Late Iron Age or early Roman presence on the Rhine frontier. The SFBs, in particular, became one of the most common types of domestic structure in Late Roman settlements in Germania Secunda, appearing with or without other markers of Germanic material identity, such as hand-thrown pottery and three-aisled longhouses, suggesting that some of the traditional building styles of the newcomers had inspired imitation by prior residents of the province.
The author further explores these long-term processes of cultural interchange in the technology and styles of personal ornamentation, especially in her expert analysis of copper-alloy dress accessories like brooches and belt buckles using the technique of Portable X-ray Fluorescence [pXRF]. Studies of the Late Roman Lower German frontier have traditionally focused on evidence from the supposedly distinctive burial goods, hand-thrown pottery styles, domestic architecture and field use or settlement patterns of supposed incoming Germanic immigrants. This volume examines a whole range of such excavated resources to suggest a much more complex process over several centuries, deemphasizing the importance of singular “migration events,” that is, armed invasions by extra-territorial barbarian groups intent upon the acquisition of land and its resources, both agricultural and human. Instead, she stresses long-term cultural assimilation between imperial residents and alien outsiders, both newly arrived immigrants and adjacent neighboring peoples, a process which produced a composite culture through economic exchange, multi-directional population mobility and mutual emulation of decorative styles. In particular, the author presents substantial evidence on emerging fashions of personal display, charting the date of manufacture, geographical distribution and context of discovery for 4,540 civilian and military copper-alloy dress ornaments which, she suggests, are not easily or exclusively classifiable as either “Roman” or “Germanic,” “military” or “civilian,” or even, in a number of cases, “male” or “female.” Her detailed metallurgical analysis of 686 copper-alloy dress accessories is a significant contribution to our knowledge of the period, offering insight into the widespread production and distribution networks of fashion items worn by different types of wearer.
Van der Meulen-van der Veen concludes by roundly rejecting Edward Gibbons’ well-known (but long-since superseded) model of “decline and fall” to describe the fate of the late Roman province as the result of a weakening imperial economy and infrastructure to which the barbarian invasions merely delivered the coup de grâce. Instead, the archaeological evidence she has gathered in this study reveals considerable adaptation and cultural fusion in which new settlements reveal mixed styles of material culture on both sides of the imperial frontier. Thus, the author observes a progressive “Germanicisation” of the Roman province over several centuries, yet insists that this process should not be understood as a clear or categorical loss of its “Romanness” per se, since provincial Roman culture had always been marked by a high degree of culturally sensitive hybridism, negotiating between differing practices and ideas, both traditional and newly introduced, a dynamic if uneven process of interchange and adaptability on the part of native inhabitants, resident Romans and newer immigrants alike. The transformation of the Late Roman province of Germania Secunda into a barbarian kingdom can better be described as an intensification of this process of assimilation, rather than a surgical break or definitive cultural erasure effected by incoming martial elites. The new kingdom built upon a centuries-long cultural rapprochement between the two sides of the frontier, which went both ways and only accelerated over the turn of the fourth to fifth centuries. Germania Secunda and Germania Libera did still retain a degree of cultural distinctiveness in the material record, however, including features of personal adornment. But this difference was a self-conscious stylistic choice, the author suggests, describing it with a coinage from our own contemporary world, “glocalization” (179), that is, the regional customizing of broader trends and tastes to signal local affiliations or identities which may be more apparent than substantive. She concludes:
The transformation of the Late Roman provinces may be described as merely the next step in this process [of assimilation], rather than a sudden shift caused by external forces … Previous works have cited the introduction of new styles of material culture or architecture as direct evidence for migration: these were thought to be reflective of people moving, bringing their possessions with them and building in their own traditions. These interpretations mostly seem to address first-generation migrants, but the data presented in this thesis indicate that there is more to these finds. Settlement hybridity and developing styles of material culture signify a world that is ‘Germanicising’, although it should be emphasised that this term should not be interpreted as the replacement of the provincial-Roman rural population by newcomers. The wide distribution of certain types of Armbrust brooches [crafted from a leaded copper alloy in which a spring with an iron bar ends in hemispherical caps] and the ambiguity of ‘migration-related settlements’ indicate that these represent the effects of migration on Germania Secunda, not the process itself. The small finds of the Late Roman West show the formation of a unique cross-frontier, pan-Germanic style of material culture that adopted certain aspects of Germanic origins, but which cannot be directly linked to any individual or communal identity. The rural settlements themselves, which often combined architectural traditions from both sides of the frontier are also best understood as a rural population adopting new practices introduced by migration. (179)
The immigration of new settlers into Germania Secunda and the “folkways” or traditions they brought with them can thus best be seen as a catalyst to broader imitative developments within the province itself, rather than an “on the ground” replacement of its rural population by the newcomers.
Some of these newcomers were Germanic foederati, as can be deduced from the distribution of military-style belt buckles around the turn of the fifth century. These newly recruited soldiers from within the province or from Germania Libera across the river were deployed as auxiliaries in the Roman army for frontier policing and defense, to be sure. But even so, as the author notes, this recruitment was not itself a new phenomenon. Evidence for the presence of military-style belts and other dress accessories appears much earlier as well, so that Van der Meulen-van der Veen resists assuming that the increased presence of Germanic soldiers clearly points to fears of an impending “invasion” or even an origin for these soldiers in Germania Libera or elsewhere to serve as auxiliary troops (179).
This volume contains an impressive, detailed and compelling analysis of the archaeological evidence recovered so far in the Roman province of Germania Secunda, clarifying dynamic processes of cultural change over four centuries of time. Its “holistic” approach is admirable, but could perhaps more generously have folded into its comprehensive ambition what can be surmised of this period and its aftermath from the linguistic and historical records as well, at least to provide a clearer context for its processual conclusions. Even so, the author’s cautious attitude is well-taken as a fruitful corrective to some long-standing assumptions which now will require further assessment and refinement in response.