GERMANIC TRIBES MIGRATING AS A UNIT

To identify the migration pattern of the Germanic tribes, it is necessary to look at the social make-up of clans.  This can give insight into value system of the tribal units.  Understanding this value system will help to determine the likelihood of these groups moving as a large contiguous group or conversely in smaller factions or as warrior clubs.

These communities most likely maintained a hierarchical clansman form of government, which possessed, as Musset concluded, “no political organization beyond a chief” (Musset, 1975) .  Kings existed, and originated through noble birth, but they did not wield absolute power (Tacitus, Germania, 7).  Their true leaders were chosen by valor, through a kind of democracy, but the same democracy could remove the leader if necessary (Tacitus, Germania, 7).  This code of valor was important to the Germans and essential to the hegemony of the tribe (Tacitus, Germania, 7).  This code was so strong that the German placed it as the highest of disgraces, to survive their leader in battle (Tacitus, Germania, 14).

This structured society is apparent in many aspects of the tribal community (Musset, 1975) .  Their marriage rites were “praiseworthy” to Tacitus (Tacitus, Germania, 18).  Tacitus described the monogamous content of the marriage contract and how the German only possessed one wife (Tacitus, Germania, 18).  The majority of the tribes gave maidens as wives, because sexual activity was equally unknown to both men and women in the tribes before the marriage ceremony (Tacitus, Germania, 18).  The men and women were not rushed into marriage, but usually were joined together later in life (Tacitus, Germania, 20).  The crime of adultery and sexual promiscuity was punished severely by the Germans with the females suffering harsher retribution than the males (Tacitus, Germania, 19).  It is the bond of marriage that was the core of the family unit, which in turn bound together the tribal society.  It is this unity that separated the migrations of whole tribes and the raids of the Germanic warrior tribes (Price, 1996) .

Women held a high position in ancient Germany, beyond the binding of marriage.  For the Sitones, the women were actually the leaders of the tribe, although Tacitus disapproved of this situation (Tacitus, Germania, 45).  Women held an air of holiness and prophecy in the Germanic culture, and their advice was adhered to and considered valuable (Tacitus, Germania, 8).  The ultimate “supernatural” enemy of the Germanic tribes, the Huns, were believed to have been the spawn of evil women who were exiled to Asia after being caught worshipping, Halya, the goddess of the underworld, and mated with demons (Maenchen-Helfen, 1973) .

The Germanic women often attended battles, caring for the wounded, giving food and aid to the warriors, and motivating the warriors to fight harder (Tacitus, Germania, 8). This respect for and importance of women separated the German tribes from most that existed in male-dominated antiquity.  This social structure elevated women and solidified the community as a whole.  It added strength to the family unit because both partners had value, as opposed to one of the partners being important and the other considered property or a necessary liability.

“They do not limit the number of children they conceive in marriage, and to destroy an offspring is considered infamous” (Tacitus, Germania, 19).  Their large families live in wooden houses with the stables contained on the interior.  Most stables were under the same roof, but partitioned from the living areas (Diesner, 1982) .  The stables were primarily for housing their cows, sheep, goats, and horses in the winter months (Hachmann, 1971) .

These housing units were not part of a city structure, but were dispersed over the area of tribe habitation.  Tacitus stated that the Germans did not have cities, and did not even tolerate closely contiguous dwellings (Tacitus, Germania, 16).  Rolf Hachmann evaluates the land patterns of the German tribal bases and notes that this suggests land ownership, either tacitly or through arraigned agreement of the community as a whole (Hachmann, 1971) .  These land bases were spread-out, but they were all defended inclusively.

The bond of the chief and community heritage tied these tribal localities together.  The communities were affectionate and charitable toward one another, at least those under the same king (Salvian, On the Government of God, 5.4).  Tacitus mentioned that the best way to control a German tribe was to kidnap the king’s or noble’s daughter, who would submit the entire tribe to any demands necessary to reacquire the abducted daughter (Tacitus, Germania, 8).  This charitable nature of peacetime Germans often extended to Roman refugees, who sought asylum away from Rome on several occasions (Bradley, 1888) .

The Germanic tribes were conducive to moving as a large contiguous group over large distances.  The few primary source documents describe a people who are closely knit from the clan leader to the family unit.  There are exceptions of smaller movement from the tradition of the Germanic warrior clubs, where a small band of men would “colonize” an area or raid a territory, leaving the bulk of the population behind (Price, 1996) .

In the first century BC, Caesar argues that the Germanic tribes across the river Rhine were in constant movement (Caesar, Gallic War, 6.22).  This is not fully supportable by archaeology, nor can it be fully refuted, but in any case it documents a period in which there were tribes moving (Hachmann, 1971, Wells, 1999) .  Around AD 175, during the period of Marcus Aurelius the limes were attacked a few times but almost all movement stopped (Musset, 1975) .

Peter Wells, a scholar approaching the study of the Germanic tribes from primarily an archaeological standpoint, identifies the third century as a period with an ending of major building.  There is a reduction in the inhabited and fortified portions of the towns.  There were few new villas, and many old ones were abandoned.  The overall settlement pattern moves back to a more rural one, more consistent with the prehistoric Iron Age (Wells, 1999) . 

However, the whole of temperate Europe remains substantially populated by indigenous groups who had already occupied the region for generations (Wells, 1999) .  Goffart (1980) stated that the invasions of the third century were never over 1000 people and did not actually disrupt native people.  This would leave the temperate portions of Europe occupied, with the invaders only sending a portion of their people and the invaded not being too disrupted.  Dixon (1976) states that the migrations, especially in the 4^th century, were actually continuations of a long process of movement beyond the Roman frontiers.  The decisive factor coming with the incursion of the Huns, where mass migrations occurred after the displacement of the Gothic tribes.

These mass migrations consisted of more than just the Huns and Goths.  The other tribes involved with this first phase of mass migrations include the Alans, Vandals, Suevi, and Burgundians, Gendae, and Heruli, Bructeri, Charnavi, and Salians (Lewis, 1967, Diesner, 1982) .  The second phase consisted of the Franks, Alamans, Bavarians, Hermunduri, and Thurinians (Lewis, 1967, Diesner, 1982) .  And the third phase of the invasions was by the Lombards and Avars (Lewis, 1967, Diesner, 1982) .  These mass migrations are the focus of this study and are not conducive to the arguments of small raids but are associated with large groups of people leaving their homelands.

Strabo lists the Celtae as having a migratory habit due to the meagerness of their lives and the fact that they were almost completely pastoral (Strabo, Geography, 7.1.3).  There is an abundance of evidence that supports the migrations of large groups.  Around AD 100, the Chatti move to the Rhineland area from the eastern portions of Germania (Hachmann, 1971) .  The Goths move from northeastern Germania to the southeastern region and are replaced by the Slavonians and the Lithuanians (Bradley, 1888) .  The Burgundians relocate around AD 200 (Diesner, 1982) .  The third century AD is a period that has many migrations and invasions of people leaving their homelands.  The fourth century AD is characterized by the movement of the Huns, who constantly move around Europe never really forming a large politic, and the Vandals, Goths, and Alans relocating new areas (Musset, 1975) . 

The Germanic tribes migrated en-mass in the 5^th century AD, as recorded in the archaeological record (Simons, 1968) .  These apparent phases of movement are interesting beyond the damage that was incurred upon the Roman Empire.  It are these larger migrations that seem to correlate with climate change.

Paleoclimatology support the occurrence of droughts of the second, third, and fourth centuries AD and ancient documentation supports the desiccation of the region.  Why does Jordanes mention that the Goths were always searching for suitable homes (Jordanes, Gothic History, 27)?  Why were the various tribes being attacked frequently in Dacia and other areas?  It seems to be because they held the fertile regions (Jordanes, Gothic History, 22).  Germania was lacking in fertile areas and the demand for these preferred lands outweighed their availability.  The tribes left their homes to find better land and surrendered their initial territories to weaker tribes in the fourth century.  The Huns did invade Germania from Asia, which was also under similar adverse environmental conditions.  It was the Huns, who were actually forced to move by an environmental shift, which in turn moved the Germans, as the Huns – an already nomadic culture-initiate the waves of invasions (Simons and Time-Life Books., 1968, Maenchen-Helfen, 1973, Huntington, 1907) .

The German social structure was solid from the family unit to king.  The family unit was very important to the majority of the Germanic tribes, and the bond between husband and wife seemed unbreakable.  The community was held together through a sense of valor and commitment to an elected leader, whose glory was their own.  They shared a common religion, up to the point of Christianization in AD 341, which congealed the tribes into hegemony.  The tribes of the West were cited as acting individually, but the tribes, themselves, were structured, while the eastern tribes usually responded as a collective.  Environmental shifts affected the agriculturally based tribes significantly.  The Germans had no other option but to leave as a unit and risk potential extinction in a foreign land as opposed to guaranteed extinction in their homeland.