Readings on migrations and migration theory?

[diegis]

Well ok, just one before I make ready for bed...
Probably I expressed myself badly when I wrote "Goths as they appear in the fourth century" and Balkans. True, Kulikowski sees Goths in the later third century. The important point is still his rejection of migration nonetheless, just as his idea of the Roman creation of the Goths. Well he can say it better than I can:
"Nothing in the material evidence suggests that ‘the Goths’ came from somewhere else and imposed themselves on a polyethnic coalition; nothing contemporary tells us that Goths ‘came’ from anywhere at all. Instead, in the crucible of Roman frontier politics, people of very different backgrounds came together under leaders who were defined as Goths in their constant interaction with the Roman empire. The relative clarity of that relationship with the empire led to a stable political system just beyond the frontier in which the material culture we call Santana-de-Mures/Cernjachov developed" p.98 among many examples in the book... For this Gothic-Roman interaction, the north-eastern Balkans territory along the Danube was crucial, even though of course Cernjachov-culture extended beyond it.

...which seems to me like a point of contention, not a commonly accepted fact. What exactly is the evidence for the existence of 'the Gothic name' in the lower Vistula-area for example? I presume there was no inscription with it found there... You are not referring to Ptolemaios, are you?

btw, I don't think the question is if a group which called itself Goths existed before. May be, may not be. Names can travel in most interesting ways. But how would one prove, assuming for the sake of the argument there were Goths in the Vistula-area, just these people migrated en masse? For Archaeology, as recent works (especially Sebastian Brather of course) have shown, this is almost if not entirely impossible, although Heather may disagree. The written sources leave us in the dark, too. So what now? DNA studies? I hope not!

Have a good night!

Well, thats some ideas i posted and i was previously criticized here i remember, that Goths appear in previous Dacian and Sarmatian teritories and are formed mostly from local Getae/Dacians with Sarmatians, Germanic and later even Roman elements.

Even the Vistula area from where some said the Goths came (but hard to impossible to prove beside Jordanes story) shows elements of Dacian/Getae presence all along, in fact the presence of Dacian nobility actually, close to the same period of appearence of Goths, which can be very well a transformation of Getae. Especially as Caracalla imposed a "damnatio memoriae" for his brother Geta (the singular for Getae) right before the first mention of "Goths" to show up in Roman writings

This is a map with the findings of bracelets/armlets worn by Dacian nobles (called Simleul Silvaniei type)

http://www.academia.edu/1455259/New_evid...ral_Poland