The Slavs Yesterday and Today Different Perspectives on Slavic Ethnicity in German Archaeology

This article deals with the numerous images of the Slavic tribes between the Elbe and the Oder in archaeological interpretations. The position taken by East German archaeologists was to integrate the Slavs explicitly into the theoretical constructions of historical-materialism; in the ideological struggle between East and West the Slavs, as victims of medieval feudal developments politically supported the picture of a common socialist identity and history. In contrast West German archaeologists on the basis of rigid source criticism placed the Slavs behind the scenes of the historical stage.


The Slavs Yesterday and Today Different Perspectives on Slavic Ethnicity in German Archaeology
ChriStoPh Kilger This article deals with the numerous images of the Slavic tribes between the Elbe and the Oder in archaeological interpretations. The position taken by East German archaeologists was to integrate the Slavs explicitly into the theoretical constructions of historical-materialism; in the ideological struggle between East and West the Slavs, as victims of medieval feudal developments politically supported the picture of a common socialist identity and history. In contrast West German archaeologists on the basis of rigid source criticism placed the Slavs behind the scenes of the historical stage.
Christoph Kilger, Stockholm Numismatic lnstitute, Bollhusgränd 1 B, Sweden. After the collapse of the Berlin wall and the fall of the government in East Germany, almost the entire structure of the former, centrally organized, archaeological authorities was replaced by the federal West German model. By this time even the old archaeological establishment had retired due to its political involvement, and West German colleagues took over. It is not my intention to comment on these changes, to criticize or to justify the new order in German archaeology in the perspective of those people directly involved. What is essential is not to choose sides but to look at what both archaeologies have accomplished in their interpretation of the Slavs. An important question concerns the role of the Slavic people in the historical records and archaeological narratives. Which part did they play while forming national, ideological or regional identities? A proper starting point would be by examining how the Slavs were interpreted in German medieval records.

THE IMAGE OF THE SLAVS IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
The Sachsenspiegel, written by the Saxon nobleman Eike von Repgow in the 13th century, constituted an important compilation of different law texts and procedures for the administration of justice. In its popular form the Sachsenspiegel was a vernacular manuscript with depictions of different scenes of crimes, judgments and punishments. Because of the lack of a general law in the German countries, the Sachsenspiegel influenced the jurisdiction up till modern times, for instance in Thuringia until the beginning of the 20th century (Run8berg 1930ff:11).The vernacular shows clearly how the connection to different groups in medieval society was significant for procedures of judgment. The different groups were depicted stereotyped by their clothing, their hairstyle or by their posture. The bearded Jew was clearly marked by his hat, the Frank by his fur collar, the Saxon by his knife, and the Slav by his haircut (short at the neck) and striped socks. In the judgment scene all the different ethnic groups are represented with the count as judge and as judicial authority sitting on a chair. The Slav is clearly marked by his peripheral position and the gesture interpreted in the medieval text as an expression of incompetence (fig. I). In judicial court the Saxon and the Slav were not allowed to pass judgement on each other (ibid:19). advantages. An integration of the Slavs into German society was not desired by the German authorities. The Slavs were judged according to the Vendish law and were paying different taxes compared with the German population. In the Middle Ages belonging to a different ethnic group like the Slavs implied also social and economical disadvantages. Ethnical representation and identity had slowly changed to an identity of class. A Slavic identity became synonymous with the rural peasantry of the Middle Ages until modern times. As the people of the hinterland, they were separated from those living in the towns (Gläser 1982).
Their position in medieval society was clearly determined, but how did their image change and how were they interpreted in modern research? To understand how German archaeologists were trying to interpret the Slavs and integrate them into wider interpretations, we have to take a closer look at how the aims and  (Otto 1953(Otto , 1954Werner 1954), there was still no clear-cut division between a West German and the genuine East German Marxist archaeology at least on an academic level as there seemed to be later (Coblenz 1992).
Otto proclaimed that archaeology is historical science. The two sciences do not differ methodologically, and they have to apply the same kind of source criticism. According to the historical-materialistic concept outlined by Marx, archaeological source criticism has to verify and denote the level of development of the prehistoric group under investigation.
As a historical science archaeology can reconstruct the economical structure and process of production and exchange. Material culture reflects ancient societies and their level of development; it signifies the forces of production that determine people's conditions in life and their relationships in the process of production. The economical embraces the social. Thus society's genetical development can be studied retrospectively with the aid of material culture, e ven in times before the appearance of written sources (Otto 1953:1 -4 of socio-economic studies, and pointed out the renewed interest in archaeological cultural groups and cultural hi story in Marxist archaeologya breakthrough which was possible in the Soviet Union only after the denial of Nikolay Marr's theories of ethnogenesis as a false dogma by Stalin in the beginning of the 1950s (Trigger 1989:230 work resulted in the so-called archaeologicalgeographical method based on a sourcecritical concept of material culture, thereby separating "living culture" from "dead culture". Knowledge of ancient societies is severely biased depending on how and in which circumstances material remains are discovered and studied by the archaeologist. Thus material remains which are excavated belong to dead culture or retrieved culture. In contrast living culture denotes traces which were not buried and which have managed to survive above ground (Härke 1991:190 when processuell approaches were being formed and theoretical and methodological questions were explicitly debated in the United States, Great Britain and Scandinavia (Härke 1991: 191). The source-critical method outlined by Eggers seemed to be sufficient in West German archaeology, meeting the basic requirements of archaeological interpretation.
In some way these discussions foreshadowed later developments in German archaeology. The 1950s were in some way the heyday of a theoretical debate in post-war German archaeology. The shadow of Kossinna was haunting German archaeologists after the war and forcing them to emancipate and reconstitute archaeology. But the stress, strongly proposed by West German archaeologists, lay on how archaeology should be carried out on a methodological level. The theoretical outlines developed by Otto, as representative of a normative, Marxist view and by Eggers and Werner as representative of the West German source-critical type of archaeologythereby denying and rejecting all interference of ideological matters into the business of archaeologystrongly influenced how the Slavs were represented in archaeological interpretations. The latter expresses a so-called economicalcultural type that embraces material production, as well as an external, historical-cultural dimension. The historical-cultural dimension has often been understood and described mechanically in traditional research as the distribution of specific artefact types. The economical-cultural dimension has consequently been neglected. Material culture is an expression of the forces of production. The forces of production directly reflect the working process materially. There are the objects Herrmann classifies material culture according to its archaeological expressions. First there are all objects that reveal material production, in other words all archaeological finds that are man-made; second, there are artefacts and archaeological complexes that directly reflect the forces of production, such as workshops, settlements, hoards, marketplaces and mines; and finally there are objects that reveal the artificial and intellectual ideas in contemporary society, such as graves, cult places, works of art, statues, objects of sacrifice, details of clothing and so on.   5).Most famous were the projects carried out on the lake sites in Teterow (Unverzagt & Schuldt 1963) and Behren-Liibchin ( fig. 6) (Schuldt 1965 . 7) (Schuldt 1985:35 -49 10).
Both categories are connected with persons of high social prestige (Gabriel 1988:109 -110

LIVING AND DEAD IDENTITIES
The Vikings denote winners in as much as they were a powerful force in history, who founded kingdoms and vast networks of trade and power relations in the Baltic and Western Europe, who were violent raiders and also had the capacity to adapt to different social, economic and political constellations. They deserve the respect and scrutiny of scholars and the public. In the Scandinavian countries the Viking-Age represents a living identity. One main issue in Iron Age archaeology in Scandinavia concerns the process of the manifestation of the state and the reproduction of power strategies by the Germanic people (Hedeager 1990;Randsborg 1980;Sawyer 1989).This concern with the establishment of The political division of Europe after World War II into an eastern-socialist and a westerncapitalistic block reflected also geographically the "ethnical" division between the German Empire and the western Slavic regions in medieval times. Thus the GDR as a borderland was in constant need of processing an ideological and political identity which stressed the historically distinctive character of the western Slavs. In contrast, West German scholars were trying to exclude the overall impact of dominant theories as guiding principles in archaeological fieldwork and interpretations. Questions concerning ethnicity were lowered to the methodological level, such as the cartographical and source-critical method outlined by Eggers. The Oldenburg-project and the research on the Slavic sea-ports can be considered masterpieces of archaeological fieldand investigation-work on the chronological and chorological distribution of the different artefacts found at these sites. Thus the only tool kit for interpretative work remains the profound knowledge about artefacts and constructions. Consequently West German archaeology could be termed a science of workmanship and artefactual science, but one that is unable to answer questions about internal social and ethnical processes. How the Slavs have been treated in the archaeological literature is a welcome question from the view of a critical archaeology. It might be easy to point out the faults and ethnocentric views and values noticed in earlier research which helped German archaeology to get a better understanding of historic and prehistoric processes. It is not the objecti ve of this paper to re-establish a kind of Slavic consciousness and feeling of identification. It is more a feeling of sympathy as well as curiosity as to how the Slavs were treated in research and how history should appear. It further shows how important feelings of identification are when carrying out archaeological research. In my opinion the Slavic case remains a special one in which unconcious values have a strong impact on how research should be conducted and how the results should fit into already established structures of scientific procedure. Elements of this attitude towards this ethnic group have a long history and can, as we have seen above, be traced to the chronicles and law texts of the Medieval Ages. In the Slavic case it is obvious that interests are governing scientific research and that interests are governed by underlying values. Interestingly, the gap to the Slavs in East German research could be filled and their image as "the other" could be neutralized at least partially through Marxist archaeology and its theoretical constructions. The Slavs were the outsiders, the stupid and the ugly in German medieval history, and quite comparable to the image of the Jews. Their image as peasants, the working people from the countryside, was later used and adapted to a socialist image. Nevertheless, even if East German archaeology in its academical shape was deeply normative, trying to prove the dogma of historical-materialism in an archaeological context, it pinpointed the Slavs' role as victims. But this feeling of sympathy was mainly grounded in ideological and even political reasons. On the other hand West German archaeologists were hiding behind archaeological contexts and source criticism, Correot Swedish Archoeology, Vol. 6, l99ö consequently focusing on external processes that could have an impact on Slavic society.
The position of value-free research is a difficult one.
English revised by Laura Wrang.