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The early Slavs comprised a diverse group of tribal societies living during the Migration period and early medieval Europe (c. 5th to 10th centuries) whose tribal organizations indirectly created the foundations for today’s Slavic nations (via the Slavic states of the High Middle Ages). The first written mention of the name ''Slavs'' dates to the 6th century, by which time the Slavic tribes inhabited a vast area of central-eastern Europe. Over the following two centuries, the Slavs expanded further, toward the Balkans and the Alps in the south and west, and towards the Volga River in the north and east.〔 "between the sixth and seventh centuries, large parts of Europe came to be controlled by Slavs, a process less understood and documented than that of the Germanic ethnogenesis in the west. Yet the effects of Slavicization were far more profound". 〕 From the 9th century the Slavs gradually converted to Christianity (Byzantine Orthodoxy and Rome-centred Catholicism), and by the 12th century they formed the core population within a number of medieval Christian states: the East Slavs in Kievan Rus', the South Slavs in Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, and the West Slavs in Poland and the Holy Roman Empire (Pomerania, Bohemia, Moravia). By the 6th century AD, the various native Iranian ethnic groups of Eastern Europe, comprising the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans had been assimilated and absorpted (e.g. Slavicisation) by the Early (Proto)-Slavic peoples of the region. ==Overview== The meaning of the term "Slav" depends upon the context in which it is used. This term can be used to refer to a culture (or cultures) living north of the River Danube, east of the River Elbe, and west of the River Vistula during the 530s CE. In addition, Slav is an identifier for the common ethnic group. Furthermore, Slav denotes any language with linguistic ties to the modern Slavic language family (which has no connection to a common culture or shared ethnicity).〔Paul M. Barford, 2004. Identity And Material Culture Did The Early Slavs Follow The Rules Or Did They Make Up Their Own? East Central Europe 31, no. 1:102–103〕 Despite the various notions of Slav, it is unclear whether any of these descriptions add to an accurate representation of that group's history, since historians, such as George Vernadsky, Florin Curta, and Michael Karpovich have called into question how, why, and to what degree the Slavs were cohesive as a society between the 6th and 9th centuries.〔Pots, Slavs and 'Imagined Communities': Slavic Archaeologies And The History of The Early Slavs. European Journal of Archaeology 4, no. 3:367–384; George Verdansky and Michael Karpovich, Ancient Russia, vol. 1 of History of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943)〕 When discussing the evidence that specialists use to construct a plausible history of the Slavs, the information tends to fall into three avenues of research: the archeological, the historiographic, and the linguistic. Archaeologically, early Slavic physical evidence ranges from hill forts, to ceramic pots and fragments, to abodes. Archaeologists however face difficulties in distinguishing which finds are truly Slavic and which are not.〔Sebastian Brather. 2004. "The Archaeology of the Northwestern Slavs (Seventh To Ninth Centuries)".'' East Central Europe'' 31, no. 1:78–81.〕 In addition, many of these findings are either inaccurately carbon-dated or so isolated that they do not reflect organized Slavic settlement.〔Brather, ''The Archaeology of the Northwestern Slavs'', p.79〕 Historiographically, a number of sources describe the Slavs. However, there are several problems using these texts to build upon the available knowledge of the early Slavs, even when used in a multidisciplinary fashion. The useful historical information about the Slavs from these texts is either cryptic or lacks any mention of their sources. Moreover, these works tend to discuss the Slavs only in terms of their effects on surrounding empires, particularly the Byzantines and the Franks. The variety of names from historiographic texts that refer to the Slavs, such as the Antes, Sclaveni and Venethi, in addition to the locales and regions which they at one point or another occupied, makes it laborious to establish a geographical boundary for major Slavic settlement. This is a troublesome task when the names of these places have not always remained the same or even survived. Most importantly, the majority of the texts utilized to describe the Slavs during this period are either second-hand accounts or describe an encounter with these groups years, decades, or centuries after it occurred. While earlier texts contextualize the Slavs' early history and later development, texts written about an event long after it had occurred make the relevant information less reliable. Linguistically, the pursuit of a Slavic history is also problematic. This pursuit has focused on three main areas of study: Slavic geographical names, names of flora and fauna, and "lexical and structural similarities and differences between Slavic and other languages.〔Barford, Identity And Material Culture, 103〕 " The use of ethnic identifiers in written texts during and after the 500s, such as the description of the Slavs as Antes, Sclaveni, and Venethi by their immediate neighbors, produces problems. Moreover, the concept of ethnicity during this period was so fluid that different ethnicities would be ascribed to the same group depending upon the situation of the encounter, such as in Michal Parczewski's map. This map, a conglomeration of different written fragments about the Slavs' homeland, selectively draws upon these fragments. In order to validate his preconceived theories about Slavic migration, Parczewski omitted information from his sources which directly contradicted his conclusions, thus making the map of Slavic settlement in relation to their neighbors during the 6th century extremely suspect.〔Barford,'' Identity And Material Culture'', pp. 104-105〕 Moreover, the association of particular styles of pots and burials with specific ethnonyms by archaeologists, and extremely selective use of historiographic materials, presumes a direct connection between language and ethnicity. These facts reinforce how subjective ethnic identification can be, especially in a region where many tribal groups existed and identified themselves as distinct from one another.〔Barford, ''Identity And Material Culture'', pp. 105-106〕 The history of the early Slavs is inseparable from the political agenda behind much 19th- and 20th-century archaeological, linguistic, and historiographic research. Florin Curta, an expert on the history of the early Slavs, contends that the process of creating such a history "was a function of both ethnic formation and ethnic identification". However, this process became extremely blurred by a myriad of interests. These agendas ranged from Pan-Slavic researchers in Central and Eastern Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries,〔Barford,'' Identity and Material Culture'', p. 99〕 to post-World War Two European nations strengthening their newfound legitimacy,〔Barford, ''Identity and Material Culture, 99–101, Pots, Slavs and 'Imagined Communities': Slavic Archaeologies And The History of The Early Slavs. European Journal of Archaeology 4, no. 3:370, Pavel M. Dolukhanov, The Early Slavs (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1996), 7〕 to contemporary politicization of historical, archaeological, and linguistic discourse.〔Barford, ''Identity and Material Culture'', pp. 100, 102〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Early Slavs」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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