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DG-2023, 431-450

Migrations of Ethnonyms, Migrations of Peoples. Continuity and Change in the Ethnic Landscape around the Black Sea through the Study of Late Antique Lists of Ethnonyms

S. Liccardo

Universität Wien

 

For citation: Liccardo, Salvatore. Migrations of Ethnonyms, Migrations of Peoples. Continuity and Change in the Ethnic Landscape around the Black Sea through the Study of Late Antique Lists of Ethnonyms // Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy (The Earliest States of Eastern Europe). 2023: The Black Sea Region in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Problems of Historical Geography / Editor of the volume A.V. Podossinov. Мoscow: GAUGN-Press, 2023. S. 431–450.

 

DOI: 10.32608/1560-1382-2023-44-431-450

 

Abstract: This contribution aims at highlighting the importance of the study of ethnonyms and, in particular, of lists of ethnonyms for understanding late antique discourses of ethnicity. The selected sources for this contribution are the Laterculus Veronensis (314 CE) and the Cosmographia of Julius Honorius (5th century CE). Both works consist in a series of catalogues of place names and ethnonyms, which provide invaluable material for the analysis of the ethnic vocabulary of the time. Drafted with different purposes, these texts serve to elucidate the role of ethnonyms in both the political communication and the educational system of Late Antiquity. In this context, as a cultural and geographical borderland, the area north and east of the Black Sea represents an ideal subject of studies. Its apparently frozen representation in several Late Roman sources exemplifies the dynamic between direct knowledge of the area, the persistence of centuries-old ethnographic traditions, and the agenda of the authors. The following examination will focus on a few ethnic names, such as the Vandali and the Sciri, whose transmission history evidences continuity and change of the ethnic discourse applied to the populations inhabiting this geographical area. In Late Antiquity, the Greco-Roman world experienced numerous drastic transformations that made familiar representations of the ethnic landscape increasingly outdated. The selected sources represent two different examples of the attempt of reconciliating the developments on the ground with the older but authoritative ethnographic tradition. In conclusion, these registers reveal the importance of ethnonyms within the organization of knowledge and the learning techniques of the time, as well as the political undertone of ethnic names and their lists.

Keywords:
Late Antiquity, ethnonyms, Black Sea, Sciri, Laterculus Veronensis, Cosmographia of Julius Honorius, ethnic discourse
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