"Slavic" pottery
Aside from genetics and linguistics, there is another tool to identify "origin", namely the spread of certain technologies. There is hardly a technology that has been studied more extensively by archaeologists than pottery - in fact the most common material used to distinguish pre- and early metal-using cultures.
A key innovation here has been the invention of the pottery wheel. It is first documented for the late 4th millennium BC in Mesopotamia, but may in fact have arrived there from the Indus valley. During the third millennium, the technology spread to the Eastern Mediterranean (Anatolia, Levant, Egypt, Aegean islands), and latest by the first half of the second millennium it arrived on the Eastern Balkans (
http://www.aegeobalkanprehistory.net/article.php?id_art=1). During the Iron Age, the pottery wheel is, among others, used by Etrurians (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucchero), the Scythians in the Carpathian basin ((
http://regeszet.org.hu/images/angol/a_007.pdf) and most likely also along the Western Black Sea, and presumably also Hallstatt- La Tene Continental Celts. On the British Isles, however it only arrives in the 1st century BC with the immigration of the Belgae. While the use of the pottery wheel is widespread across all of the Roman empire, it only reaches the Germanics via the Alemanni in SW Germany (from the 3rd century AD) and the Franks (from the 5th century AD). The penetration of Germania parallels the Frankish expansion - wheeled pottery arrives in Schleswig, i.e. at what was the Southern Danish border during that period, in the 11th century (
http://www.academia.edu/1736261/Ubung_Sachkultur_der_Balten_Slawen_und_Skandinavier , in German).
So, what about the Slavs? If they were Dinaric, or at least NW Pontic in origin, shouldn't they have used the pottery wheel? In fact, the most commonly used tool to archeologically trace Slavic expansion on the Balkans and north of the Carpathians has been finds of ceramics of the Prague-Korchak type, and related variants such as the Leipzig group (middle Elbe) and the Sukow-Dziedziche group (Western and central Baltic Sea). These ceramics are hand-made, i.e. without using the pottery wheel, and sparsely decorated (see the example of Leipzig pottery below).
The whole concept of "Slavic" Prague-Korchak type pottery has been criticized from multiple angles, including dating problems, and the inability to assign ceramics to ethno-linguistics (the Anglo-Saxon migration in England, e.g., coincided with a marked decrease in the use of the pottery wheel there, so the appearance of hand-made ceramics must not necessarily relate to Slavs, but may have been effected by Germanics as well). For an extensive critique see
http://www.academia.edu/231240/The_Prague_type._A_critical_approach_to_pottery_classification. For the moment, it suffices to constate that mainstream, especially Russian, Polish and Czech, but also a lot of German archaeology has traditionally equated Slavs with simple, hand-made pottery.
Now, let's look at another culture assumed to be early Slavic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipoteşti-Cândeşti_culture
The
Penkovka culture (so called in its Ukrainian part) or
Ipotesti-Candesti culture (in Romania) is an archaeological culture
Ukraine spanning
Moldova and reaching into
Romania. Its western boundary is usually taken to at the middle Prut and Dniester rivers, where contact with the
Korchak culture occurs.
The core of the culture seems to be in
Left-bank Ukraine, especially along the Sula, Seim, Psel, Donets and Oril rivers,
[2][3] but its territory extends to
Right-bank Ukraine, and Penkovka pottery is also found in eastern and southern Romania,
where it co-exists with wheel-made pottery of late Roman derivation; and is referred to as the
Ipotesti-Candesti culture by Romanian archaeologists.
[4] Penkovka-type pottery has even been found in Byzantine forts in the north-eastern Balkans.
[5] "
Nomadic" style wheel-made pottery (called Pastyrske or Saltovo ware) also occurs in the Ukrainian Penkovka sites as well as in the lower Danube and Bulgaria, but is most commonly found within the
Saltovo-Mayaki culture, associated with Bulgars, Khazars and Alans.
[6][7]
Hand-made Penkovka pottery is distinguished from
Prague-Korchak types on the basis of its biconical profile and tendency for out-turned rims.
[8] However, Florin Curta has argued that there can be no simple relationship between type of ceramic vessel and the ethnicity of groups which consumed them. E. Teodor performed a detailed analysis of ceramic vessels in 6th century southeastern Europe, and discovered a complex picture which cannot be reduced to 2 or 3 broad 'archaeological cultures', as each microregion and even individual site shows idisyncrasies in their ceramic profile and degree of connectivity to other regions of 'Slavic Europe'.
Again the concept here is clear: Wheel-made pottery = late Roman, hand-made (south Ukrainian Penkovka)= Slavic. The "Nomadic style" wheel made pottery (obviously, Nomads didn't have anything else to carry, why not take a pottery wheel around...) complicates things a bit, see the map of the Saltovo culture below:
Here an extract from a paper about the Slavic expansion into the Carpathian basin (
http://mek.oszk.hu/03400/03407/html/47.html):
The Slavs who arrived through the Hargita reached the upper valley of the Küküllő rivers around the middle of the 7th century. The 'Prague type' pottery found in the region must date from the very beginning of settlement. The hand-made pots are more of an Avar type, and the utilization of potter's wheels probably spread from territories controlled by the Avars. This pattern is found on sites in the Kis-Küküllő valley. The settlement near the Lóc creek, at Bözöd-Doborotványa-Nagyszénafű, consists of huts with ovens made of stone slabs; 7th century, early Slavic pots were found in its lower layer, and 7th–8th century, late Slavic pots, bearing the mark of Avar influence, in the upper.
"
utilization of potter's wheels probably spread from territory controlled by the Avars.." - as if there wasn't any indication of Scythians using the pottery wheel already a millennium earlier in the region.
Another example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justiniana_Prima
Justiniana Prima (
Serbian: Царичин град) was a
Byzantine city that existed from 535 to 615, and currently an archaeological site, near today's
Lebane,
Leskovac district in southern
Serbia. It was founded by Emperor
Justinian I and served as the seat of an Archbishopric that had jurisdiction of the Central Balkans. (..)
In 615 the city was destroyed by invading
Avars coming from north of the Danube. (..)
Two fibulae
[2] and
Slavic pottery made 550–600 show that a considerable part of the inhabitants of Justiniana Prima were Slavs before the Avar incursion.
Bottom lines:
- There is no indication of a northward diffusion of the use of the pottery wheel from the Balkans, which had a long tradition in its use, to north of the Carpathians during the second half of the first millennium AD. This makes a Dinaric origin of the Slavs quite unlikely.
- There are OTOH clear signs that hand-made pottery, as common north of the Carpathians, expanded into the Balkans. This may either be accepted as proof of Slavic immigration into the Balkans primarily from the north (and not from the NW Black Sea, which had a pottery wheel tradition as well). Alternatively, the advance of hand-made pottery may be regarded as relating to the general breakdown of long-distance trade relations and the incursion of various "Barbarians". Under such a scenario, most of the "official" chronology of Slavic settlement on the Balkans requires critical review.