The Khazar Economy: Economic Integration or Disintegration? 183
The designation of the eighth century as the lower limit of the Saltovo cul-
ture may be correct, but does not necessarily mean that the sedentarization
processes which began to develop among the Bulgar and Khazar population
did not start earlier. The theory, according to which during their migration
northwards the Alans, while passing through the lands of the Bulgars, man-
aged to influence them so much in the scope of a few years, that the Bulgars
not only began to settle en masse, but also adopted the Alanian agricultural
and stock-breeding economy and culture, seems quite incredible.57 The evo-
lutionary approach hinders the explanation of the development of agriculture
among the Bulgar versions of the Saltovo culture. It also prevents the search for
sedentary Bulgar communities prior to the second half of the seventh and the
eighth century, despite the existing data on the matter.
A striking example in this regard is the description, given by I. Baranov, of
the settlement of some of the Bulgars in the Crimea. Until the middle of the
seventh century, their economy was nomadic and corresponded to the first
phase of nomadism (camp or year-round nomadism). These Bulgars spent the
winter in pastures along the northern shores of the Sea of Azov. After passing
through the Taman Peninsula, they spent each spring in the Crimea, before
moving on to the steppes beyond the Isthmus of Perekop. And each winter
they returned to the northern shores of the Sea of Azov. The Khazar invasion
closed off this Bulgar group in the Crimean Peninsula.58 “As a consequence of
of the other five types (which were named Upper-Don, Lower-Don, Cis-Azov, Crimean
and Dagestani).
57 S. Pletneva presented the situation in a similar way in 1967 (Pletneva 1967, 185). At the
same time, she stated in the same book that “it was the Bulgars, who, mixed with some
Alans, were the main creators of the Saltovo-Maiaki culture” (Pletneva 1967, 188). With
regard to the Alans, Mikheev’s view that the economic development in the forest-steppe
zone (the Alanian one) of the Saltovo culture in the Severski Donets area cannot be
explained with the sedentarization processes, seems completely logical (Mikheev 2004,
89). Tortika 2006a, 120–121 expresses a similar opinion.
58 Baranov 1990, 15. Aibabin 2003, 56 is of a similar opinion. Tortika 2006a, 129 presents
the sedentarization process of the Bulgars as the result of external pressure or migra-
tion, related to the Khazar invasion (in the case of the Bulgars of Asparukh), or to Khazar
pressure (on the Bulgars in the Crimea or the Don Region). According to him, some sort
of sedentarization is visible among the Bulgars, since from the late seventh century and
until the mid–ninth century a few “traces of the transition of the nomads to a sedentary
or semi-sedentary lifestyle” appeared in various places in Eastern Europe (on the steppes
borders, in the forest-steppe region and the foothills). Tortika 2006a, 112–129 therefore
assumes that for the Bulgars the sedentarization process played a significantly smaller
role than presumed earlier. This process was discontinued around the middle of the ninth
century, as the Bulgars began to pour into the nomadic groups of the Magyars and the