190 Halsall
power. This could be linked with competition for royal patronage within
local communities and among the political elite. We must also, however, con-
clude that people adopting this costume in public ritual were not necessarily
(and possibly were unlikely to have been) Danubian incomers. Nonetheless,
these burials’ fairly limited number show that while a death produced stress
the threat posed to local standing was not critical. These displays neverthe-
less illustrate the tensions involved in establishing local power structures. The
finds’ distribution thus most likely reveals where such stress and competi-
tion were most common. These surely included areas where Gothic newcom-
ers dwelt, but the artefacts’ distribution need have no relationship to that of
Gothic settlements overall. The evidence, almost invariably discovered long
ago in obscure and even dubious circumstances, is of such poor quality that
more detailed social and chronological analyses are impossible. Nonetheless,
in however attenuated a form, these data show that the political and military
power associated with the Goths reached down to local societies and their
power struggles. The objects which seemingly manifested a connection with
FIGURE 8.1 Map of supposed Ostrogothic burial sites in Italy and Dalmatia
Map by Guy Halsall