Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom 213
Rome to Pescara, in Sicily, and in the western country from Rome to Genoa.52
A number of these inhumations contain certain items, namely adornments
such as eagle brooches and buckles with semi-precious stone and coloured
glass inlays.53 Some have argued that these artifacts and their associated style
of dress are indicative of both Gothic identity and the locations of Gothic
settlement.54 Others challenge that equating material culture with ethnic and
social identities is a precarious methodology that has been problematized over
the past few decades.55 These dissenters have pointed out that artifacts in this
“polychrome” style were being produced across the Mediterranean during
this period.56 Important elements of the eagle brooch design, therefore, were
adopted within the empire, and cannot be said to signify some extra-Roman,
distinctly Gothic provenance.
Interestingly, some who argue for a positive relation between the brooches
and Gothic identity appreciate this last point. It is recognized that analysis of
these items must be context-specific, and that a given artifact cannot, across
time and space, remain a constant marker of identity. To think otherwise is
to misunderstand the mutable nature of both identity and the function of
symbols.57 After all, the eagle had long been a meaningful symbol among
Romans and even Huns, and it is entirely plausible that this inspired Gothic
usage.58 The brooches and their burials can be linked with the Goths because,
within Italy, their central and mainly northern distribution maps onto the
locations of Gothic settlement provided by Procopius.
Procopius also associates these settlements with military deployment,59
and this makes sound strategic sense as well: the Gothic army would have
covered transalpine routes into Italy, along the east coast to defend against
eastern imperial aggression, and across the main east—west routes over the
52 Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 68–9; Bierbrauer, Die Ostgotischen Grab, pp. 209–15; Heather,
Goths, p. 237 n. 31 notes that there are 126 such ‘Gothic’ graves.
53 For an illustrated survey of the graves: Bierbrauer, “Archeologia”.
54 See n. 49.
55 Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 336–8 for arguments against mapping Gothic identity
onto these allegedly Gothic burials; Curta, “Some Remarks on Ethnicity” for a summary of
the debate over this archaeological methodology.
56 Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, p. 337.
57 Heather, Goths, p. 311.
58 Greene, “Gothic Material Culture”, pp. 121–5.
59 The Procopian evidence was assembled by Bierbrauer, Die Ostgotischen Grab, pp. 23–41.
See also Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 66–71; Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”, pp. 40–1.