The Early Germans 2nd Edition by Malcolm Todd (PDF)

Description

For many centuries Germanic peoples occupied much of northern and central Europe. From the fourth century onward migrant groups extended their power and influence over much of western Europe and beyond to North Africa. In so doing, they established enduring states in France, Spain, Italy and Britain. This illustrated book makes use of archaeological and literary sources to outline the ethnogenesis and history of the early Germanic peoples. It provides an overview of current knowledge of these peoples, their social structure, settlements, trade, customs, religion, craftsmanship and relations with the Roman Empire. In this second edition, the author incorporates important new archaeological evidence and reports on advances in historical interpretation. In particular, he offers new insights into developments in central and eastern Europe and the implications for our understanding of migration and settlement patterns, ethnicity and identity. Ten new plates have been added featuring significant new sites discovered in recent years.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Book Description For many centuries Germanic peoples occupied much of northern and central Europe. From the fourth century onward, migrant groups extended their power and influence over much of western Europe and beyond to North Africa. In so doing, they established enduring states in France, Spain, Italy, and Britain. This illustrated book makes use of archaeological and literary sources to outline the ethnogenesis and history of the early Germanic peoples. It provides an overview of current knowledge of these peoples, their social structure, settlements, trade, customs, religion, craftsmanship, and relations with the Roman Empire. The second edition incorporates important new archaeological evidence and reports on advances in historical interpretation. In particular, it offers new insights into developments in central and eastern Europe and the implications for our understanding of migration and settlement patterns, ethnicity, and identity. New plates have been added featuring significant sites discovered in recent years. From the Inside Flap For many centuries Germanic peoples occupied much of northern and central Europe. From the fourth century onward migrant groups extended their power and influence over much of western Europe and beyond to North Africa. In so doing, they established enduring states in France, Spain, Italy and Britain. This illustrated book makes use of archaeological and literary sources to outline the ethnogenesis and history of the early Germanic peoples. It provides an overview of current knowledge of these peoples, their social structure, settlements, trade, customs, religion, craftsmanship and relations with the Roman Empire. In this second edition, the author incorporates important new archaeological evidence and reports on advances in historical interpretation. In particular, he offers new insights into developments in central and eastern Europe and the implications for our understanding of migration and settlement patterns, ethnicity and identity. Ten new plates have been added featuring significant new sites discovered in recent years. From the Back Cover For many centuries Germanic peoples occupied much of northern and central Europe. From the fourth century onward migrant groups extended their power and influence over much of western Europe and beyond to North Africa. In so doing, they established enduring states in France, Spain, Italy and Britain. This illustrated book makes use of archaeological and literary sources to outline the ethnogenesis and history of the early Germanic peoples. It provides an overview of current knowledge of these peoples, their social structure, settlements, trade, customs, religion, craftsmanship and relations with the Roman Empire. In this second edition, the author incorporates important new archaeological evidence and reports on advances in historical interpretation. In particular, he offers new insights into developments in central and eastern Europe and the implications for our understanding of migration and settlement patterns, ethnicity and identity. Ten new plates have been added featuring significant new sites discovered in recent years. About the Author Malcolm Todd is an Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and former Principal of Trevelyan College in the University of Durham. He is the author interalia of ‘The Northern Barbarians’ (Second Edition, Blackwell Publishing, 1987) and ‘Roman Britain’ (Third Edition, Blackwell Publishing, 1999), editor of ‘The Blackwell Companion to Roman Britain’ (Blackwell Publishing, 2003) and a contributor to ‘The Cambridge Ancient History’ and ‘Der Neue Pauly’. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Overview This is a 266-page paperback book, 6″ x 9″ in format dealing with the subject of the early German tribes with particular focus on the so-called “migration period” from about 450 to 700. Malcolm Todd is an Emeritus Professor of Archaeology from the University of Durham in England, and he wrote this book in 1992. It has stood the test of time and a second edition was published in 2004. There are 36 black and white illustrations including photographs, maps and hand drawings. The author describes it as a “general introduction to a huge and complex field of study.” I found this book to be quite technical which made me assume it is aimed at professionals in the field of ancient European history. This is a rather small target market, but I am guessing that these professional historians could rate the book at five stars.Organization The first 136 pages give a general sweep of six subtopics: the land and its people, the social fabric of these ancient tribes, the relationship and interaction of these tribes with the Roman Empire, burial customs, trade patterns especially with the Roman Empire and a catch-all section on religion, human sacrifice, myths, attitude toward Christianity, craftsmanship and the beginnings of German art. I bought the book hoping to learn about the “everyday life” of these ancient German tribes, and this first section was most useful for my purposes. In the second section, pages 137 to 264, the author provides a de tailed report on the movements and main events for about a dozen different German tribes starting with the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, then the Suebi and Vandals, next the Franks, the Alamanni and the Burgundians, then the Saxons, Frisians and Scandinavians and finally the Gepids and the Lombards. Unless you are already an expert in this period of history, one may find this section a little overwhelming in its detail and the blur of dates, movements and battles. Most of the action takes place outside of present-day Germany with the Visigoths settling in Spain, the Vandals conquering and briefly occupying North Africa, the Lombards taking over northern Italy, etc.What I found useful I am a retired businessman doing research in preparation for writing about the everyday lives of my German ancestors all the way back to the Iron Age. I bought the book hoping to learn some things about the early German tribes who were tantalizingly mentioned briefly by Julius Caesar and later by Tacitus – such as the Cherusci who famously defeated and slaughtered the Roman Legions in AD 9 and thus stopped the advance of the Roman Empire more or less at the banks of the Rhine River. I wanted to learn what happened to the Alamanni. (I learned they were absorbed by the Franks.) I wanted to learn about the background of the Franks. Were they French or German? (I learned that they were a German tribe originated in present-day Germany and migrating west into present-day France.) I learned about the ancient German gods, their burial customs, their houses and something about their agrarian way of life. The author’s expertise in archaeology was especially useful for this book because this period of 450 to 700 is often referred to as the Dark Ages because of the paucity of historical records. Todd does excellent work in using coin findings at each site to date the event that transpired there. All of this was good and made me glad that I bought and read the book.What could have been improved The author assumes that his readers have a strong background in the subject, and therefore he uses Latin terms such as the “Roman foedus” and ancient place names without explaining the present-day correspondent. For example, he did explain that when a tribe moved into “Noricum” this was more or less present-day Austria, but I never did figure out the location of “Moesia” which the Ostrogoths used as their base along the lower Danube. A glossary would have been very helpful in sorting out these place names and explaining these ancient Latin terms. The second half of the book which tracks the various German tribes is almost completely about the events taking place outside of present-day Germany. Insofar as these German tribes (Lombards, Burgundians, Vandals, Visigoths, etc.) have been assimilated with the majority population where they eventually settled, the book didn’t really tell me very much about the ancestors of the people living in present-day Germany – the Prussians, the Swabians, the Bavarians, the Hessians, the Saxons and others.Who might benefit from this book This book seems to be written for PhD students in ancient or early medieval European history. It fills a gap between the plethora of books about the Roman Empire and even more books about Europe in the High and Late Medieval periods. If you have an above average interest in the story of the ancient German tribes and their movements and how they engaged with the Roman Empire, this book is for you. I give the book four stars for the general reader such as myself.

⭐This book is well written. The strength of the work is that it strives to cover the majority of the Germanic peoples/tribes and provide a general introduction. The author is clearly well versed and knowledgeable. By itself however I find it insufficient as it often fails to incorporate that subject matter into the broader framework of the relevant history. Having said that, this is fully disclosed by the author’s statement in the foreword that “In a single small volume many major subjects can be only briefly touched on, while others have been excluded only for want of space”. As an example of the latter, on pg 205 the author writes “The detailed history of Germanic settlement into southern Britain is a well-developed subject of its own and one which cannot be adequately summarized in a book of this kind”. I think devoting a few pages than 4.5 to the subject would have benefited the reader. The development of the Germanic people from the neolithic period is barely touched upon. If you are not familiar with the history of Europe up to 600 CE/AD the book is of little help in this regard and much of the information will not make as much sense as it could have. In a sense, if you don’t have sufficient background knowledge the content of the book will be hard to interpret on its own, and if you have done extensive prior reading in the history of the period the book does not add much. One major weakness is the illustrations. There are many, which is a positive, but the figure legends are rather useless. Often they are just a title. The many maps of settlements have no key/legend to assist in the interpretation of what is shown. What are the various little black dots, the circles, the shaded areas? The book would have also benefited from more geographical maps (again if properly annotated) to assist the reader with an understanding of the many migrations of the tribes. having said that, I find these issues to be rather general in history books (I am a biologist and in our field detailed meaningful legends are exposition of figures is key). The cultural history is also not as well addressed as I had hoped. The issues of Arian and Catholic Christianity are touched upon here and there and there is a brief description of the pagan gods of the Germanic peoples, but in the end the information is not well placed into context. There is almost no discussion of the transition into the Christian religion, even for crucial events such as the conversion of Clovis I. Wikipedia does a better job in this regard. Another downside is that the book is under-referenced. Most of the time, when a specific statement caught my interest that was no direct sourcing of the statement that would have allowed me to seek the source for additional information.In conclusion, while I am glad I read the work and I am pleased to add it to my library, I would consider that if you do not have sufficient prior background knowledge this book won’t satisfy your interest in the early Germanic peoples beyond learning their names and some facts, which I find are otherwise often presented without a solid historical context. Conversely, if you have even just an interested amateur level of prior background regarding the history of Europe in the relevant time period (as I consider to have) this book seems superficial. Having said that it does provide more details into Germanic graves and material culture than most other sources I have read. If you are interested in the subject matter, by all means give it a read. In my own experience, it left me wanting more. If the author published a book on the subject consisting of 3-4 times the number of pages in this book I would certainly buy it and have high expectations.

⭐This book helps to dissolve at least two popular myths about the early Germans: First, they were not an unarticulated bunch, and secondly, they did not consider themselves Germans. Professor Todd explains in this short and well-structured volume how these myths came about. The Germans had a lot of bad press, and did not produce written accounts of themselves apart from stories of the individual tribes, so for centuries the Roman version persevered. The oldest known use of the word “Germans” is from Poseidonus in the second century BC, to distinguish them from the Celts and the Scythians. The Romans continued to use this term, but the people they refer to did not consider themselves as one people, but instead as Goths, Franks, Langobards and so on.”The Early Germans” is divided in two main parts. The first is an account of the landscape, the society and its institutions, the customs, the trade, diplomacy and religion. Much of this knowledge derives from archeological sites, and Professor Todd makes expert use of the diffuse material available in this field. The second part describes the different tribes. Some tribes are known almost by name only, while others migrated to the south and west and created kingdoms and realms in the old Roman lands.This book is part of Blackwell’s “The People of Europe” series and is highly recommended. If you want to read more about the German tribes in the same series, you should try Edward James: The Franks, Peter Heather: The Goths and Neil Christie: The Lombards. There is also a volume on the Vandals, but is it rather hard to come by. “The Early Germans” tells its story in 285 pages with lots of maps and illustrations, and the editors should be complimented for a presentation with a good and readable typeset.

⭐Un’ottima lettura per chi è alle prime armi nello studio delle civiltà germaniche. Questo lavoro si sta rivelando di grande aiuto per l’impostazione della mia tesi.Ouvrage incomparable pour qui écrit des ouvrages d’histoire sur cette époque. Mais il aurait pu etre plus fourni, en particulier pour ce qui concerne la civilisation matérielle.

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