As its title suggests, the subject matter of this book is not the Slavs, but the process leading to what is now known as “the Slavs.” This process was a function of both ethnic formation and ethnic identification. In both cases, the “Slavs” were the object, not the subject. The preceding chapters have presented a series of perspectives on the history and archaeology of the Lower Danube area during the sixth and seventh centuries. Each approaced a different aspect of the process of constructing a Slavic ethnie and each highlighted specific themes and arguments. This chapter will review those themes, but will also attempt to string them all together into a tripartite conclusion. In doing so, it will focus on the major issues presented in the introduction: the migration and the making of the Slavs. Though in agreement with those who maintain that the history of the Slavs began in the sixth century, I argue that the Slavs were an invention of the sixth century. Inventing, however, presupposed both imagining or labeling by outsiders and self-identification.

MIGRATION

A brief examination of the historiography of the “Slavic problem” yields an important conclusion: the dominant discourse in Slavic studies, that of “expert” linguists and archaeologists, profoundly influenced the study of the early Slavs.