migration

Abstract

No serious scholar believes that migration of various kinds did not play a significant role in events of the first millennium AD, but the extent and importance of any large-group migration is particularly controversial. This paper seeks to think again about this highly controversial dimension of the subject area. Given that neither revisionist accounts of the operation of group identities, nor archaeological materials offer any sure guidance on the matter, it suggests that some the available historical materials are worth taking more seriously, and explores the kind of picture that emerges from them.1