The spread of the Slavs stands as one of the most formative yet least understood events in European history. Starting in the 6th century CE, Slavic groups began to appear in the written records of Byzantine and Western sources, settling lands from the Baltic to the Balkans, and from the Elbe to the Volga. Yet, in stark contrast to the famous migrations of Germanic tribes like the Goths or Langobards or the legendary conquests of the Huns, the Slavic story has long been a difficult puzzle for historians of the European Middle Ages.
This is partly because early Slavic communities left behind rather little for archaeologists to find: they practiced cremation, built simple houses, and produced plain, undecorated pottery. Perhaps most significantly, they did not leave behind written records of their own for several centuries. As a result, the term “Slavs” itself has been ambiguous, sometimes imposed by outside chroniclers and often mis-used in later nationalist or ideological debates. Where did these people come from, and how did they so thoroughly change the cultural and linguistic map of Europe?
