ABSTRACT
Archaeology, Hans-Jürgen Eggers wrote, is concerned with the study of "dead civilizations" and thus, naturally enough, with the identity of the deceased. 2 This study will discuss the light that archaeology may or may not shed on questions of ethnic identity during the period when barbarian generally Germanic peoples were depicted in the historical sources as settling in the western empire and establishing kingdoms there. The focus will be on Gaul, which at that time, as shall be seen, was a crossroads. Whether evidence comes from settlement sites, artifact types, or, as often is the case, cemeteries, the question of ethnic attribution at once arises. After all, ancient societies of all types, including Greeks, Romans, and barbarian gentes, displayed cultural particularisms whose material vestiges archaeology, using a comparative perspective, tries to discern. Indeed, the variation revealed in material culture is the archaeologist's stock-in-trade. To correlate variation with ethnic identities is a very tricky business (some would say impossible or fruitless), at least without reliable written sources to help. 3
