Florin Curta Explained

Florin Curta
Birth Date:16 January 1966
Birth Place:Romania
Nationality:Romanian, American
Occupation:archaeologist, historianHonorary Member of the Romanian Academy (2023)

Biography

Curta works in the field of Balkan history and is a professor of medieval history and archaeology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.[1] Curta's first book, The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, A.D. 500–700, was named a 2002 Choice Outstanding Academic Title and won the Herbert Baxter Adams Award of the American Historical Association in 2003.[2] Curta is the editor-in-chief of the Brill series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450. In 2011, he contributed to The Edinburgh History of the Greeks. He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies, Princeton University (Spring 2007) and a visiting fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University (2015). He attends an Eastern Orthodox Christian parish.[3]

Theories and criticism

Being inspired by Reinhard Wenskus and the Vienna School of History, Curta is known for his usage of post-processual and post-structuralist approach in explaining Slavic ethnogenesis and migrations by, which argues against the mainstream view and primordial culture-historical approach in archaeology and historiography.[4] [5] [6] [7] Curta argues against theories of Slavic mass expansion from the Slavic Urheimat and denies the existence of the Slavic Urheimat. His work rejects ideas of Slavic languages as the unifying element of the Slavs or the adducing of Prague-type ceramics as an archaeological cultural expression of the Early Slavs. Instead, Curta advances an alternative (revisionist[8] [9]) hypothesis which considers the Slavs as an "ethno-political category" invented by the Byzantines which was formed by political instrumentation and interaction on the Roman Danubian frontier where barbarian elite culture flourished.[4] [10] [11] [12] [13] According to Curta, questions of identity and ethnicity are modern social constructs, imposed externally.[14]

Curta’s conjectures were met with substantial disagreement and "severe criticism in general and in detail" by other archaeologists, historians, linguists and ethnologists. They criticized what they saw as Curta's arbitrary selection of historical and archaeological data, sites and his interpretation of chronologies to support preconceived conclusions. In addition, they felt his cultural model inadequately explained the emergence and spread of the Slavs and Slavic culture.[15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] Curta has also been criticized for inadequate argumentation and for contradicting information given by Byzantine historiographers such as Theophylact Simocatta.

Although Curta's work found support by those who use a similar approach, like Walter Pohl and Danijel Džino,[21] the migrationist model remains in the view of many the most acceptable and possible to explain the spread of the Slavs as well as Slavic culture (including language).[22]

Bibliography

Edited volumes

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Interview with Florin Curta . Medievalists.net . December 24, 2011 . January 2007.
  2. Web site: Florin Curta . history.ufl.edu . University of Florida . April 11, 2019.
  3. Web site: Holt . Andrew . An Interview with Dr. Florin Curta on Communism, Faith, and Academia . apholt.com . December 25, 2014.
  4. Di Hu, "Approaches to the Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Past and Emergent Perspectives", Journal of Archaeological Research, 21(4), 2013, pp. 389–390
  5. Johannes Koder, "On the Slavic Immigration in the Byzantine Balkans", Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone: Aspects of Mobility Between Africa, Asia and Europe, 300–1500 C.E., 2020, pp. 81–100
  6. Florin Curta, The Early Slavs. Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe by Paul M. Barford (review), European Journal of Archaeology, 6(1), 2003, pp. 99–101
  7. Florin Curta, "The early Slavs in Bohemia and Moravia: a response to my critics", Archeologické rozhledy, 61 (4), 2009, pp. 725–754
  8. Wolverton . Lisa . 2003 . The Making of the Slavs: History and Archeology of the Lower Danube Region ca. 500-700 (review) . Journal of Interdisciplinary History . 34 . 1 . 92–93 . 10.1162/002219503322645655 . 143226004 . 1530-9169.
  9. Mârza . Radu . 2017 . Teaching Slavic History in Romania in 2017 . Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana . 22 . 2 . 140-156 . 10.21638/11701/spbu19.2017.211 . 1995-848X.
  10. Felix Biermann, "Kommentar zum Aufsatz von Florin Curta: Utváření Slovanů (se zvláštním zřetelem k Čechám a Moravě) – The Making of the Slavs (with a special emphasis on Bohemia and Moravia)", Archeologické rozhledy, 61 (2), 2009, pp. 337–349
  11. Boris Todorov, The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 by Florin Curta (review), Comitatus, 33, 2002, pp. 178–180
  12. Paul Stephenson, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 by Florin Curta (review), The International History Review, 24 (3), 2002, pp. 629–631
  13. Florin Curta, "The Making of the Slavs between ethnogenesis, invention, and migration", Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana, 2 (4), 2008, pp. 155–172
  14. Greenberg . Marc L. . 2002 . Common Slavic: Progress or Crisis in its Reconstruction? Notes on Recent Archaeological Challenges to Historical Linguistics . International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics . en-US . 44-45 . 197–209 . 0538-8228.
  15. Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822, Cornell University Press, 2018, pp. 124
  16. Tomáš Gábriš, Róbert Jáger, "Back to Slavic Legal History? On the Use of Historical Linguistics in the History of Slavic Law", Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 53 (1), 2019, pp. 41–42
  17. Shuvalov . Petr V. . 2008 . Изобретение проблемы (по поводу книги Флорина Курты) . Петербургские славянские и балканские исследования . Russian . 2 . 13–20 . 1995-848X.
  18. Andrej Pleterski, "The Ethnogenesis of the Slavs, the Methods and the Process", Starohrvatska prosvjeta, 3 (40), 2013, pp. 8–10, 22–25
  19. Andrej Pleterski, "The Early Slavs in the Eastern Alps and Their Periphery", in The Slavs on the Danube. Homeland Found, Editors-in-Charge Roman A. Rabinovich and Igor O. Gavritukhin, Stratum plus, No. 5, 2015, pp. 232, quote: "Однако под влиянием англосаксонских антропологических теорий возникла и третья концепция, согласно которой славяне в Европе распространялись не как «биологический» феномен, а как культурная модель образа жизни с языковым компонентом данной культурной модели (Barford 2001; Curta 2001; 2008; 2010; 2010а; Džino 2008; 2009). Недостаток данной концепции состоит в том, что она в основном сосредоточена на механизме передачи культурной модели, и гораздо меньше — на ее происхождении. На другие слабые места в ее аргументации указывает Владимир Сокол — это недостаточное знание адептами концеп1 За дружескую помощь я благодарю Владимира Нартника. №5. 2015 ции конкретных материалов, что приводит к произвольным интерпретационным выводам (Sokol 2011)."
  20. Book: Belaj . Vitomir . Belaj . Juraj . Vitomir Belaj . 2018 . Around and below Divuša: The Traces of Perun's Mother Arrival into Our Lands . Zbornik Instituta za arheologiju / Serta Instituti Archaeologici, Vol. 10. Sacralization of Landscape and Sacred Places. Proceedings of the 3rd International Scientific Conference of Mediaeval Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology . https://www.bib.irb.hr/988715 . Zagreb . Institute of Archaeology . 75–76 . 978-953-6064-36-6 . The lexical content of the living culture of the ancient Slavs before their separation refutes Curta's conclusions. As if Curta before our eyes were writing a new historiographic myth about them (Belaj, V., Belaj, J. 2018). Negative answers to such considerations were not in short supply either. Suffice it to mention the 2009 and 2013 works by the Ljubljana scholar Andrej Pleterski, and the 2010 work by the Ukrainian scholar Maksim Žih. The latter mocked Curta: "in summary, we could say that F. Curta's works are frequently structured on the principle leading "from (an a priori) concept towards sources". We may add that Curta's way of thinking is suspiciously similar to the stadial theory of the Soviet scholar Nicholas Yakovlevich Marr9 (see: Belaj, V., Belaj, J. 2018) ... In addition to the fact that Curta's conclusions cannot withstand a logical critique, they are also based only on selected evidential material he necessitated in order to infer the conclusions he had already made in advance..
  21. Danijel Džino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-Roman and Early Medieval Dalmatia, BRILL, 2010, pp. 93–94
  22. [Michel Kazanski]

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Florin Curta".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.