Славянские «племена» Восточной Европы X – первой половины XI века: аутентификация, локализация и хронология
Slavic «Tribes» of Eastern Europe in the 10th – the first half of the 11th century: Authentication, Localization and Chronology

Summary/Abstract: The article provides an overview of Old-Russian, Byzantine, Latin, Arabic and Jewish-Khazar texts of the 10th – the beginning of the 12th century, in which there are mentions of ethnonyms, which can be considered as the names of Slavic «tribal» communities. These historical evidences («Bavarian Geographer», the letter of the Khazar king Joseph, a treatise «De Administrando Imperio», Primary Chronicle and some others) are researched with the help of text’s critics to define their historical authenticity. Special attention is paid to the coincidences of these texts, which are a key argument for the reality of denotation-societies behind these designation-ethnonyms. Particular attention is focused on verifying and assessing the reliability of the historical and geographical information about Slavic «tribes» in the early Old Russian Chronicles. The paper collects and examines historical and linguistic data about the key Slavic communities of Eastern Europe (Polyane, Ulichi, Drevljane, Krivichi, Sloveni and some others). Separately the archaeological information about the areas for which they were located in the 10th–11th centuries is reviewed. It is concluded that behind the equal ethnonyms in terms of language and literary context of earlier chronicles can be «hidden» different types of communities (political, territorial or others). In some cases it is impossible to determine the type of community-denotation even hypothetically (for example, Dregovichi). There is no reason to date the emergence of any community much earlier fixing its name, the names of its leaders or other onomastic markers in the written sources.

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