Try this article on identifying the DNA of Vandals: http://originhunters.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/vandals-dna-leaving-genetic-graffiti.html
For a big read, the Friesian.com website has a whole rack of detailed linguistic analysis of the who, what and where of the barabrians including Goths and Vandals. But you'll need to sit down with a cuppa and give it some serious attention! http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm
Goths in Italy, Vandals in Africa
The Roman emperors of the later 300s and early 400s mishandled their relationships with their guest-mercenary barbarians, time and again. Part of this mismanagement included inciting what we would now call racial hatred, or ethnic cleansing. Goth residents were attacked and killed in riots in Constantinople in 400, and in 403, Honorious ordered the families of Goth mercenaries to be slaughtered.
These events indicate another salient point: 'non-Goths' must have been able to identify their targets. Goths had been living in and around the edges of the Roman Empire for at least two generations - were they still easily identifiable, and if so, how?
It makes me reflect on how we handle identity and difference in modern western Europe. Accent, food smells, jewellery preferences and clothing - all mutable things, and yet so very important to us.
Remember too that when this break-down of the Goth-Roman relationship happened, there were many 'ethnically barbarian' people who identified themselves completely as Roman.
Stilicho, for example - aware of his Vandal background but every inch a Roman general.
Honorious's actions served to alienate thousands of these Romanised barbarians, who swelled the ranks of the Goth resistance.
This Goth army under a charismatic leader, Alaric, sacked the city of Rome twice, in 408 and 410. Then they headed for Rome's granaries across the sea in Carthage. They didn't make it, but they didn't leave Italy either.
At the same time that the Goths were terrorising Italy, a loose confedration of Vandals, Alans, and other Germanic people were progressing unhindered westwards across Europe. They were diverted from Gaul by the Franks, yet another mercenary barbarian tribe who were working in Gaul. Moved on, the Vandal confederation were granted foederati status in Iberia by 409.
The Vandal - Alan alliance was creaky and after a decade of uneasy co-existence in Iberia, the Vandals moved on to North Africa. Using fleets taken from the ports of southern Spain they established by the 430s a lucrative kingdom based on the central islands of the Mediterranean, the granaries of Carthage, and piracy.
The Anglo-Saxon word for the Mediterrananean was the 'Wendelsae' - the Vandals' Sea.
These events indicate another salient point: 'non-Goths' must have been able to identify their targets. Goths had been living in and around the edges of the Roman Empire for at least two generations - were they still easily identifiable, and if so, how?
It makes me reflect on how we handle identity and difference in modern western Europe. Accent, food smells, jewellery preferences and clothing - all mutable things, and yet so very important to us.
Remember too that when this break-down of the Goth-Roman relationship happened, there were many 'ethnically barbarian' people who identified themselves completely as Roman.
Stilicho, for example - aware of his Vandal background but every inch a Roman general.
Honorious's actions served to alienate thousands of these Romanised barbarians, who swelled the ranks of the Goth resistance.
This Goth army under a charismatic leader, Alaric, sacked the city of Rome twice, in 408 and 410. Then they headed for Rome's granaries across the sea in Carthage. They didn't make it, but they didn't leave Italy either.
At the same time that the Goths were terrorising Italy, a loose confedration of Vandals, Alans, and other Germanic people were progressing unhindered westwards across Europe. They were diverted from Gaul by the Franks, yet another mercenary barbarian tribe who were working in Gaul. Moved on, the Vandal confederation were granted foederati status in Iberia by 409.
The Vandal - Alan alliance was creaky and after a decade of uneasy co-existence in Iberia, the Vandals moved on to North Africa. Using fleets taken from the ports of southern Spain they established by the 430s a lucrative kingdom based on the central islands of the Mediterranean, the granaries of Carthage, and piracy.
The Anglo-Saxon word for the Mediterrananean was the 'Wendelsae' - the Vandals' Sea.