The tentative conclusion is that there is no archaeological evidence of large-scale discontinuity of habitation in the eastern river delta during the second half of the 1st century BC.The evidence simply does not support Tacitus’ claim that the Batavians settled in an almost uninhabited Rhine delta. Instead, the data suggests that the Batavians, who split off from the Chatti and moved to the Rhine delta, can best be regarded as an elite group (probably a prominent, pro-Roman Chattian leader with his kinsmen and warriors), which subsequently assimilated with former Eburonean subgroups in the Rhine/Meuse delta. This is a case of ethnogenesis with a multi-ethnic origin, probably under Roman supervision or sanctioned by Rome. If we assume that a Batavian identity group was already a fact in the mid-Augustan period, this process must have taken place over a few decades.
Finally, a long-discussed question is the extent to which Lower Rhine groups, and Batavians in particular, attached importance to a Germanic identity. Did they refer to themselves by this name, or was it merely a label applied by outsiders? I would like to draw attention to Alan Lund’s recent analysis of the development of the term
Germani in Roman times. Relevant here is his distinction between the use of this name both as an ethnic macro-term (
Oberbegriff) and as a term with a much narrower meaning (
Unterbegriff). His central thesis is that the ‘Germans’ – in the sense of the ethnic macro-term – were not discovered but created; in other words, he maintains that the name
Germani was not an ethnic label by which a group identified itself, but an external categorisation. Lund sees Caesar as the creator of both the ethno-cultural macro-term
Germani, and the geographical macro-term
Germania. He regards the name ‘Germans’ as an externally applied ethnic label, comparable to the term ‘Indians’ for the original inhabitants of North America.
The matter is more complex, however, in that there also seem to have been
Germani in a narrower sense. A small group of tribes on the Gallic side of the Lower Rhine, of which the Eburones constituted the principal group, used this ethnic label to refer to themselves. Thus for them the name
Germani may well have had an emic significance. What started out as the name of a local federation of tribes was later expanded by Caesar into an ethnic macro-term with a powerful political and ideological dimension. We know for certain that the Roman system of ethnic categorisation included the Batavians with the Germans. After all, they came from beyond the Rhine and were a splinter group of the Germanic Chatti. However, because it was a new Roman construct, the term
Germani – in the sense of an ethnic
Grossgruppe – meant little to the Batavians themselves. It is possible that they saw themselves as Germans in the narrower sense (i.e. the ethnic umbrella term for a group of east-bank tribes), but there is to date no epigraphic evidence to support this. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that every Batavian soldier who served in the Roman army was familiar with the Roman clichés regarding Germans: the army was the context par excellence in which they were constantly confronted with this image. The Romans wanted to see the Batavians as
Germani.This was particularly true of the Rome-based bodyguard of the Julio-Claudian emperors, which was expected to correspond to the clichéd image of fearsome Germanic warriors. They regularly presented themselves as Germans to the Roman public. In their grave inscriptions, however, they emphasised only their tribal identity.
Archaeologists have nothing to contribute to the discussion on the Germanic ethnicity of Lower Rhine groups, for the simple reason that this cannot be defined on the basis of material culture. In archaeological terms, Germanic ethnicity is evident only as a Roman construct, and is most apparent in public inscriptions and iconography relating to imperial propaganda. It is of course possible (as Hachmann and many others have done) to proceed from a strictly archaeological concept of Germans, but this is a modern academic construct which says nothing about how people referred to themselves. What then does the archaeological record tell us about the relationship between the Roman macro-ethnic categorisation of the groups in the Northwest European Plain – as outlined above – and the macro-cultural articulation of the region? The archaeology of the Late Iron Age argues for a north-south articulation of the northwest European continent, in which the Rhine does not function as a cultural boundary. On the contrary, groups in the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium as well as in Hessen and southern Westphalia were strongly influenced by the La Tène culture, as is shown by the presence of central places, sanctuaries, specialist glass and metalworking
, and the adoption of coinage. However, as part of the new politico-geographic order, all emphasis in Roman
Germani discourse came to lie on the east-west articulation, with the Rhine functioning as a boundary between the civilised world and a world of barbarism. This politico-cultural divide was seen as the logical consequence of the distinct ethno-cultural barrier between Celts and Germans