Florin Curta

Florin Curta (born January 15, 1965) is a Romanian-born American archaeologist and historian who is a Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Florida.

Biography

Curta works in the field of the Balkan history and is a Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. 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. 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 in 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.

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.Di Hu, "Approaches to the Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Past and Emergent Perspectives", Journal of Archaeological Research, 21(4), 2013, pp. 389–390 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) 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.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

Curta’s conjectures were met with substantial disagreement and "severe criticism in general and in detail" by other archaeologists, historians, linguists and ethnologists. They noted Curta's arbitrary selection of historical and archaeological data, sites and interpretation of chronologies to support his preconceived conclusions and cultural model which fails to explain the emergence and spread of the Slavs and Slavic culture.Walter Pohl, ''The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822'', Cornell University Press, 2018, pp. 124 Curta has also been criticized for inadequate argumentation and for contradicting information given by Byzantine historiographers such as those by Theophylact Simocatta.

Although Curta's work found support by those who use similar approach, like Walter Pohl and Danijel Dzino, the migrationist model remains as the most acceptable and possible to explain the spread of the Slavs as well as Slavic culture (including language).Michel Kazanski,
Archaeology of the Slavic Migrations
, in: Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, Editor-in-Chief Marc L. Greenberg, BRILL, 2020, quote: "There are two specific aspects of the archaeology of Slavic migrations: the movement of the populations of the Slavic cultural model and the diffusion of this model amid non-Slavic populations. Certainly, both phenomena occurred; however, a pure diffusion of the Slavic model would hardly be possible, in any case in which a long period of time when the populations of different cultural traditions lived close to one another is assumed. Moreover, archaeologists researching Slavic antiquities do not accept the ideas produced by the "diffusionists," because most of the champions of the diffusion model know the specific archaeological materials poorly, so their works leave room for a number of arbitrary interpretations (for details, see Pleterski 2015: 232)."

Bibliography

* (Doctoral Dissertation)
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Edited volumes

* ''East Central & Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
* ''Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages''. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005.
* ''The other Europe in the Middle Ages. Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans''. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008.
* ''Neglected Barbarians''. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011.
* with Bogdan-Petru Maleon, ''The Steppe Lands and the World Beyond Them. Studies in Honor of Victor Spinei on his 70th Birthday''. Iași: Editura Universității "Alexandru Ioan Cuza", 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Curta, Florin
1965 births
Living people
20th-century American historians
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American historians
20th-century Romanian historians
21st-century Romanian historians
Place of birth missing (living people)
American archaeologists
American medievalists
Romanian archaeologists
Romanian medievalists
Historians of the Balkans
Romanian emigrants to the United States
University of Florida faculty
American Byzantinists
Byzantine archaeologists
American male non-fiction writers