The Carpi or Carpiani were a tribe that resided in the eastern parts of modern Romania in the historical region of Moldavia from no later than c. AD 140 and until at least AD 318.
The ethnic affiliation of the Carpi remains disputed, as there is no direct evidence in the surviving ancient literary sources. A strong body of modern scholarly opinion considers that the Carpi were a tribe of the Dacian nation.Virgil Cândea. An Outline of Romanian HistoryJ.B. Bury. The Cambridge Medieval History volumes 1-5Gudmund Schutte. Our Forefathers, Volumul 1 Other scholars have linked the Carpi to a variety of ethnic groups, including Sarmatians, Thracians, Slavs, Germanic peoples, Balts and Celts.
About a century after their earliest mention by Ptolemy, during which time their relations with Rome appear to have been peaceful, the Carpi emerged in c. 238 as among Rome's most persistent enemies. In the period AD 250–270, the Carpi were an important component of a loose coalition of transdanubian barbarian tribes that also included Germanic and Sarmatian elements. These were responsible for a series of large and devastating invasions of the Balkan regions of the empire which nearly caused its disintegration in the "Crisis of the Third Century".
In the period 270–318, the Roman "military emperors" acted to remove the Carpi threat to the empire's borders. Multiple crushing defeats were inflicted on the Carpi in 273, 297, 298-308 and in 317. After each, massive numbers of Carpi were forcibly transferred by the Roman military to the Roman province of Pannonia (modern western Hungary) as part of the emperors' policy of repopulating the devastated Danubian provinces with surrendered barbarian tribes. Since the Carpi are no longer mentioned in known documents after 318, it is possible that the Carpi were largely removed from the Carpathian region by c. 318 or, if any remained, it is possible that they mingled with other peoples resident or immigrating into Moldavia, such as the Sarmatians or Goths.
Name etymology
The Greco-Romans called this people the Carpi or Carpiani.Hist. Aug. Gordiani Tres XXVI.3 Probably the earliest mention of them, under the name Καρπιανοί (Carpiani in Latin) is in the Geographia of the 2nd-century Greek geographer Ptolemy, composed c. AD 140.Ptolemy III.5.1, 10Smith's Carpi
The name Carpi or Carpiani may derive from the same root as the name of the Carpathian mountain range that they occupied, also first mentioned by Ptolemy under the name Καρπάτης - Karpátēs. The root may be the putative Proto-Indo-European word *ker/sker, meaning "peak" or "cliff" (cf. Lithuanian karpyti "mountain peaks looking like a saw", Albanian karpë "rock", Romanian (ş)carpă "precipice", Sanskrit kar "cut", and Latin scarpa, cfr. Italian scarpata, English escarpment).Köbler *Ker (1)"Tomaschek (1883) 403" Scholars who support this derivation are divided between those who believe the Carpi gave their name to the mountain range (i.e. the name means "mountains of the Carpi")" Parvan Vasile (1926) 153"Martini, Peter I., Chesworth Ward (2010) 255 and those who claim the reverse. In the latter case, Carpiani could mean simply "people of the Carpathians". But the similarity between the two names may be coincidence, and they may derive from different roots. For example, it has been suggested that the name may derive from the Slavic root-word krepu meaning "strong" or "brave".Müller (1883) 430 (note 5)
Romanian scholar Vasile Pârvan considered that the following peoples recorded in ancient sources correspond to Ptolemy's Karpiani: the Kallipidai mentioned in the Histories of Herodotus (composed around 430 BC) as residing in the region of the river Borysthenes (Dnieper)Herodotus IV.17" Parvan (1926) 153" the Karpídai around the mouth of the river Tyras (Dniester) recorded in a fragment of Pseudo-Scymnus (composed c. 90 BC)Pseudo-Scymnus 842 the Harpii, located near the Danube Delta, mentioned by Ptolemy himself.Ptolemy III.10 If so, their locations could imply that the Carpi had very gradually migrated westwards in the period 400 BC - AD 140, a view championed by Kahrstedt. These names' common element carp- appears frequently in Dacian and Thracian placenames and personal names.Van Den Gheyn, S. J. (1930) 385 But there is no consensus that these groups are in fact Carpi. Bichir suggests that they were Thraco-Dacian tribes distantly related to the Carpi.
Territory The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World places the Carpi between the river Hierasus (Siret) and the river Porata (Prut)Barrington Atlas Map 22
However, it is not possible to reliably define the territories of these groups due to the imprecision of the ancient geographical sources. Also, it is likely that in many areas, ethnic groups overlapped and the ethnic map was a patchwork of dispersed sub-groups. The Sarmatians and Bastarnae are attested, in both literature and archaeology, all over Wallachia, Moldavia and Bessarabia.Batty (2008) 250, 378Barrington Atlas Map 23 It is likely that, when Greco-Roman sources refer to conflicts with the Costoboci, Carpi or Goths, they are referring to coalitions of different groups under the currently hegemonic tribe. Given the Carpi's repeated raids South of the Danube and clashes with the Romans during the 3rd century, it is likely by ca. 230, the Carpi had extended their hegemony over eastern Wallachia, previously dominated by the Roxolani.
Material culture There is no dispute among scholars that some Decebalic-era Dacian settlements in Moldavia (mostly west of the Siret, with a few on the east bank (including Piroboridava, identified with Poiana-Tecuci), were abandoned by 106, most likely, according to Bichir, as a result of the Roman conquest of Dacia. From this time, Bichir identifies two distinct cultures in Moldavia, existing side by side. One, a sedentary culture, labelled "Daco-Carpic" by Bichir, started around 106 and disappeared around 318; A smaller culture displayed characteristics usually associated with nomadic peoples from the Eurasian steppes, labelled "Sarmatian" by Bichir.
By 1976, 117 sedentary settlements had been identified, the great majority (89) located West of the Siret (thus inside Dacia's borders as defined by Ptolemy). The inhabitants lived in both surface-dwellings and sunken-floor huts. The single-roomed surface-dwellings were made of wattle and beaten-earth, usually of rectangular or square form, varying from 9 sq m to 30 sq m in size. Each contained a clay hearth placed at the centre of the dwelling. The more numerous sunken-earth huts are usually of oval or round shape. The sedentary people generally cremated their dead, both adults and children, according to Bichir: all the 43 purely "Daco-Carpic" (sedentary) cemeteries used only cremation. The ashes from the cremation were, in the great majority of cases, buried inside urns. Table 1 Some graves contained grave-goods, but no weapons other than a single dagger. Mundane goods include knives, keys, and belt-buckles; valuable goods include Sarmatian-style mirrors, silver ear-rings, gold pendants and beads.
Pottery found in sedentary sites includes the hand-made "porous" type, grey wheel-made ware, red-fired pottery and imported Roman ware. Bichir describes the first two as continuing Dacian La Tène pottery, and points to the presence of the so-called "Dacian cup", a cup of distinctive design, as evidence of a Dacian base to this culture. However, he admits that the pottery also shows Roman and Sarmatian influence. The sedentary folk appear to have been generally illiterate, as no "Daco-Carpic" inscription was ever found during the very intensive excavations carried out in the region.
The sedentary culture did not issue its own coinage. However, Roman coinage circulated "intensely" in the Carpi's territory, according to Bichir. This is based on the large number of coin-hoards found in Moldavia (90), and about 100 isolated coins. However, the circulation of Roman coins seems to have virtually ceased after 218, as no coin-hoards and only 7 isolated coins have been found from after Caracalla, who ruled AD 211–218. Tables 11 and 12
Nomadic-culture graves are predominantly of the inhumation type, found, by 1976, in 38 places in Moldavia. These are predominantly found on the plains, rarely on the Carpathian foothills (i.e. East of the Siret), either singly or in small groups of 2-13 graves, including men, women and children. The great majority of nomadic-culture graves are flat (non-tumular), in contrast to nomadic barrow-graves found from the Dniester region eastwards. However, some secondary barrow-burials (i.e. using pre-existing barrows) have been found, mostly dating from 200 onwards. The nomadic graves always contain grave-goods, often including weapons, and mirrors engraved with tamgas (ritual or tribal symbols associated with nomadic steppe cultures).
Six cemeteries in Bichir's list contain both cremation and inhumation graves. At the Poieneşti site (the only one fully investigated by 1976), 6 adults and 17 children were buried (compared with 62 cremated). Of these, 2 adults and 7 children were found to have artificially elongated crania. This custom, achieved by tightly binding an infant's skull during its early growth phase, is associated with steppe nomads. Bichir identifies the adults as nomads and the children as the progeny of mixed nomad-sedentary marriages.
From the ratio of sedentary to nomadic graves, Bichir concludes that the sedentary folk constituted the majority of the population of Moldavia. In the mixed cemeteries documented by Bichir, nomadic graves constitute about 28% of the total. However, in Moldavia as a whole, nomadic graves represent no more than 1% of all graves.
After 318, according to Bichir, the "Daco-Carpic" culture was in Moldavia replaced by the Sîntana-de-Mureş "variant" of the Chernyakhov culture common to much of the North-Pontic region of south eastern Europe in the period 200–400.
Ethno-linguistic affiliation There is no direct evidence in surviving Roman imperial era sources, literary or epigraphic, regarding the language of the Carpi. In the near-total absence of inscriptions in the barbaricum, the only valid (though not infallible) indicator of the linguistic affiliation of barbarian peoples are personal names, which can sometimes be ascribed to a linguistic group. However, not a single Carpi personal name is preserved in the surviving ancient sources, other than the name "Carpi" itself, which cannot be ascribed with confidence to any linguistic group.
According to traditional Romanian historiography, as well as to several non-Romanian scholars, the Carpi were a people of the Dacian tongue and cultureHeather (2006) 85; Millar (1981) 279; Maenchen-Helfen (1973) 452; Goffart (2006) 205; Minns (ed. 2011) 124. For Romanian scholars see Bichir (1976) 146. Heather, who supports this view, suggests that the Carpi name was adopted as the collective name of the Free Dacian tribes when they achieved a degree of political unification in the early 3rd century.Heather (2009) 114
However, a significant number of scholars dispute that the Carpi were ethnic Dacians, and have identified them variously as Sarmatians, Daco-Thracians, Celts, or even proto-Slavs. This is because the region between the rivers Siret and Dniester was of great ethnic diversity during the Roman imperial era, the Barrington Atlas listing Agathyrsi, Bastarnae, Britolagai, Costoboci, Roxolani, Thrakes, and Tyragetae.Barrington Atlas Map 22 and 23 Also, some modern authors surmise the existence of ethnic groups formed in loco from mixed origins (but mostly with an indigenous Dacian/Sarmatian base e.g. the Goths).Halsall, Guy (2007), Barbarian migrations and the Roman West, 376-568, Cambridge University Press, p.132Matthews, John; Heather, Peter (1991), The Goths in the fourth century, Liverpool University Press p.90
The evidence to support a Dacian identity: