Ethnicity, Ethnogenesis, and the Vandals: Some Remarks on a Theory of Emergence of the Barbarian gens

Abstract

There are two objectives behind this article. First, it seeks to trace down the pedigree of a theory described in scholarly discourse as the ‘ethnogenesis model’. As is often believed, the theory originally was, essentially, an innovative concept proposed by Reinhard Wenskus, the German researcher. My article puts forth the idea whereby it was Walter Schlesinger who had laid the foundations for the theory, whose concept was further developed by Wenskus. My other purpose was to verify the basics of the theory itself, based on relevant empirical material; specifically, I mainly deal with original sources reporting on the ethnic composition and history of the Vandal people.