The Daesitiates: The identity-construct between contemporary and ancient perceptions

Abstract

This paper discusses the ancient identity knovvn from the sources as the Daesitiates. The crucial question that this paper raises is: what is hidden behind the term Daesitiates? Is this term a construct of the ancient sources and modern interpretations, or did it exist once as a historical "realitv”, and vvhose realitv did that term represent? Currently the prevailing scholarlv opinion is  that the Daesitiates representeđ an ethnic or proto-ethnic communitv. which developed through different stages of social organisation from the late Bronze Age throughout the Iron Age to the arrival of the Romans in the first centurv BC. ultimately 
becoming a “people" or a “people-making communitv". The existing sources are analvsed against the contexts in which they  existed: the pre-Roman Iron Age arhaeological culture (Central-Bos nian culture) and the written and epigraphic sources. The archaeologv shows the existence of a specific kind of regional identity. hut it does not provide evidence for the assumption that a unified identitv-discourse existed in the pre-Roman era. Although the region is insufficientlv explored. a few things might he  educted from the existing knowledge. The settlement pattern of known hillforts (gradine) shows a few different zones of hahitation positioned around arable land and natural Communications - usuallv the valleys of the rivers. Burial customs are partially knovvn only from the Visoko-Breza sub-region and do not necessaril.v reflect the whole region. which is ascribed to this archaeological culture. The earlier dated Vratnica-Donji Skladovi necropole presents an inhumated group burial of warriors without visible social differences. while in the recentlv published and later dated Kamenjača-Breza necropolis it is possible to  detect gradual social different iations. The written sources Appian, Strabo, Velleius Paterculus and Cassius Dio mention a group called the Daesitiates in relation to the events from the time of the Roman coiujuest in the late 1th century BC and early  1th  century AD. Appian mentions a group of the Daisioi (Desii) in the context of Octavian’s expedition into Illyricum in 35-33 BC. as one of his most formidable opponents. Although the scholarship assumes links between the Daisioi and Daesitiates which were known from the later belluni Batonianum. from this mention it is impossihle to determine with absolute certaintv whether  these Daisioi were related to the later Daesitiates. The other sources mention a group of the Daesitiates in regards to the  events from the belluni Batonianum of AD 6-9. Dio notes that one of the leaders of the uprising. the Dalmatian Bato was “of  Daesitiates”. Velleius Paterculus knew that the Daesitiates and Pirustae were located in the Central part of the Dalmatian  province. while Strabo saw the Daesitiates as one of the Pannonian ethne whose leader was Bato. It cannot be concluded from  the works of Velleius or Dio who were the Daesitiates they mentioned: including the people, family, class or regional identity. Strabo on the other hand saw the Daesitiates as a political identity, one of the barbarian ethne from central Dalmatia. Finally  the Daesitiates were mentioned by Pliny the Elder as one of the Roman administrative peregrine civitates in the Naronitan  conventus of the Dalmatian province. The epigraphic evidence mentioning the Daesitiates exists in a few different contexts. Dollabela's inscription from Solin dated AD 19/20 mentions (He) duni castellum Daesitiatum, indicating the existence of the  centra! stronghold of this group. Other inscriptions mention individuals carrving administrative functions inside Roman civitas: the Roman militarv praefect and indigenous prineeps. Finally one military diploma from Herculaneum and a toinbstone from
the militarv camp in Tilurium (Gardun) record the administrative identities of soldiers, in accordance vvith the prevailing custom of the Roman army. This paper concludes that the earlier scholarship used contextually and chronologicallv different clusters of sources in order to construct the ethnicitv of the Daesitiates. The archaeological evidence shows an indigenous Iron age
culture. The written sources reflect the perception of the barbarian “other" from outside observers who are not concerned with establishing an “objeetive” ethno-graphic taxonomy. Finaliv, the epigraphic evidence mostlv refiects the existence of the Roman peregrine civitas mentioned in Plinv. not ethnicity. From the other coinparative studies of similar communities in Continental Europe it is possible to establish a new view on the origins and different aspects ofthis identity. The Daesitiates were probablv one of the political alliances that were formed from the local communities in the future province of Dahnatia as a
reponse to Roman imperialism in the late 2nd or 1th century BC which initially had no sense of a common identity. The existence of these political alliances influenced Roman perception and vvritten sources to etnicise thein, assuming that those identities existed in a timeless and ahistoric vacuum of “barbarian” societies. The establishment of a peregrine civitas  institutionalised the perception of Daesitiate ethnicitv inside provincial structures. After a certain time these changes resulted in the establishment of the Daesitiate identitv. which was in later antiquity transformed into municipal identitites and a provincial Dalmatian identity.