"By this time, there had emerged just beyond the Roman frontiers, a series of frontier kingdoms, in which Gothic and allied elites ruled local populations of Slavs, Sarmatians and even Germanic peasants" (Christian 223).
"At the end of the first millenium BCE, commercial agriculture was practiced in Crimea to supply the cities of the Black Sea coast and for exports to the Mediterranean. To the north, pastoralists dominated the Pontic steppes, while communities that Herodotus referred to as 'farming Scythians' lived along the river valleys and in the forest steppes of the old Tripolye heartland. The forested lands further north had long been an area of scattered communities of foragers who adopted some of the technologies of neolithic, including pottery. From the Second millenium BCE, there are signs of the spread of a type of forest pastoralism from central Europe, in a belt that stretched just north of the wooded steppes, from the Baltic to the middle Dneiper and the middle and upper Volga. This tradition is associated with the so-called 'corded ware' cultures. It combined foraging, fishing and livestock-breeding. From 1000 BCE, some woodland communities also began to practice swidden agriculturer. Swidden farmers cleared well drained slops near rivers, burnt the felled trees and farmed in their ashes for three or four years before moving on. This extensive and nomadic form of agriculture could only support small populations, and population densities in such regions were little higher than those of foraging communities. So, even at the beginning of the contemporary era, farming communities of the woodlands were confined to the southern edge of the great Russian forests, depended on livestock-rearing as much as farming, and farmed without ploughs. Their villages formed a thin lacework of settlements spread along the region's river systems.
"The densest populations of farmers could still be found further south in the Tripolye heartland, which had also been the heart of the Chernyakhiv cultures in the Gothic period. Written sources describe the presence of numerous small communities of farmers in the region. Tactitus, writing in the first century of the modern era, described the 'Venedi' of western Ukraine as a 'populous race' who occupied a 'great expanse of land.' The names attributed to these populations suggest that most spoke or used early forms of Slavic, though amongst them there may also have been groups who spoke Sarmatian, Gothic or Turkic languages. These communities used plough agriculture, reared livestock and had trading and other contacts with the Mediterranean. Most settlements were unfortified, which suggests that they were used to the suzerainty of Gothic, Sarmatian or Turkic tribute-takers, though they occasionally used the woods and swamps as refuges.
"From c.500 CE, there are signs of new migrations into and beyond the wooded steppes. Most migrants probably spoke some form of proto-Slavic or used it as a lingua franca. The fact that the various Slavic languages were still quite uniform even in the eleventh century, suggests that these migrations began from a compact east European 'homeland', whose precise location remains uncertain. In the sixth century, Jordanes described a large area of agrarian settlement in eastern Europe, dominated by a 'populous race' of Slavic speakers (Venethi), and reaching from the Carpathians to the middle Dneiper, and northwards to the Vistula. Their major tribes he named as the 'Sclaveni' (who almost certainly spoke Slavic) and the 'Anti' (many of whom may have been of Sarmatian or Alan origin).
[...]
"We do not know the exact form these migrations took. New households may have cleared land close to the established villages, leading to a slow, amoeba-like migration, household by household. Or whole communities may have migrated in a more deliberate way. Such migrations may have been as organized as the migrations described by Caesar in Gaul, in which whole communities picked a likely territory after sending out scouts, packed up their crops and belongings like nineteenth-century settlers in the American Midwest, and set off with their belongings in carts drawn by horse or oxen. But almost everywhere they went, from the sixth to the tenth centuries, Slavic-speaking migrants built log-houses (poluzemlyanki) sunk 40-70 cm into the ground for greater warmth. Their houses were roughly square with sides of 3-4 metres, with roofs of earth and straw, and with stone stoves that were used for heating and cooking. Slavic dwellings were, as Goehrke puts it, 'modest, dark and sooty'. Only in the north, around Novgorod and Pskov, did Slavic migrants borrow the Finnish technique of building houses at ground level.
[...]
"In the first millennium, improved technologies created population pressure throughout the 'barbarian' lands just north of the Roman empire, as farmers adopted better ploughs, with iron ploughshares hauled by oxen or horses, or started sowing more wheat and rye. Improved techniques spread into much of eastern Europe, including the old farming areas of Moldova and central Ukraine. Here the so-called 'Prague' cultures show the spread of plough agriculture and stock-rearing, using Roman techniques including systematic manuring and crop rotations. Further north, migrants used more extensive systems of cultivations, though a 'scratch' plough (ralo) became common. An improved light plough with a metal share (sokha) began to appear towards the end of the millennium. The sokha was particularly well adapted to the stony, root-filled soils of the newly colonized woodland regions, whose thin top soils lost fertility if ploughed too deeply. The heavy plough (plug) began to spread in the woodlands only in the eleventh to twelfth centuries and perhaps even later
"In the old core areas, the main crops in the sixth and seventh centuries were still millet and also wheats and barleys. Oats became more common as a summer crop, while pulses and flax and fruit such as apples were also grown. Everywhere, livestock were important, including horse, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. However, the key to successful colonization further north was probably the spread of winter ryes. In the ninth and tenth centuries, winter ryes begin to appear in the mixed forest zone. Rye was more reliable than wheat in the colder, northern parts of Rus', and its introduction permitted the use of more intensive and productive systems of crop rotation. The introduction of rye stimulated population growth right across the northern half of Europe in the first millenium and eventually allowed the emergence of non-agricultural specialists, including artisans such as smiths, or regional chiefs with retinues who coulde provide a measure of defense. As populations grew, and new implements came into use, the number of blacksmiths and the quality of their work increased in the ninth century. This was the first sign of an emerging division of labour within the farming communities of the mixed forest lands" (Christian 328-331).
