'Hello, Historian': the methodology of history, Sarmatism, and the Khazar myth of the Cossacks' origin (19.12.2021)

An episode of Vitaliy Dribnytsya’s “Hello, Historian” rubric on the methodology of history. Key points: the Saltovo-Mayaki archaeological culture is linked to the Khazar Khaganate, but properly Khazar burials are hard to separate from Alanic and Bulgar ones; Sarmatism was the political mythology of the Polish szlachta of the 16th–17th centuries about descent from the Sarmatians, while the Cossack “Khazar” counter-myth (notably in the preamble of Pylyp Orlyk’s “Constitution” of 1710) was a political pamphlet of the Baroque era rather than ethnography; a document that is older in time does not give a clearer picture of ancient origins — this is the general methodological error of primordialism. A source for the article on the formation of pre-modern identity.