Elbe Germanic peoples

[1] Historically they are possibly the same as the Irminones or Herminones mentioned by classical authors such as Tacitus, Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela.

By contrast with the settlement areas of the North Sea, Oder-Vistula and Rhine-Weser Germans (from which the Franks descended), there was a relatively uniform development in the economic and social spheres.

This can be seen, for example, in the clear consistencies of material and intellectual culture (ceramics, appliances, weapons, jewellery, religious customs, etc.).

In 1963, the Czech archaeologist Bedřich Svoboda took up the term and postulated an Elbe Germanic connection with the finds in Bohemia and Bavaria, which was later confirmed.

[4] "Elbe Germanic", also called Irminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer in his 1942 book, Nordgermanen und Alemanen, to describe the unattested proto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancestral to the later Alemannic, Lombardic, Thuringian and Bavarian dialects.

Urn from a large Lombard cremation grave field at Putensen, near Harburg, Germany, from the period of 50-375 AD, belonging to the Elbe Germanic culture. This rare metal urn was probably a Roman import
The distribution of the primary Germanic dialect groups in Europe in around AD 1:
North Germanic
North Sea Germanic , or Ingvaeonic
Weser–Rhine Germanic , or Istvaeonic
Elbe Germanic , or Irminonic
East Germanic
The catchment of the River Elbe
Elbe Germanic disc fibula from Schwanbeck, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany