The term generally used to refer to the peoples who inhabited an area concentrated in modem Poland, and who by the early middle ages were considered a distinct cultural group. The origins of the Slavs are very obscure though they seem to derive from the Iron Age tribes indigenous to the Oder-Vistula area; they are principally defined by linguistic and place-name evidence rather than by historical or archaeological remains.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied