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The Tragedy of Empire
A sweeping political history of the turbulent two centuries that led to the demise of the Roman Empire. The Tragedy of Empire begins in the late fourth century with the reign of Julian, the last non-Christian Roman emperor, and takes readers to the final years of the Western Roman Empire at the end of the sixth century. One hundred years before Julian’s rule, Emperor Diocletian had resolved that an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and from the Rhine and Tyne to the Sahara, could not effectively be governed by one man. He had devised a system of governance, called the tetrarchy by modern scholars, to respond to the vastness of the empire, its new rivals, and the changin...
The Heirs of the Roman West
In this collection leading international authorities analyse the structures and economic functions of non-agrarian centres between ca. 500 and 1000 A.D. – their trade, their surrounding settlements, and the agricultural and cultural milieux. The thirty-one papers presented at an international conference held in Bad Homburg focus on recent archaeological discoveries in Central Europe (Vol.1), as well as onthose from southeastern Europe to Asia Minor (Vol. 2).
The Making of the Slavs
This book offers an alternative approach to the problem of Slavic ethnicity in south-eastern Europe between c. 500 and c. 700, from the perspective of current anthropological theories. The conceptual emphasis here is on the relation between material culture and ethnicity. The author demonstrates that the history of the Sclavenes and the Antes begins only at around 500 AD. He also points to the significance of the archaeological evidence, which suggests that specific artefacts may have been used as identity markers. This evidence also indicates the role of local leaders in building group boundaries and in leading successful raids across the Danube. Because of these military and political developments, Byzantine authors began employing names such as Sclavines and Antes in order to make sense of the process of group identification that was taking place north of the Danube frontier. Slavic ethnicity is therefore shown to be a Byzantine invention.
The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe
In The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe, Florin Curta offers a social and economic history of East Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe during the 6th and 7th centuries. It challenges the current model of transition from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages on the basis of an interpretation of the written sources, but especially of an enormous amount of archaeological evidence accumulated in the last 50 years or so. It deals with societies in close contact with the Roman world, as well with those located very far from it. It addresses questions of property, subsistence, crafts, trade, and social change.
War and Warfare in Late Antiquity (2 vols.)
This two-volume publication explores the key factors determining the course and outcome of war in Late Antiquity. Volume 8.1 includes a detailed review of strategic and tactical issues and eight comprehensive bibliographic essays, which provide an overview of the literature. In Volume 8.2, thematic papers examine strategy and intelligence, fortifications and siege warfare, weaponry and equipment, literary sources and topography, and civil war, while papers focused on particular geographic regions home in on war and warfare in the West Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries, and the Balkans and the Eastern frontier in the 4th to 7th centuries AD. Contributors are Susannah Belcher, Neil Christie, Ian Colvin, John Conyard, Jon Coulston, Jim Crow, Florin Curta, Hugh Elton, James Howard-Johnston, Jordi Galbany, Jordi Guàrdia, John Haldon, Michel Kazanski, Maria Kouroumali, Michael Kulikowski, Christopher Lillington-Martin, Marta Maragall, Oriol Mercadal, Jordi Nadal, Oriol Olesti, Alexander Sarantis, Conor Whately, Michael Whitby and John Wilkes.
The Jews of Khazaria
The Jews of Khazaria chronicles the history of the Khazars, a people who, in the early Middle Ages, founded a large empire in eastern Europe (located in present-day Ukraine and Russia). The Khazars played a pivotal role in world history. Khazaria was one of the largest-sized political formations of its time, an economic and cultural superpower connected to several important trade routes. It was especially notable for its religious tolerance, and in the 9th century, a large portion of the royal family converted to Judaism. Many of the nobles and commoners did likewise shortly thereafter. After their conversion, the Khazars were ruled by a succession of Jewish kings that began to adopt the hal...
The Region of the Upper Msta River in the Early Middle Ages
This is a book about the archaeological sites of the 5th to 8th century of the Volga-Baltic watershed in the forest zone of Eastern Europe. The region has long been known for burial assemblages of the so-called culture of the Pskov long barrows, but the book brings to light a different group of sites. The population living on those sites co-existed with those who buried their dead under the Pskov long barrows, but within a different landscape. This polarity suggests that the local population was behind the culture of Pskov long barrows, while the new category of site point to immigrants from the southwest. The book suggests that the "new" archaeological sites were inhabited by a Slavic-speaking population from the periphery of the Kiev and Kolochin cultures.
The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia
The structures of the late ancient Visigothic kingdom of Iberia were rooted in those of Roman Hispania, Santiago Castellanos argues, but Catholic bishops subsequently produced a narrative of process and power from the episcopal point of view that became the official record and primary documentation for all later historians. The delineation of these two discrete projects—of construction and invention—form the core of The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. Castellanos reads documents of the period that are little known to many Anglophone scholars, including records of church councils, sermons, and letters, and utilizes archaeological findings to determine how the political system of elites related to local communities, and how the documentation they created promoted an ideological agenda. Looking particularly at the archaeological record, he finds that rural communities in the region were complex worlds unto themselves, with clear internal social stratification little recognized by the literate elites.
The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century
The Ostrogoths appropriated the remnants of the Roman empire in Italy, Spain, southern Gaul and the north-west Balkans. In this title, studies illuminate the evolution of medieval Europe from Roman civilisation moderated by Germanic outsiders.
Iron Age Myth and Materiality
Iron Age Myth and Materiality: an Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000 considers the relationship between myth and materiality in Scandinavia from the beginning of the post-Roman era and the European Migrations up until the coming of Christianity. It pursues an interdisciplinary interpretation of text and material culture and examines how the documentation of an oral past relates to its material embodiment. While the material evidence is from the Iron Age, most Old Norse texts were written down in the thirteenth century or even later. With a time lag of 300 to 900 years from the archaeological evidence, the textual material has until recently been ruled out as a usable source for any study...
