Cultural Encounters on Byzantium's Northern Frontier, c. AD 500-700

Cultural Encounters on Byzantium's Northern Frontier, c. AD 500-700
Author: Andrei Gandila
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2021-08-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781108455978

In the sixth century, Byzantine emperors secured the provinces of the Balkans by engineering a frontier system of unprecedented complexity. Drawing on literary, archaeological, anthropological, and numismatic sources, Andrei Gandila argues that cultural attraction was a crucial component of the political frontier of exclusion in the northern Balkans. If left unattended, the entire edifice could easily collapse under its own weight. Through a detailed analysis of the archaeological evidence, the author demonstrates that communities living beyond the frontier competed for access to Byzantine goods and reshaped their identity as a result of continual negotiation, reinvention, and hybridization. In the hands of 'barbarians', Byzantine objects, such as coins, jewelry, and terracotta lamps, possessed more than functional or economic value, bringing social prestige, conveying religious symbolism embedded in the iconography, and offering a general sense of sharing in the Early Byzantine provincial lifestyle.

Cultural Encounters on Byzantium's Northern Frontier, c. AD 500–700

Cultural Encounters on Byzantium's Northern Frontier, c. AD 500–700
Author: Andrei Gandila
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2018-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108679013

In the sixth century, Byzantine emperors secured the provinces of the Balkans by engineering a frontier system of unprecedented complexity. Drawing on literary, archaeological, anthropological, and numismatic sources, Andrei Gandila argues that cultural attraction was a crucial component of the political frontier of exclusion in the northern Balkans. If left unattended, the entire edifice could easily collapse under its own weight. Through a detailed analysis of the archaeological evidence, the author demonstrates that communities living beyond the frontier competed for access to Byzantine goods and reshaped their identity as a result of continual negotiation, reinvention, and hybridization. In the hands of 'barbarians', Byzantine objects, such as coins, jewelry, and terracotta lamps, possessed more than functional or economic value, bringing social prestige, conveying religious symbolism embedded in the iconography, and offering a general sense of sharing in the Early Byzantine provincial lifestyle.

Byzantium and the Avars, 6th-9th Century AD

Byzantium and the Avars, 6th-9th Century AD
Author: Georgios Kardaras
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2018-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004382267

In this book, Georgios Kardaras offers a global view of the contacts between the Byzantine Empire and the Avar Khaganate, emphasizing the reconstruction of these contacts after 626 (when, in contrast to archaeological evidence, written sources are very few) and the definition of the possible channels of communication between the two powers. The author scrutinizes the political and diplomatic framework, and critically examines issues such as mutual influence on material culture and on warfare, reaching the conclusion that significant contact between Byzantium and the Avars can be proved up until 775.

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier
Author: Paul Stephenson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2000-06-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521770173

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier is the first narrative history in English of the northern Balkans in the tenth to twelfth centuries. Where previous histories have been concerned principally with the medieval history of distinct and autonomous Balkan nations, this study regards Byzantine political authority as a unifying factor in the various lands which formed the empire's frontier in the north and west. It takes as its central concern Byzantine relations with all Slavic and non-Slavic peoples - including the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Hungarians - in and beyond the Balkan Peninsula, and explores in detail imperial responses, first to the migrations of nomadic peoples, and subsequently to the expansion of Latin Christendom. It also examines the changing conception of the frontier in Byzantine thought and literature through the middle Byzantine period.

Byzantium in the Year 1000

Byzantium in the Year 1000
Author: Paul Magdalino
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2002-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047404092

One thousand years ago, the Byzantine Empire was reaching the height of its revival as a medieval state. The ten contributions to this volume by scholars from six European countries re-assess key aspects of the empire's politics and culture in the long reign of the emperor Basil II, whose name has come to symbolise the greatness of Byzantium in the age before the crusades.

Continuation or Change? Borders and Frontiers in Late Antiquity and Medieval Europe

Continuation or Change? Borders and Frontiers in Late Antiquity and Medieval Europe
Author: Gregory Leighton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2022-09-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000645924

This volume examines interdisciplinary boundaries and includes texts focusing on material culture, philological analysis, and historical research. What they all have in common are zones that lie in between, treated not as mere barriers but also as places of exchange in the early Middle Ages. Focusing on borderlands, Continuation or Change uncovers the changing political and military organisations at the time and the significance of the functioning of former borderland areas. The chapters answer how the fiscal and military apparatus were organised, identify the turning points in the division of dynastic power, and assign meaning to the assimilation of certain symbolic and ideological elements of the imperial tradition. Finally, the authors offer answers to what exactly a "statehood without a state" was in regard to semi-peripheral and peripheral areas that were also perceived through the prism of the idea of a world system, network theory, or the concept of so-called negotiating borderlands. Continuation or Change is a useful resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in medieval warfare, Eastern European history, medieval border regions, and cross-cultural interaction.

Frontiers in Question

Frontiers in Question
Author: Daniel Power
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 318
Release: 1999-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1349274399

We are used to the idea that each state has clearly defined borders, which cleanly separate different nationalities from one another. What, though, were frontiers like before the evolution of the modern nation state? The nine essays in this book seek to answer this question across a thousand years of Eurasian history.