1st Edition
Continuation or Change? Borders and Frontiers in Late Antiquity and Medieval Europe Landscape of Power Network, Military Organisation and Commerce
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.
1. Networks of Masculinity: Bearded Warriors in East Central Europe (6th–9thc.)
Florin Curta and Robert Lierse
2. The Slavs and the Conceptual Borderland of the Byzantine Romanness in Macedonia
Mitko B. Panov
3. Imperial Legacies and Multiple Borderlands: Was There an ‘Adrio-Byzantine’ Model of Identity in the Upper Adriatic?
Ivan Basić
4. Ritual Representation of Power in Medieval East Centra lEurope Rulership, Sacrality and Warfare (Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, 10th-14thcentury)
Dušan Zupka
5. The Danube River Between Byzantium and Nomadic Confederations (Huns and Avars) .The Dual Role of Barrier and Bridge
Georgios Kardaras
6. At the gates of the Empire: the organization of the Byzantine borderlands in the context of Early Medieval Bulgaria
Kirił Marinow
7. Cross-border Cooperation Between Óláfr Haraldsson and the Clan of Rǫgnvaldr Úlfsson
Maciej Lubik
8. The "Barbarian" Borderlands Between East and West. The First Piast’s Dynasty as an Organizer of Interregional Trade – a Comparative Approach
Piotr Pranke
9. Polish Piast Rulers and the Prayers of Monastic Communities
Piotr Oliński
10. The Public Military Service of Bishops toward Piast Monarchy (12th-13th Century)
Radosław Kotecki
11. Conflict and Contact Zone: The Lower Middle Elbe (Northern Germany) as a Border in the Carolingian and Ottonian Periods
Felix Biermann
12. Who are you calling peripheral? The creation of Piast central power, on the example of the Lednica settlement complex
Andrzej Pydyn and Konrad Lewek
13. Discovering traces of the possible early first millennium AD nordic settlements in the Lower Vistula river basin. Interdisciplinary archaeological research at the site in Osie (site no.: Osie 28, AZP 27-41/26), northern Poland
Mateusz Sosnowski, Jerzy Czerniec, Krystian Kozioł, Olaf Popkiewicz, Paulina Lewińska, and Stanisław Szombara
14. A time of change: Puck harbour in context of the growth of the early Piast monarchy
Mateusz Popek
15. Between the World of Christians and Pagans. Galician-Volynian Rus’ Towards Yotvingia and Lithuania in the 13th Century
Dariusz Dąbrowski
16. City Foundatios, Frontiers, and Sacral History in Peter von Dusburg’s Chronicon terrae Prussiae
Gregory Leighton
17. Tribute as a Political Instrument in the Borderlands. The Example of the "Tribute of Dorpat"
Dmitry Weber
Biography
Gregory Leighton is NAWA Ulam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Archival Sciences, Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Dr. Leighton studies the Teutonic Order and the Baltic crusades (13th–15th centuries). He has published in The Journal of Medieval History, Zapiski Historyczne, and other leading periodicals. His first monograph will appear with ARC Humanities Press in 2022.
Łukasz Różycki is Professor of History at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. His main research interests include the study of Roman and Byzantine theory of warfare, with a particular focus on military treatises, and the study of the 6th century. He is the author of a number of books – most recently Battlefield Emotions in Late Antiquity (2021) – and articles related to the study of late antiquity and the history of the Byzantine Empire.
Piotr Pranke is an assistant professor who deals with the history of medieval Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe, and is a member of the Faculty of Historical Sciences at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. His scientific interests include the history of trade in the Viking era and the history of the Otton Empire and its influence on the shaping of the areas of "younger Europe". His most recent book publication is Medieval Trade in Central Europe, Scandinavia, and the Balkans (2020).
