Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages stood at a crossroads of trade and crusading routes and fell within the spheres of influence of both the Byzantine Orthodox Church and Latin Christendom. This authoritative survey draws on historical and archaeological sources in the narration of 750 years of the history of the region, including Romania, southern Ukraine, southern Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania and Greece. Exploring the social, political and economic changes marking the transition from late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages, this book addresses important themes such as the rise of medieval states, the conversion to Christianity, the monastic movement inspired by developments in Western Europe and in Byzantium, and the role of material culture (architecture, the arts and objects of daily life) in the representation of power.
Some remarks on ethnicity in medieval archaeology F C Recent critiques of the culture-historical approach to ethnicity have denounced the idea that archaeological cultures are 'actors' on the historical stage, playing the role that known individuals or groups have in documentary history. But the critique has gone as far as to claim that, because archaeologists supposedly have no access to the meaning of cultural traditions, medieval ethnicity cannot be studied by archeological means. Ethnicity should be banned from all discussions, if medieval archaeology is to make any progress in the future. The paper examines the theoretical malaise at the root of this scepticism verging on nihilism. The understanding of the archaeological record not as an imprint, but as a text allows for much learning about meaning in the past. Symbols, style and power are the key concepts that currently guide anthropological research on ethnicity as a 'social construction of primordiality'. As several archaeological examples show, medieval ethnicity was a form of social mobilization used in order to reach certain political goals. Ethnic identity was built upon some preexisting cultural identity, in a prototypic manner. Eine ethnische Einheit, ein Volk oder ein Stamm, mit dem man in Mitteleuropa ohne weiteres Kulturen oder kulturellen Gruppen identifizieren pflegt, ist aber kein gar so homogenes und gleichbleibendes Gebilde, wie man es in Anlehnung an der romantischen Volksbegriffs Herders annehmen zu können glaubt, sondern eine ungemein vielschichtige Gesellungsform, die nicht so sehr durch die Bande des Blutes, als vielmehr durch das Moment politischer Herrschaft zusammengehalten wird. 1
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