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

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.

Gregory Leighton is NAWA Ulam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Archival Sciences, Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun, 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. Lukasz Rózycki is Professor of History at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, 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 Torun, 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).

Introduction 1. Networks of Masculinity: Bearded Warriors in East Central Europe (6th-9thc.) 2. The Slavs and the Conceptual Borderland of the Byzantine Romanness in Macedonia 3. Imperial Legacies and Multiple Borderlands: Was There an 'Adrio-Byzantine' Model of Identity in the Upper Adriatic? 4. Ritual Representation of Power in Medieval East Centra lEurope Rulership, Sacrality and Warfare (Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, 10th-14thcentury) 5. The Danube River Between Byzantium and Nomadic Confederations (Huns and Avars) .The Dual Role of Barrier and Bridge 6. At the gates of the Empire: the organization of the Byzantine borderlands in the context of Early Medieval Bulgaria 7. Cross-border Cooperation Between Óláfr Haraldsson and the Clan of Rognvaldr Úlfsson 8. The "Barbarian" Borderlands Between East and West. The First Piast's Dynasty as an Organizer of Interregional Trade - a Comparative Approach 9. Polish Piast Rulers and the Prayers of Monastic Communities 10. The Public Military Service of Bishops toward Piast Monarchy (12th-13th Century) 11. Conflict and Contact Zone: The Lower Middle Elbe (Northern Germany) as a Border in the Carolingian and Ottonian Periods 12. Who are you calling peripheral? The creation of Piast central power, on the example of the Lednica settlement complex 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 14. A time of change: Puck harbour in context of the growth of the early Piast monarchy 15. Between the World of Christians and Pagans. Galician-Volynian Rus' Towards Yotvingia and Lithuania in the 13th Century 16. City Foundatios, Frontiers, and Sacral History in Peter von Dusburg's Chronicon terrae Prussiae 17. Tribute as a Political Instrument in the Borderlands. The Example of the "Tribute of Dorpat"