The North-Eastern Caucasus, which includes the territories of the modern Chechen Republic and the Republic of Dagestan, is one of the oldest centers of the manufacturing economy in the Old World. The ...development of productive forces and production relations over several millennia, expressed in vivid monuments of material culture, starting from the Kura-Araxes Eneolithic culture, inevitably led to the socio-political evolution of society, the emergence of early forms of statehood or the inclusion of these societies in various kinds of military-political alliances. Numerous Nakh (ancestors of modern Chechens, Ingush and Batsbi) and Dagestan tribes were actively involved in such unions, and the territory of their settlement was partly or completely included at different times in the early state associations that arose in adjacent territories. Such early polities include the Ancient Georgian Kingdom (Iberia) and Caucasian Albania of the late antiquity, the Alanian Kingdom and the Khazar Khaganate of the early Middle Ages, known from written sources.
The considerable breadth of Leonese documentation in the early Middle Ages has made it possible to test the hypothesis of whether the mpn sequence is a Caroline feature or whether it is one shared by ...both the Visigothic and the Caroline scripts. The analysis of the data indicates that the mpn sequence appears in the Leonese Visigothic documents beginning in the mid eleventh century as a result of the introduction of the Caroline script. Additionally, by reviewing the published collections examined in this article, many transcription errors in the edition of several documents have been pointed out, and several documents, previously considered as tenth-century originals, have been classified as late eleventh-century copies. The results of this research contribute to the description of the substitution process of the Visigothic script by the Caroline script in the Iberian Peninsula. En el caso de aquellas copias que llegaron a formar parte de un cartulario, su carácter de copia es evidente para el investigador actual y no suponen grandes dificultades para ser catalogadas diplomáticamente como tales; sin embargo, aquellas otras copias que han permanecido como documentos sueltos individuales pueden llegar a plantear serios problemas para el investigador actual a la hora de determinar su naturaleza, muy especialmente si fueron realizadas también en escritura visigótica.
Languages are central to the creation and expression of identities and cultures, as well as to life itself, yet the linguistic variegation of the later-Roman and post-imperial period in the Roman ...West is remarkably understudied. A deeper understanding of this important issue is crucial to any reconstruction of the broader story of linguistic continuity and change in Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as to the history of the communities who wrote, read, and spoke Latin and other languages. In spite of intensive study of culture and ethnic identity in late antiquity, language has often been neglected, a neglect encouraged by the disciplinary boundaries between linguists and historians, Romanists, and medievalists. There is no single volume that sets out the main developments, key features, and debates of the later-Roman and post-imperial linguistic environment. The linguistic landscapes of the late-Roman and post-imperial West are difficult to uncover and describe, while attempts to speak across disciplinary divides are challenging. The contributors have tackled this subject by offering detailed coverage of the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Gaul, the Germanies, Britain, and Ireland. This volume, the third in the LatinNow series, helps readers to understand better the embeddedness, or not, of Latin, at different social levels and across provinces, to consider (socio)linguistic variegation, bilingualism and multilingualism, and attitudes towards languages, and to confront the complex role of language in the communities, identities, and cultures of the later and post-imperial Roman West.
„The Past through Narratology“ proposes a fresh approach to various types of texts from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Starting from a broad definition of what a text can be – ranging from ...hagiographic narratives and maps to archaeological remains – this book proposes narrativity and narratology as frameworks for exploring sources and exchanging opinions. The various contributions in this volume investigate how late antique and early medieval authors and movements used narrative as a vehicle for their ideas and how they operated in literarised spaces. At the same time, this book also examines how we as researchers construct narratives about our periods of study.
„The Past through Narratology“ bietet neue Ansätze zur Interpretation spätantiker und frühmittelalterlicher Texte. Ausgehend von einer weit gefassten Definition dessen, was ein Text sein kann – von hagiographischen Erzählungen über Karten bis hin zu archäologischen Überresten –, schlägt dieses Buch Narrativität und Narratologie als Deutungsrahmen für die Erforschung von Quellen und den wissenschaftlichen Austausch neuer Ideen vor. In den hier versammelten Beiträgen wird untersucht, wie Autoren und literarische Bewegungen Sinnzusammenhänge in Erzählform brachten und sie in literarisierten Räumen positionierten. Gleichzeitig stellen sie die Frage, wie wir als Forscher Narrative über unsere Vergangenheit konstruieren.
The problem of fraternal relations in the early Middle Ages has not been hitherto studied in detail, especially in comparison with the multitude of studies dealing with the models of marriage, ...gender-based social roles, or the relations between generations. Historians have been often prone to assume that relations between siblings in European culture were naturally constant, based on loyalty, solidarity, and readiness to act in the common interest, stemming from blood ties. However, this conviction equates the category of brotherhood/fraternitas used by medieval authors with concepts associated with sources from later periods. This study does not concern narrowly defined family history, but is an attempt to examine fraternal relations in the early Middle Ages as a multidimensional cultural phenomenon. As the author seeks to demonstrate, it is difficult to speak of kinship in the ninth century and later without being aware of the religious and ideological implications of the transformations taking place at the time, even if direct traces of the impact of moralizing and theological teachings on the conduct of individuals are hard to capture in the sources.
The history of the British Isles and Ireland is characterized by multiple periods of major cultural change, including the influential transformation after the end of Roman rule, which precipitated ...shifts in language, settlement patterns and material culture
. The extent to which migration from continental Europe mediated these transitions is a matter of long-standing debate
. Here we study genome-wide ancient DNA from 460 medieval northwestern Europeans-including 278 individuals from England-alongside archaeological data, to infer contemporary population dynamics. We identify a substantial increase of continental northern European ancestry in early medieval England, which is closely related to the early medieval and present-day inhabitants of Germany and Denmark, implying large-scale substantial migration across the North Sea into Britain during the Early Middle Ages. As a result, the individuals who we analysed from eastern England derived up to 76% of their ancestry from the continental North Sea zone, albeit with substantial regional variation and heterogeneity within sites. We show that women with immigrant ancestry were more often furnished with grave goods than women with local ancestry, whereas men with weapons were as likely not to be of immigrant ancestry. A comparison with present-day Britain indicates that subsequent demographic events reduced the fraction of continental northern European ancestry while introducing further ancestry components into the English gene pool, including substantial southwestern European ancestry most closely related to that seen in Iron Age France
.
