Theme:
3. The Carpathian Basin: Integration, Mobility and Diversity
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
From Local to Microregional and Beyond: Spatial Structures in and around the Early Medieval Carpathian Basin
Content:
Local and microregional-based social and economic structures can be found at the roots of every macroregional and global power system. In historical periods, the circumstances of human life were primarily determined by these basic structures and networks, which were created by interconnected microregional centres.
We intend to investigate microregional and regional networks emerging in the Carpathian Basin and the neighbouring territories at the time of the early medieval transformation. In these geographical frames, after the collapse of the Roman limes and the short intermezzo of the Hun Empire, relatively weak formations built their own regional systems, communicating and competing with each other and the surrounding powers. One and a half centuries later, the Avar invasion unified the better part of the macroregion under one system. While certain elements of the late Roman system of "central places" seem to prevail, and there are other signs of microregional-based structures, from the late seventh century a radically new system of central zones emerged.
What kinds of social and economic opportunities helped to grow local communities and/or microregional power centres? Who or what were the catalisators of such processes? What kinds of processes drive their social and economic organisation? What were the factors preventing, helping, or even demanding cooperation between them? What kind of role did microregional centres or central areas play in structuring the surrounding area? And how could regional power reflect the problem of the presence of macroregional or global structures of considerably higher complexity?
We expect both case studies and theoretical presentations from the post-Roman period to the Middle Ages to investigate the questions of regionality, power centres, and central areas. We await contributions addressing the questions of the organization of communication, subsistence, production, redistribution of specialised craft products and strategic resources like salt, iron, and non-ferrous metals.
Keywords:
Migration period and early medieval archaeology, regional trajectories, communication and networks, production and redistribution
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Gergely Szenthe (Hungary) 1
Co-organisers:
Erwin Gáll (Romania) 2
Ivan Bugarski (Serbia) 3
Affiliations:
1. Hungarian National Museum
2. “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest
3. Institute of Archaeology, Belgrade
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