{"title":"Migrations in the Archaeology of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Some Comments on the Current State of Research)","authors":"Florin Curta","doi":"10.1163/9789004425613_005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425613_005","url":null,"abstract":"Historians of the modern era have recently turned Eastern Europe into a vagina nationum: the greatest mass migration and even the “making of the free world” are directly related to Eastern Europe.1 Historians studying Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages disagree. They doubt that migration could explain even changes taking place in the region. Walter Goffart sees no reason for Germanic tribes residing in the vastness of Ukraine to emigrate: “if really land hungry, they might have satisfied their needs right where they were”.2 According to Guy Halsall, the archaeological record pertaining to East Central Europe in the 3rd century does “not support the idea of a substantial migration”.3 Instead, one can envision communication lines along the principal trade routes.4 The idea that the Goths migrated out of northern Europe to the fringes of the Empire rests “mainly on the evidence of a single ancient source, the Getica of Jordanes, around which complicated structures of scholarly hypothesis have been built”.5 One could argue in principle that the Sântana de MureşČernjachov culture came into being “because of a migration out of the Wielbark regions, but one might equally argue that it was an indigenous development of local Pontic, Carpic, and Dacian cultures”.6 Peter Heather, however, is skeptical about skepticism. To him, there can be no doubt that the Wielbark people morphed into the Sântana de MureşČernjachov people, who became Goths in the course of a century-long migration across Eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.7 Similarly, the","PeriodicalId":149712,"journal":{"name":"Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128451777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Migration and Ethnicity in the Venetian Territories of the Eastern Mediterranean (13th to 15th Century)","authors":"C. Gasparis","doi":"10.1163/9789004425613_008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425613_008","url":null,"abstract":"Human geographic mobility is a diachronic phenomenon, the goal of which is the security and/or betterment of life for those on the move.1 Following the major migrations in Europe in the early Middle Ages, those of the late medieval period were less massive and decisive, and stemmed from different causes. The group or individual population movements in the period and place under examination here may be assigned to two large categories: (a) movements owed to violence (e.g. wars, political persecutions, or natural phenomena and diseases), which aimed primarily to seek security in a new place, and (b) those owed to living conditions and the economic environment, which aimed at improving migrants’ living conditions. While there is geographic mobility in both cases, that in the first category could be characterized in contemporary terms as “refugee movement” and as more or less massive, while that in the second may be characterized as “migration”, and is normally by individuals. Refugees leave their home voluntarily or involuntarily due to lifethreatening political or military violence. The migrant, also compelled by specific ( normally, economic) circumstances, voluntarily leaves his home in search of better living conditions and life prospects. However, those who move to further improve and enrich themselves, even though their living conditions are not as bad, are also characterized as migrants. One category of displaced persons included by contemporary scholars among migrants were prisoners of war and slaves","PeriodicalId":149712,"journal":{"name":"Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone","volume":"234 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133749341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Patterns of Turkish Migration and Expansion in Byzantine Asia Minor in the 11th and 12th Centuries","authors":"Alexander Beihammer","doi":"10.1163/9789004425613_007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425613_007","url":null,"abstract":"Beihammer The historical evolution of medieval Anatolia in the centuries between the decay of Byzantine rule and the Ottoman conquest is closely linked with intricate processes of migration, cross-cultural encounter, and ethnic change. The area in question includes what the Byzantines with a very generic terms used to la-bel ἑῴα or ἡ ἀνατολή, i.e., “the East”.1 After various expansionist stages that culminated in the reign of Basil (976–1025) the empire’s eastern provinces stretched from the western coastland of Asia Minor as far as northern Syria, the Upper Euphrates region, and the Armenian highlands. first, the political, cultural, and ethnic transformation of this area began as a fortuitous side effect of the rise of the Great Seljuk Empire in the central lands Islam. A ruling claiming from a common ancestor called Seljuk and super-ficially nomadic warriors, who drew their origin from Oghuz in lands of Transoxania, formed the driving force of this new empire. In the 1040s, Turkmen hosts made their first raids into the region south of the Anti-Taurus range and invaded the Armenian highlands between the Araxes (Aras) and the Arsanias (Murat) Rivers. Soon it turned out that the Taurus Mountains, which for centuries had formed a natu-ral barrier between Christian-Roman and Muslim territories, had become salient patterns of from the","PeriodicalId":149712,"journal":{"name":"Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132387241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Slavic Immigration in the Byzantine Balkans","authors":"J. Koder","doi":"10.1163/9789004425613_004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425613_004","url":null,"abstract":"The Balkans have a complex ethnic and linguistic structure owing to migrations from the North which took place in waves of varying intensity and changed the regions demographic character from the antiquity onwards, when it was inhabitated by Illyrian and Greek tribes.1 The Slavic immigration from the late 6th century onwards was the most important for the present ethnic composition of the populations in southeastern Europe. It has been a matter of great debate since Jacob Philipp Fallmerayer (1790–1861) published his notorious thesis, stating that “not the slightest drop of undiluted Hellenic blood flows in the veins of the Christian population of present-day Greece”.2 Already since the 12th century Byzantine historians like Nikephoros Bryennios (12th century), George Pachymeres (13th century), Nikephoros Gregoras (14th century), Michael Kritoboulos and especially Laonikos Chalkokondyles (15th century) discussed the ethnic identities of the medieval Balkan populations and their alledged Illyrian origin. They used the ethnonyms Albanoi, Akarnanoi, Bosnoi, Bulgaroi, Dalmatai, Illyrioi, Makedones, Mysoi, Sarmatai, Skythai, Thrakes, Thessaloi and Triballoi.3 The collective names of the Slavs,","PeriodicalId":149712,"journal":{"name":"Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131059542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Migration and Enslavement: A Medieval Model","authors":"Y. Rotman","doi":"10.1163/9789004425613_014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004425613_014","url":null,"abstract":"At the beginning of the third millennium sociologist Stephen Castles has called for “a sociological argument that points to the significance of forced migration in contemporary society and in current processes of change”.1 Castles’ words have since become a landmark for scholars and activists interested in and working on migration and forced migration.2 Five years prior to the publication of Castles’ article, the Refugee Participation Network – rpn – newsletter changed its name and format and became the Forced Migration Review. Published since 1998 by the Refugee Studies Centre in the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, it was launched in order to “contribute to improving policy and practice for people affected by forced migration; provide a forum for the voices of displaced people; be a bridge between research and practice; raise awareness of lesser-known (or little covered) displacement crises; and promote knowledge of, and respect for, legal and quasi-legal instruments relating to refugees, idps and stateless people”.3 Although the fmr preceded Castles article’s publication by five years, its foundation can be considered as a response to the same need for a conceptual framework in the study of what has become over the last two decades the largest movement of people today. This is evident in particular in view of the premises that Castles has laid out in connecting forms of forced migration to the new economic system of globalization as well as to the socio-political framework of transnationalism. The large movement of people around the world today, and in particular from South to North, is therefore linked to, and is perceived as a product of the radical socioeconomic and political changes of our time.","PeriodicalId":149712,"journal":{"name":"Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129196852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}