Falko Daim - Böcker

Das Handbuch behandelt die Geschichte und Kultur der byzantinischen Welt von der Gründung Konstantinopels (324) bis zur Eroberung der Stadt und damit dem endgültigen Untergang des Byzantinischen Reichs durch die Osmanen (1453). Nach einem ausführlichen Einleitungsteil von 100 Seiten folgt die Darstellung von 15 zentralen Themen, u.a. Politik und Staat, Mensch und Gesellschaft, Gesetzgebung und Rechtspraxis, Heer und Flotte, Kirche und Religion, Natur und Umwelt, Architektur und Kunst, Sprache, Literatur, Bildung, Medizin und Musik. Da das Werk Teil des Neuen Pauly ist, werden die Aspekte der Kontinuität seit der Antike und der Innovation besonders berücksichtigt.

Die Supplemente 8 bis 14: DER NEUE PAULY schreibt weiter Geschichte. Jeder Band bildet ein Konzentrat aus dem gesammelten Themenwissen des NEUEN PAULY. Mit neuen Daten und Zusammenhängen angereichert, bündeln und vertiefen die Supplemente die enzyklopädische Darstellung. Ob Historische Gestalten der Antike, die Germanen und das Römische Reich, die Frühgeschichte der Mittelmeerkulturen, Byzanz oder die Militärgeschichte der griechisch-römischen Antike es folgen faktenreiche und spannende Exkurse rund um eine jahrhundertelange Antikerezeption.

In this volume the concept of complex systems is used to discuss the interplay between social and environmental factors for the emergence and maintenance of maritime infrastructure and route systems in the ancient and medieval period. The approach is applied to various aspects of maritime history within the research programme ‘Harbours from the Roman Period to the Middle Ages’.Complexity theory and network analysis provide an analytical framework to describe social configurations (cities, maritime communities, polities) and environmental phenomena (hydrosphere, climate) as complex systems, entangled via mechanisms of feedbacks, adaptation or disruption.

In 1799, one of the most important hoards of gold from the European early Middle Ages was discovered near the village of Nagyszentmiklós (then in the Kingdom of Hungary, now Sânnicolau Mare, Romania). It consists of 23 gold vessels with a total weight of almost 10 kg.What makes the treasure so valuable is the high quality of workmanship and the exotic beauty of some of the vessels. Above all, however, it represents a unique resource for the study of cultural connections between the Mediterranean world and the nomadic societies of Eurasia. The contributions in this volume—results of a conference held in Vienna in 2010—deal, among other things, with techniques of goldsmithing and the possible connections between the treasure and the culture of the Sasanian Empire.

The exhibition "Byzantium – Splendour and Everyday Life" of the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn and the Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums in Mainz (2010) opened up new perspectives for Byzantine research.This conference volume takes up the approach of the exhibition and deepens the discussion of its themes in an interdisciplinary framework. The focus is on everyday life within the urban and rural regions of the empire. The contributions in this volume bring together the results of the Mainz conference. They are dedicated to the capital Constantinople, the cities and their surroundings in the Balkans and Asia Minor, as well as everyday life at sea, in monasteries and in the countryside.

What do we know about the environments in which the Byzantine Empire unfolded in the eastern Mediterranean? How were they perceived and how did man and the environment mutually influence each other during the Byzantine millennium? Which approaches have been tried up until now to understand these interactions? And what could a further environmental-historical research agenda look like?The present volume brings together contributions from researchers who have approached these issues from very different perspectives. They focus on the explanatory power of traditional as well as “new” sources and the methods of Byzantine Studies and Byzantine archaeology for this hitherto little-explored sphere.

Within the research project known as ‘Harbours from the Roman Period to Middle Ages’, an international conference titled “Harbours as objects of interdisciplinary research – Archaeology + History + Geosciences” was held in Kiel in 2015. This volume includes 26 papers presented at the conference under the headings ‘Geophysics and Field Research: Developing methods’, ‘Geoarchaeology: Changing Harbour Environments’, ‘Archaeological Features: Harbour Facilities and Infrastructure’ and ‘Written and Iconographic Sources: Complementing the Material Evidence’.

Jerusalem is a city holy to three world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. From the early Byzantine period, Christian pilgrimage here and to other holy sites became a »mass phenomenon«. Thousands of Christians set out to holy sites in Palestine, Egypt and other places in order to physically experience salvation history and seek divine intervention in their lives. Numerous travel reports, pilgrim guides and other written sources highlight important aspects of pilgrimage. In addition, many well-preserved churches, monasteries, hostels and other buildings, as well as rich archaeological findings, provide us with a vivid and synthetic picture of the history of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This volume presents the contributions of a conference held at Jerusalem in 2017. They address the phenomenon of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem from very different approaches using written and material sources. On the one hand, they ask how pilgrims travelled to the Holy Land, what was the infrastructure that made pilgrimages possible, what did they see and what impressed them. On the other hand, they approach the pilgrims themselves, their origins, their motivations and their itineraries.

General phenomena such as the organisation of the Byzantine navy and its operations or lighthouses are discussed in this volume as well as new geoarchaeological research methodologies in harbour archaeology. Most contributions in the present volume examine case studies for the most important maritime core region of the Byzantine Empire, the Aegean. This sea connected the remaining provinces of the empire in Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor after the loss of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa to the Arabs in the 7th century A.D. In addition to technical and geographical aspect, the studies in this volume make clear that we need to explore more and more the social embedding of the seasides of Byzantium to understand their dynamics in all their complexity.The conference »Seasides of Byzantium. Harbours and Anchorages of a Mediterranean Empire«, from which the papers collected in the present volume emerged, took place in Athens in 2017 as part of a cooperation between the DFG-funded Special Research Programme (SPP-1630) »Harbours from the Roman Period to the Middle Ages« and the National Hellenic Research Foundation. It united historians, archaeologists and geoarchaeologists to explore harbours and anchorages as core maritime infrastructure to the Late Roman and Byzantine Empire.