Integration und Herrschaft

The volume looks at the integration of the barbarians into the Late Antique world in the context of Late Antique and Early Medieval forms of social integration. The two central features of this process are the building of new power structures on the territory of the Roman Empire and beyond, and the ethnic integration to which the Roman- barbarian Regna owed their cohesion. The particular significance of the volume lies in the wide horizons of the collection - early medievalists open up a field which stretches from west--Roman/Frankish Europe to the Byzantine and Slavic east and into islamic Spain. Just as diverse are the approaches taken, inspired by the early medieval research tradition of the "Vienna School". Several of the contributions show that the transition from antique forms of social and political integration in the fifth and sixth centuries was similar in east and west. The building of a common identity from the wareness of self and the perceptions of others, especially in the case of the Franks, is newly interpreted from a number of angles. The role of the church in the integration of the new Gentes and Regna is investigated and differentiated. The problems of the relationship between the settlement itself and ethnic processes are explored from archaeological and historical perspectives. The role and self image of the kingdoms of the Goths, Alamans and Franks are investigated in detail, including a critical analysis of the role of historiography. There are new insights into the cultural basis of ethnic and social integration, in which the appropriation and interpretation of the past play a role. Finally, several contributions are dedicated to the role of the Slavs in the ,Transformation of the Roman World", which has often been overlooked. The majority of these articles originated as papers given at an international symposium of the Forschungstelle fiir Geschichte des Mittelalters der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.