The Transformation of Roman Dalmatia: Power, Communication and Identity

The project focuses on the transformations of the Roman province of Dalmatia between 400 and 1000. This was a period of radical change for the different areas of this region. The considered time-frame offers the possibility to study the waning of the Roman rule, the first attestation of the Slav identity in Dalmatia, the struggle of Franks and Byzantium in the region and the crystallization of a new society in the 10th c. when powerful elites, like the Croatians and later the Venetians, shared control of the territory. While the major Adriatic towns showed strong links with the Eastern Mediterranean and Byzantium, other coastal and inland territories witnessed the formation of new political entities named after ethnic groups like Croatia, Narentania or Serbia. These are the years when the name Dalmatia began to signify only the Adriatic shores and islands, as in the case of today: a semantic-turn reflecting broader changes that will be investigated in this proposal. These changes have been traditionally explained with the pattern of migration, destruction and resistance. The proposed research will challenge this view. In order do this five main lines of research are planned: (1) The Territorial transformations of the province and their background. (2) Urban discontinuity and destruction myths (How the decline of roman cities and the rise of the medieval ones were explained by medieval chronicles ). (3) De-Romanization and the rise of new elites. (4) Constantine Porphyrogenitus and the construction of the Dalmatian ethnography (an analysis of the chapters 28/9-36 of the De administrando imperio). (5) Christianization. Focal aspects of the proposal will be the transformation of political structures and formation of identities, instead of the paradigm of population-change. It is essential to frame these aspects in the debate on the Transformation of the Roman World. Moreover Dalmatia will be discussed within the nascent debate on the Transformation of the Carolingian Word which has one of his centers in Vienna. The discourse of identities and political structures will be contextualized in the role of communication, both by land and sea. The broader history of Europe and the Mediterranean will be recalled and neighbouring regions will be used for comparison. The aim of this research is to enhance the role of Dalmatia within the current historical debates.

The project focused on the transformations occurring in the Roman province of Dalmatia between the fifth and the eleventh century, the years that experienced the collapse of the imperial system and the beginning of the Middle Ages. In the process, the structure of society was deeply altered. This change was accompanied by a dramatic drop of literary evidence which becomes almost inexistent since the beginning of the seventh century. When, after two centuries of darkness, our sources begin to shed light on the region in the early ninth century, we encounter a society organized around non-Roman patterns. The old provincial name Dalmatia was now mostly referring to the coastal fringes of the former territory only, while the inland had become a barbarian landscape formed by polities called by Slavic names, mostly unknown to the imperial world. The region was, moreover, dotted by Romans, living in coastal communities, and apparently working as middlemen in the infrastructure of communication.Older historiography explained this transformation through the classical pattern of migration, destruction and escape. Change was, according to this interpretative matrix, brought by new barbarian populations coming from the north and refugees fleeing from the inland to the coast, a territory which the barbarians, so it was argued, could not control. This interpretation shows countless fallacies, which resurrects bygone myths of romantic fatherlands lost in the mists of time and covered with snow. Moreover, the history of Dalmatia was often read in isolation, which brought scholars to stress the elements of peculiarity at the cost of the features common to further regions of Europe and the Mediterranean.In fact, looking at the history of Dalmatia from a comparativistic angle brought a more nuanced understanding of the regions past, and enabled the historian to grasp patterns common to the neighbouring territories. Departing from grim myths of migration and descendent, we suggested that societies transformed because of mutating economic and political conjunctures, change in taste and habits rather than supposed mass movements of peoples. Understanding change and continuity mostly as social and cultural processes enriched the picture, granting the historian sharper tools with which to investigate this exciting world. On the backdrop of this interpretative matrix, the project integrated an important region on the Adriatic in the wider debate on the Transformation of the Roman World and the rise and waning of the Carolingian Empire.The project leader F. Borri described the habits and identities of the human groups of Dalmatia, testing them on the framework of historical change. He analyzed their everyday life, as far as the scant evidence permits, their myths and culture. Moreover, he worked on the role of state and the one of the Dalmatias powerful neighbours, such as the Carolingian and the Byzantine empires. Finally, he explored the role of the sea and its impact to the shape of human societies under different circumstances. The project-results have been presented in numerous publications and talks.