IMC 2015: Sessions

This fourth session in honour of Ian N. Wood takes its name from the Transformation of the Roman World Project (1992-1998) sponsored by the European Science Foundation, where Wood was a co-ordinator. The project studied the origins of Europe and the emergence of European nations, going back to the crossroads of the end of the ancient world. Involving some 150 renowned European scholars, the research covered the exclusive geographical area of sub-Roman Europe and resulted with a series of edited volumes from Brill among other publications.

The three papers in this session will look at different aspects of the transformation of the Roman world. Ralph Mathisen will consider the evidence for the survival of Roman culture in Alamannia after the end of the Agri Decumates. This will be centred on a case-study of an inscription from post-Roman Alamannia that was discovered in Heidelberg in May 1901 which sheds light on other curious survivals of the Roman world. Chris Wickham will discuss the way information moved across the Mediterranean by investigating Gregory the Great’s letter collection which preserves a very large number of letters about the administration of the papacy’s extensive estates in Sicily. Finally, Ann R. Christys will look at the irruption of forces of the Islamic empire into the Iberian Peninsula in 711, which, together with the introduction of a new language and a new faith, appears to mark a turning point in the history of Spain. She will weigh limited earlier evidence against later historiography of the peninsula, which remembered 711 as an Arab/Muslim conquest.