IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 613: Frontiers and Crossroads of Italy in the Early Middle Ages
Tuesday 6 July 2021, 11.15-12.45
| Organiser: | Christopher Heath, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Christopher Heath, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University |
| Paper 613-a | Across the Border: Communication, Collaboration, and Contact - Avars and Lombards, 567-662 (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Historiography - Medieval, Politics and Diplomacy, Social History |
| Paper 613-b | Living in Interesting Times: The South Italian Frontier in the Ninth Century (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Political Thought, Politics and Diplomacy |
| Abstract | This session introduces a wider series of papers and research on frontiers and crossroads in the Italian peninsula in the Early Middle Ages. A larger strand of sessions is planned for the coming IMC 2022. Aiming to discuss and highlight the multivalent landscapes of peoples, places, languages and socio-political and religious frameworks in Italy, these three papers discuss and evaluate the tensions between frontiers and settlement on the one hand and rulers, elites and people on the other hand. Christopher Heath commences the session with an analysis of the first century of Lombard and Avar contact and conflict in the north-eastern borderlands of Italy drawing upon both narrative and non-literary materials to evaluate the links and connections through, across and between borders and peoples. Finally, Clemens Gantner tiptoes into the troubled political worlds of the Mezzogiorno. Here the fissiparous fracturing of polities mirrored the erection of new confessional boundaries. This and the attentions/interventions of external forces rendered the south into not only a zone of cultural contact but one of boundaries. Gantner discusses whether the situation on the ground reveals a fruitful creation of a melting pot of Islamic, Byzantine, Frankish and Lombardic-Italian influences on political elites and individuals. |