IMC 2022: Sessions

This session focuses mostly on funerary practices in the medieval Balkans (12th-16th centuries). While this peripheral region did fall under strong Byzantine influence, the practices differed and distorted in relation to the Byzantine legal and cultural traditions. The session aims to provide various insights into society and the activities of the actual people in this region who crossed state borders. From privileged, highly positioned members of societies, traders and foreign individuals, esteemed such as doctors, but also outcasts, criminals and above all livestock herders, who travelled the mountains with their animals with no regard to what would have been state borders. What were the implications for everyday life when living in the high mountainous or heavily wooded zones, i.e., in areas with physical-geographical barriers, in which state borders play no role? In addition, we also seek to understand how a lifestyle that implies crossing or not crossing the border affects the creation of collective identity and inclusion or exclusion from a community.

While it is more straightforward to obtain such data from the perspective of history, from an archaeological perspective aggravating methodological circumstances arise. Within archaeology, these cultural and social phenomena can be discussed indirectly through funerary archaeology and burial practices. The material culture from graves speaks of trade networks, while certain burial practices and tombstones offer evidence of similarities regardless of borders. The style and manner of making the tombstones speak of trends and artistic influences, which is the domain of art history. Bioarchaeological research on human skeletal remains can also be instrumental in understanding human migration and lifestyle. Zooarchaeological information from medieval sites can assist in the reconstruction of the symbiotic movement of humans and animals (such as with sheep, horses, and mules). The historical record can help significantly understand animals' role in travel and crossing borders. Ethnography on the behaviour of shepherds in the Dinaric area and their movement allows for the reconstruction of the past but under all critical caution.