Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800 (Transformation of the Roman World, 2) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004108467 ISBN 13: 9789004108462

Publisher: Brill Academic Pub, 1998

Synopsis

Between the fourth and the eight century, a number of 'experimental' polities had to create new forms of legitimacy and organisation to overcome a Roman world based on Empire, city and tribe. In the course of time, a new world developed that relied on Christendom, kingdom and people to pull an increased variety of local communities together. Of these three factors, the ethnic one certainly is the most elusive. This volume discusses the process of construction of ethnic identities. What did names, law, language, costume, burial rites, rhetoric, culture, royal representation or ideology mean, and to whom? This is the question that is common to the papers assembled here. Even though they span several centuries, and a geographic area from the Iberian peninsula to the Black Sea steppes, they all deal with the ways how ethnic distinction became a political factor in the post-Roman world.

About this title

About the Author:

Walter Pohl, Dr. phil. (1984) is researcher for the Austrian Academy of Arts and Sciences (Commission for Research on the Early Middle Ages) and lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Vienna. His publications include Die Awaren (Munich, 1988).

Review:

'...a useful and generally substantial collection of articles...'
Roger Collins, Early Medieval Europe, 2000.

About this edition

• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 9004108467
• ISBN 13: 9789004108462
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 374
• Editor: Pohl Walter, Reimitz Helmut