Details
This book deals with one of the key moments in the history of Byzantium and Europe and , namely the transitional period between Antiquity and Middle Ages, a topic which gains particularattention among scholars from multiple fields: historians, archaeologists and philologists. The present volume corresponds/is in line with the current research tendency also in such works as: Framing the Early Middle Age. Europe and Mediterranean 400-800 (Oxford 2004) by Chris Wickham, or – in the aspect of Byzantine studies – recently published Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era: a History (Cambridge 2011) by Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon. Adam Izdebski has concentrated in this work on the issue of economical history of Asia Minor in Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages (5th-9th century). In order to deal with the problem of significant insufficiency in the number and type of sources (lack of written evidence for the history of economy), the author utilizes? not only archeological evidence, but also data gathered by environmentalists, mostly palynologists. The usage of those sources has indicated the concentration on the rural world, in specific history of agriculture and rural colonization. From this perspective both the detailed analysis were conducted as well as the work synthesis was formed.