Black Sea Coastal Thrace 4th to 15th c.: the Hinterland of the City and a Borderland of the Empire

The paper focuses on the ambivalent character of Thrace as an intermediate hinterland of Constantinople and a severely contested borderland between the Byzantine and Bulgarian empires since the 9th c. onwards. We chose the coastal area for our survey for several reasons, as the fact that the sea communications generate much faster and clear-cut reflections of economic, political, and cultural changes; the area allows us to study various types of interaction: between Constantinople and its Thracian hinterland; between the medieval Bulgarian empire and the Thracian borderland; between the coast and its hinterland. With case studies related to the areas of Sozopol Bay and Strandzha, we will address the following aspects: Settlement patterns and their reflection on demographic fluctuations and the centers of power. Production and trade were based on local resources and imports. Manifestation of the metropolitan and the local elites in the cultural setting of the area (e. g. monastic foundations, local cult places, etc.). Perhaps the framework of the thematic session will not allow us to answer completely all questions raised, but we hope to outline the way to answer the main question: how people and powers managed the challenge to build a home in the troubled territory of Thrace between the 4th and the 15th century.