The relationship between the Byzantine imperial core, outlying provinces, and neighbouring kingdoms has been long debated, most famously in Dmitry Obolensky’s The Byzantine Commonwealth (1971). This paper will argue that the core of the problem lies in contemporary European Westphalian approaches to sovereignty, in which territorial control, bureaucratic effectiveness, and recognition of ritual supremacy are…
The paper will highlight the importance of matching the evidence drawn from documentary sources to that of the surviving silk material. Three primary aspects across ‘extended Silk Road cultures’ will be discussed: (1) The weaver’s adage that ‘The yarn is the cloth’ will be explored in relation to availability of differing raw silk supplies over…
In contemporary historiography, there is a growing interest in the subject of interactions between nomadic peoples and the empires of sedentary peoples in antiquity, with particular emphasis on late antiquity. Differences in the perception of the impact of nomadic communities on the economy cause a kind of conceptual confusion. It is largely due to differences…