Communication and Empire

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Whittow
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Communication Work ◽  
Distance Communication ◽  
Western Half

The Roman world in the second century was remarkably homogeneous, and the ties that bound it together remarkably thick and apparently strong. But what happened when the western half went its own way, when imperial territories were limited to bits of Asia Minor and the Balkans, when the construction of new monumental buildings had slowed to a trickle or stopped entirely, when the epigraphic habit had died? How did political communication work in the Roman empire of the Middle Ages that we know as Byzantium? The answer requires conjuring up a picture of people on the move; of soldiers, priests, students, pilgrims, appellants, merchants, tax collectors, administrators, painters, and builders. And it requires thinking about the messages they received and passed on. Placing the Byzantine experience in comparative perspective to Song China, this chapter surveys the evidence of Byzantine political communication to investigate both the means of transmitting news and orders as well as the underlying networks of shared discourse and identity. It shows that the survival of the Byzantine state depended largely on its ability to create an imagined community as the nation-state of the Romans. The decline of Byzantium and the rise of Muslim identities in its former territories can thus be linked to a failure to maintain effective long-distance communication networks that projected a ‘Roman’ narrative across the entirety of the empire.

Smoke signalling resistance: Aboriginal use of long-distance communication during Australia’s frontier wars

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Ray Kerkhove
Keyword(s):  
Communication Networks ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Distance Communication ◽  
Signalling Systems

AbstractThis essay reconstructs defensive/offensive mechanisms of Aboriginal communication networks and presents historical examples of their application as a means of resistance during Australia’s frontier wars. The principal focus is on smoke-signalling systems, especially in Queensland.

Frankish Royal Tombs in the Cathedrals of Cologne and Saint-Denis

Antiquity ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 38 (151) ◽  
pp. 201-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Werner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
European Society ◽  
European History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
North Central ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
North Central Europe

The centuries between A.D. 400 and 800, which make the transition between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, are sparsely documented and have often been called by the English the ‘Dark Ages’, the dark centuries of Western European history. This paucity of written historical sources is greatly to be regretted, for these were decisive centuries for the formation of European society and in them occurred events whose results are to be seen even to the present day. The Roman Empire with its ancient civilisation collapsed; the countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean went over to Islam; the Slavs settled in the Balkans, North-Central Europe, and the territory around the Danube as far as Austria; and these Danube-lands came under the domination of the Mongolian Avars.

Between Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages: new evidence of economic change

Antiquity ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 64 (242) ◽  
pp. 122-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klavs Randsborg
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
North And South ◽  
The Middle Ages

New archaeological evidence, principally from rural settlements, questions previous conceptions of the economic background to the transition from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages. In particular, finds from the Balkans, a geographical ‘hinge’ between North and South and East and West, is discussed. The major periods of change are both the 5th and the 7th centuries AD.

Nicopolis ad Istrum: Backward and Balkan?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. WHITTOW
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

The story of Nicopolis ad Istrum and its citizens exemplifies much that is common to the urban history of the whole Roman Empire. This chapter reviews the history of Nicopolis and its transition into the small fortified site of the fifth to seventh centuries and compares it with the evidence from the Near East and Asia Minor. It argues that Nicopolis may not have experienced a cataclysm as has been suggested, and that, as in the fifth and sixth century west, where landowning elites showed a striking ability to adapt and survive, there was an important element of continuity on the lower Danube, which in turn may account for the distinctive ‘Roman’ element in the early medieval Bulgar state. It also suggests that the term ‘transition to Late Antiquity’ should be applied to what happened at Nicopolis in the third century: what happened there in the fifth was the transition to the middle ages. This chapter also describes late antique urbanism in the Balkans by focusing on the Justiniana Prima site.

scholarly journals MYTHOLOGICAL SYMBOLS FROM THE THRACIAN MEGALITHIC SANCTUARIES, CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM SACRED PLACES ON THE BALKANS

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassil Markov
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The People ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
The Guardian

Abstract: The ancient Thracian megalithic and stone-hewn sacred places are full of symbols closely connected with the Thracian mythology and ancient cult practices which were typical for this area. Among them the most numerous are the huge stone-hewn human footprints, which in Bulgarian folklore were regarded as the footprints of the hero Krali Marko, who was thought of as the guardian of the people in Bulgaria. In the contemporary science studying Thrace he is believed to have been the folklore successor of the Thracian Dionysus.Marking the sacred place with a stone-hewn footstep altar of the hero was authentic evidence for the believers in ancient times that the god had been there in primordial mythological times. In this way, through the contact with the divine, the monumental rock turns into sacred and the place turns into a sanctuary. The raw becomes boiled, Nature becomes culture. With the establishment of Christianity as the sole religion in the Roman Empire since the 4th century, some of the Thracian megalithic sanctuaries have been abandoned. Others have been Christianized. Later, others in the Middle Ages were converted into Islamic sacred places. In this way they became permanently sacred places on the Balkans. Part of the signs-symbols in them have a new meaning in the spirit of the new religions.Key words: anthropology; history of culture; religion; mythology; archaeology;

Herring Trade, Quality Controls and Diplomacy in Cologne in the Fifteenth Century*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Brunmayr
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Quality Controls ◽  
Perishable Product ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
In Transit

Abstract The importance of herring to Cologne’s medieval economy is well-known and the need to control the quality of this long-distance and perishable product has also been widely recognized. The interregional quality norms that Cologne negotiated with Low Countries fishing towns in 1481 have been neglected, however. This article offers the first reconstruction of the diplomatic process that led to the edict and an analysis of the motives that impelled the diverse stakeholders to reach an agreement. The article demonstrates that in addition to herring’s commercial significance, its quality control was a major issue and was used as an instrument of influence by Cologne and other powers in the politically decentralized Holy Roman Empire. Comprehensive analysis of Cologne’s abundant sources shows how exchanges of letters and complaints gradually fed into formal negotiations, culminating in the publication of a crucial edict that established an interregional quality control system and took account of the interests of the different stakeholders in the herring trade. The article suggests that this push for regulation was also an element of Cologne’s economic strategy since it helped justify the taxes the city levied on goods in transit at the expense of competing actors in the Rhine region. In short, the example of quality controls on herring shows how food trade studies can shed light on power relations in the Empire during the late Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Beyond Neurons: Long Distance Communication in Development and Cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McMillen ◽  
Madeleine J. Oudin ◽  
Michael Levin ◽  
Samantha L. Payne
Keyword(s):  
Communication Networks ◽  
Electric Fields ◽  
Cancer Metastasis ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Electrical Coupling ◽  
The Body ◽  
Molecular Signaling ◽  
Tunneling Nanotubes ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Distance Communication

Cellular communication is important in all aspects of tissue and organism functioning, from the level of single cells, two discreet populations, and distant tissues of the body. Long distance communication networks integrate individual cells into tissues to maintain a complex organism during development, but when communication between cells goes awry, disease states such as cancer emerge. Herein we discuss the growing body of evidence suggesting that communication methods known to be employed by neurons, also exist in other cell types. We identify three major areas of long-distance communication: bioelectric signaling, tunneling nanotubes (TNTs), and macrophage modulation of networks, and draw comparisons about how these systems operate in the context of development and cancer. Bioelectric signaling occurs between cells through exchange of ions and tissue-level electric fields, leading to changes in biochemical gradients and molecular signaling pathways to control normal development and tumor growth and invasion in cancer. TNTs transport key morphogens and other cargo long distances, mediating electrical coupling, tissue patterning, and malignancy of cancer cells. Lastly macrophages maintain long distance signaling networks through trafficking of vesicles during development, providing communication relays and priming favorable microenvironments for cancer metastasis. By drawing comparisons between non-neural long distance signaling in the context of development and cancer we aim to encourage crosstalk between the two fields to cultivate new hypotheses and potential therapeutic strategies.

scholarly journals The terminology of kinship and hierarchy of rulers in the writings of Constantine the Philosopher and his contemporaries

2001 ◽  
pp. 225-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milos Blagojevic
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Eastern Christianity ◽  
Present Concept ◽  
The World ◽  
Father And Son ◽  
The Middle Ages

According to the simplified Byzantine idea, which was never discarded, the Byzantine basileus is the God's elected ruler. He is the only legitimate emperor in the world because he is the legitimate heir of Roman emperors. Apart from Byzantium, a series of other sovereign states existed throughout the Middle Ages on the territory of the former Roman Empire. That condition lead to the formulation of a sustainable interpretation of the conjured hierarchy of rulers and states. At the top of the fictitious ladder stood only the Byzantine emperor, and, at its bottom, rulers of the lowest rank to whom the emperor issued "orders". All other rulers were distributed between these two instances along the fictitious ladder of hierarchy, depending on their power and the esteem they enjoyed. At the same time, the Byzantine basileus was also perceived as the "spiritual parent" of the Christian nations and rulers who, on the otherhand, depending on their esteemed, boasted varying degrees of "spiritual kinship" with the emperor. These Byzantine concepts were adopted by Stefan Nemanja and his heirs, so that, at times, in medieval Serbia they were real and not fictitious. In the last decades of the XIV century, the power and esteem of Byzantium waned rapidly. The Empire had to take on difficult obligations towards the Ottoman Turks of which she was freed only after the Battle of Ankara (1402). The liberation from demeaning commitments brought on a revival of the ever present concept of ideal supremacy of the Byzantine emperor, especially among rulers in the Balkans. Such ideas were adopted by Constantine of Kostenec, the author of the Vita of Stefan Lazarevic, who, however, added certain corrections, conforming them to the views of the Serbian spiritual elite. According to the treaty of Gallipoli, sultan Suleiman accepted (1403) emperor Manuel II Palaiologos as his "father", a fact known also to Constantine the Philosopher, as was later also repeated by sultan Mehmed I. At the time when, in 1410, Stefan Lazarevic received for the second time the crown of despots from Manuel II, relations between the Byzantine basileus and the Serbian despots were defined as those of "father and son". By those means, Constantine the Philosopher elevates the position of the Serbian ruler to the level once held by king Milutin following his marriage to Simonis. The author of the Vita of Stefan Lazarevic took strict care to state the noble rank of the Serbian despots and thus matched it with those of sultan Mehmed I and the contender to the throne, Musa, who addressed the despots as "brother". Constantine the Philosopher makes no mistake either when referring to the king of Hungary and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Sigismund, whose vassal Stefan was. Regardless, of such ties between the two rulers, Sigismund is never mentioned as the despots' "parent" but solely as his "comrade"(ally), probably because the Hungarian king belonged to the oicumene of Western and not Eastern Christianity and could thus by no means have been a "spiritual parent" to the Orthodox Serbian despots.

scholarly journals «Blachii ac pastores romanorum»: de nouveau sur le destin du latin à l’est / «Blachii ac pastores romanorum»: again, on the destiny of Latin in the East

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Iosif Camara
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Research Direction ◽  
Population Mobility ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
The North ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Boundaries

The shepherding tradition in Romanic peoples enjoyed some interest among linguists in the first half of the 20th century. However, this tradition has been misunderstood, poorly known, or even completely ignored. Therefore, starting from a suggestion by Alf Lombard, we took up this research direction, discussing several issues revealed by the study of Eastern Romanity. These are the rustic character of the Romanian language bearing pastoral traits; the Carpathian-Balkan space in which the language was born and the issue of continuity in the North Danube area; and the dialectal configuration of the Romanian, having four relatively homogeneous historical dialects and language varieties. In this direction, we relied on linguistic, ethnographic, historical and archaeological research, in order to emphasize the importance of shepherding in the research of Eastern Romanity. Genealogically, Romanian is defined as the Latin language spoken continuously in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, from the Carpathians to the Balkans, with the changes that have taken place throughout history. The pastoral character of Eastern Romanity is rendered by the early medieval chronicles; even the exonym vlah (Wallachian) designating the Romanic population has acquired the meaning of ‘shepherd’. The specificity of this community is supported by numerous linguistic facts: semantic evolutions (e.g. animal ‘living creature, animal’ > nămaie ‘sheep’), specific derivations (a înţărca ‘wean’, derived from ţarc ‘corral, enclosed area for animals’, which initially meant ‘getting the lamb into a corral, so it stopped sucking’), expressions (a închega un gând ‘crystallise thoughts’, where the verb used is a închega ‘coagulate’) or even morphologic elements (the structure of the Romanian numeral from 11 to 19, linked to the scoring system). Throughout time, shepherding has been associated with the controversial issue of the territory in which the Romanian language and the Romanian people were born. Ethnological research has revealed the existence of four types of shepherding: local – agricultural – one, two types characterised by short transhumance, and the last one, associated with long-distance transhumance. Of the three types of transhumant shepherding, none identifies itself with the nomadic lifestyle and, therefore, the existence of a balkanische Hirtenromania (Balkan pastoral Romanity) does not imply the phenomenon of migration, as it was erroneously believed. Shepherding, through the forms described by ethnologists, explains both the sedentary character and the mobility of Oriental Romanity. Linguistic and archaeological arguments support G. Ivănescu’s view identifying the origins of the Romanian language in both the north and south of the Danube. The pastoral character of Romanity led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic level. There is, on the one hand, a dialectal diversity due to population movements, and, on the other hand, a surprising linguistic unit, due to transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic levelling role. This fact explains the linguistic unity of the Romanian language, despite its territorial spread and development in several historical provinces separated by natural boundaries. While shepherding explains some important issues in the history of Eastern Romanity, there is still need for systematic study on this topic. A comparative study of shepherding at the level of the entire Romanity is required in order to draw a complete picture of the lifestyle that characterized Romanity especially in the mountainous areas of Europe, bearing influence on the historical languages that we can only guess nowadays.

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