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390 Pages
Preface
Most of the papers in this book were originally presented at the International conference “Croats and Carolingians — revisited: Fifteen years later’, as a part of the “Gunjacéa Days” conference series (Gunjacini dani 4). The conference was convened by Dr Ante MiloSevi¢, financially supported by the Croatian Ministry of Culture and organized by the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments in Split on 17 and 18 September 2015. In addition to judiciously selected papers from this conference, additional articles were commissioned from Marko Petrak and Richard Hodges, in order to give the volume a more rounded approach to the field.
Preparation of this volume was long and arduous, and the editors would like to express gratitude to several people and institutions. First, our gratitude goes to all contributors to this volume, whose remarkably cooperative approach to the process of editorial revisions immensely eased the process. English editing of the text was carried out voluntarily by two Macquarie University Ancient History students: James Woodward and Caitlin Lawler. Both of them have done outstanding work, taking time from their busy study schedules to help bring the volume up to the highest standards of academic English.
Our gratitude also goes to our institutions (Macquarie University, the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments, and the University of Zagreb), and Danijel Dzino would like to acknowledge also the financial support of the Macquarie University Faculty of Arts, which facilitated his participation in the conference by awarding him a Faculty Travel Grant. Our gratitude goes to anonymous peer-referees and supporting people from Brill Academic Publishers — especially Marcella Mulder, Elisa Perotti, and Ester Lels whose help was an invaluable contribution to the preparation of this volume.
Notes on Contributors
Mladen Anci¢é
is Professor of History at the Universities of Zadar and Zagreb. He studied history at Sarajevo and Belgrade, before completing his PhD at the University of Zagreb on the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom and Bosnia in the 14th century, the subject of his 1997 monograph Putanja klatna: Ugarsko-hrvatsko kraljevstvo i Bosna u XIV. stoljecu (The path of the pendulum. The Hungarian-Croatian kingdom and Bosnia in 14th century). His other books include a monograph on the medieval city of Jajce, as well as a book on historiography and nationalism Sto ‘svi znaju’” i to je “svima jasno”: Historiografija i nacionalizam (What “everyone knows’, and what is “clear to everyone”: Historiography and Nationalism) (2008). He is also co-editor of Imperial spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812) (2018) with Jonathan Shepard and Trpimir Vedris.
Ivan Basié
is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Split and has taught at the University of Zagreb. He studied history and art history at the University of Zagreb, with a PhD in medieval studies on ‘The Poleogenesis of Split at the Turn of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, on which he published extensively. His research interests include the late antique and medieval Adriatic, Church history, urban history, historical geography and Early Christian and medieval art. In addition to three co-authored monographs and an edited volume, his works in English include ‘Diocletian’s villa in Late Antique and Early Medieval Historiography: A Reconsideration’ (2014), ‘Spalatensia Porphyrogenitiana. Some Issues Concerning the Textual Transmission of Porphyrogenitus’ Sources for the Chapters on Dalmatia in the De administrando imperio’ (2013), ‘New evidence for the re-establishment of the Adriatic dioceses in the late eighth century’ (2018), ‘Pagan tomb to Christian church: The case of Diocletian’s mausoleum in Spalatum’ (2017), and ‘Dalmatiae, Dalmatiarum: a study in historical geography of the Adriatic’ (2017). He is Head of Chair for Ancient and Medieval History at the Department of History of his faculty, and co-founder and vice president of the Croatian Society for Byzantine Studies.
Goran Bilogrivié is Senior Lecturer at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies, Department of History. He graduated archaeology at the University of Zagreb, where he then worked as a research assistant and completed his PhD in Medieval Studies. He has published a number of papers on various early medieval topics, mostly concerned with weapons, material culture and ethnic identities.
Neven Budak is Professor of Medieval Croatian history at the University of Zagreb, in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, where he is head of the doctoral programme in medieval sciences. He taught also at the Central European University in Budapest, in the Department of Medieval Studies. His research interests include: early medieval identities, urban history, slavery, early medieval and early modern Croatian history, and the history of historiography. Among his books are: Prva stolje¢a Hrvatske (The First Centuries of Croatia)
(1994); edited collections Kroatien. Landeskunde — Geschichte — Kultur — Politik Wirtschaft — Recht (1995), and Towns and Communication, vol. I: Communication in Towns (2010).
Florin Curta
is Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology, at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a specialist in the history and archaeology of the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in East Central and Eastern Europe between ca. 500 and ca. 1250. He received his PhD from Western Michigan University, and has taught at the University of Florida since 1999, where he is the founding member of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies program. His first book, The Making of the Slavs (2001) was named a 2002 Choice Outstanding Academic Title and won the Herbert Baxter Adams Award of the American Historical Association in 2003. He is also the author of Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250 (2006) and The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050. The Early Middle Ages (2011), and editor of several volumes such as Neglected Barbarians (2011), The Other Europe in the Middle Ages. Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans (2008), and Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (2005).
Danijel Dzino is a Lecturer at the Departments of Ancient History and International Studies (Croatian Studies) at Macquarie University, Sydney, having obtained his PhD in Classics at the University of Adelaide. His research interests focus on ancient and early medieval Illyricum, particularly the identity transformations undergone by the indigenous population of the region in Roman and post-Roman times. Author of Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: Identity Transformations in Post-Roman Dalmatia (2010), Iltyricum and Roman Politics 229 BC-AD 68 (2010), and co-author of Rimski ratovi u Iliriku. Povijesni antinarativ (Roman Wars in Illyricum. Historical antinarrative) (2013) with Alka Domic¢-Kunié. Dzino also co-edited, with Ken Parry, Byzantium, its Neighbors and its Cultures (2014).
Kresimir Filipec is Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology at the University of Zagreb, with research interests in the archaeology of early medieval Pannonia. In 2004 and 2005 he was a Head of Department for Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, from 2009 to 2011 Head of Archaeology at the University of Zagreb, and he is the current Head of the Discipline of Medieval and National Archaeology in the same department. He is the author of numerous scholarly works, including the monograph Donja Panonija od g. do n. stoljeéa (Lower Pannonia from gth to uth centuries) (2015).
Richard Hodges is President of the American University of Rome since 2012. In 1976 he was appointed lecturer at Sheffield University and launched excavations and cultural heritage projects at Roystone Grange (Derbyshire), Montarrenti (Tuscany) and San Vincenzo al Volturno (Molise). He was Director of the British School at Rome (1988-95), and became scientific director of the Butrint Foundation to undertake excavations and site management strategies at Butrint (Albania). He was subsequently Director of the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture (1996-98), Professor in the School of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (1998-2017). He served in the Ministry of Culture in Albania (1999), as adviser to (and later, Board member of) the Packard Humanities Institute during the Zeugma (Turkey) excavations (2000-04), and oversaw the making of the Ottoman museum town of Gjirokastra, Albania into a World Heritage Site in 2005. He served as Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (2007-12). He was also a visiting Professor at sUNy-Binghamton (1983), the University of Siena (1984-87), the University of Copenhagen (1987-88) and the University of Sheffield (2006-08). His most recent books are The Archaeology of Mediterranean Placemaking (2016) and Travels with an Archaeologist (2017).
Nikola Jaksié is Professor Emeritus at the University of Zadar. He is a specialist in medieval art history and archaeology, with a particular interest in early medieval sculpture, European medieval goldsmitthing and Croatian medieval topography. He is the author of over 100 publications including books such as his most recent one Klesarstvo u sluzbi evangelizacije (Sculpture in the Service of Evangelisation) (2016). He was also the editor of the multi-volumed edition “Umjetni¢ka baStina zadarske nadbiskupije” (Art Heritage of Zadar Archbishopry).
Miljenko Jurkovicé
archaeologist and art historian, is Professor of Late Antique and Early medieval art history at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Currently he is Head of the Department of Art History, and Director of the International Research Centre for Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (from 1993). He is the founder and editor of academic journal Hortus Artium Medievalium (1995) and the series Dissertationes et Monographiae (2001).
Jurkovichas organized 30 international conferences, and coordinated numerous international research projects, and published over 200 articles and books. He is the author or co-author of several exhibitions (French Renaissance, 2005; Croatian Renaissance, 2004; Europe in the Time of the Anjou Dynasty, 2001; Croats and Carolingians, 2000). He has been awarded the Strossmayer Award for Scholarly Work (2001) and twice the Medal of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2001, 2005). He has received the honors: Officier de l’ordre des palmes académiques (2004), Order of Lomonosov (2007) and Chevalier de lordre National du Mérite (2015).
Ante Milosevic
is the Director of Museum of Croatian National Monuments in Split, and Editor-in-Chief of Starohrvatska prosvjeta, leading Croatian peer-refereed journal dealing with medieval archaeology and history. He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, edited collections, and six monographs that deal with medieval history and archaeology of Dalmatia and Dalmatian hinterland. His most most recent monographs are: Arheologija Sinjskoga polja (2018), Traces of Ancient Beliefs in Early Medieval Christianity (2013), Campanilli preromanici della Dalmazia e della Croazia altomedievale (2011), La chiesa preromanica di San Salvatore a Cettina (with Z. Pekovi¢) (2009), Croci sulle lastre di rivestimento dele tombe altomedievali nellare di Signa (2008).
Marko Petrak is Professor of Roman Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb, with research interests in: Jus Commune, Byzantine Law and Roman foundations of contemporary legal systems. He studied law, philosophy and classics at the University of Zagreb, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centro di studi ericerche sui Diritti Antichi (Pavia/Italy). He is a member of the editorial board of the series Studies in the History of Private Law (Brill/Netherlands), journals Legal Roots, The International Journal of Roman Law, Legal History and Comparative Law (Napoli/Italy) and Jus Romanum (Sofia/Bulgaria). Petrak is a peer-reviewer of the European Science Foundation and member of its College of Experts.
Peter Stih
is Professor of Medieval History and Auxiliary Historical Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, a Member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include early medieval Slav ethnogenesis and state formation in the eastern Alps. He has published many books and articles on the medieval history of the Alpine-Adriatic region, including Studien zur Geschichte der Grafen von Gorz (1996) and The Middle Ages between the Eastern Alps and the Northern Adriatic: Select Papers on Slovene Historiography and Medieval History (2010).
Trpimir Vedris
is Senior Lecturer at the University of Zagreb, in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, where he studied history, ethnography and philosophy. He holds a doctorate in history from his home university and another one in medieval studies from the Central European University in Budapest. He has taught Croatian medieval history and the history of Christianity at the Universities of Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik. His research interests focus on medieval hagiography and the cult of saints, and more recently, on the formation of medieval identities, cultural memory and the modern receptions of the early Middle Ages. He is co-editor of five volumes, including Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints (with John Ott, 2012) and Imperial spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen (812) (with Mladen Anci¢é and Jonathan Shepard, 2018).
A View from the Carolingian Frontier Zone
Danijel Dzino, Ante Milosevié and Trpimir Vedris
1 Migration, Interaction and Connectivity
The creation and expansion of the Carolingian empire was a process of crucial importance for European history, as it reshaped the post-Roman world and provided the foundations for medieval western and central Europe. The establishment of the Carolingian frontier zone in central Europe and the eastern Adriatic region triggered a wave of societal and political changes: population movements, transformation of local communities and complexification of existing social networks. These changes were shaped by the different ways in which local communities reacted to Carolingian imperial power — either through resistance or integration of imperial cultural templates and architectures of power that were negotiated on a local, regional and trans-regional level. The establishment of new social networks transformed the localized, almost self-sufficient post-Roman communities which were forming in the 7th century, soon to be integrated in a much larger, interconnected and unfamiliar world. In discussing the 8th and gth centuries in central Europe and the eastern Adriatic hinterland, it is impossible to overlook the significance of this period in the construction of the ‘historical biographies’ of modern nations located in this region. The impact of preconceptions about the past which were integrated into national narratives of research in the 19th and 2oth centuries cannot be overstated. The integration of these preconceptions into national narratives presents significant challenges for the next generation of scholars, but it is also an opportunity for this current generation to reassess the existing scholarship in light of new methodologies and the most recent archaeological research to produce a more balance understanding of the past.
The impact of the expansion of the Carolingian empire on the resultant frontier regions and the societies therein closely resembles that which occurred in other pre-industrial empires. Empires, being complex trans-ethnic and trans-regional political networks, cause changes on their fringes through expansion which reshape local power-relationships and introduce new ideological discourses. Frontier societies actively participate in this transformation by processing imperial influences and templates, changing their political and economic systems and interacting with an empire either as foes or allies.
Elite individuals and indeed the elite groups of these frontier societies exploit interaction with the imperial power by integrating themselves with imperial architectures of power to enhance social dominance over their societies. These same societies also experienced social complexification processes which impacted greatly on their identities and culture.! Whether the Carolingian empire was an imperial or proto-imperial formation, finished empire or unfinished imperial project, is of little significance here.? What is significant for the purposes of this volume is to recognise how this empire organised power in particular ways, maintained ideological discourses and established a social system that secured social reproduction and integration,? all of which makes it a suitable candidate for discussion using an analytic framework for research of pre-modern empires.*
The expansion of Carolingian power in northern, central and southeastern Europe established a frontier zone which, rather than being a lineal division beyond the empire’s influence, was an active zone of cultural change, reminiscent of Turner’s well-known conception of the American frontier.5 The transformations of local communities in the Carolingian frontier regions were clearly caused by two factors. The first of these was imperial reorganisation of power through the establishment of new social networks centred around the imperial core, which necessarily peripheralized frontier regions. The second factor was the negotiation of this new organisation of power on a local level. While medievalists have been reluctant to adopt the Turnerian concept of the frontier, a number of important works have been written in the last few decades, especially in the context of frontiers in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.®
This collection of essays focuses on societal transformations in the region of the eastern Adriatic and its hinterland caused by the region’s positioning as a Carolingian frontier zone in the late 8th and gth centuries, and critically evaluates its historiography. The importance of this area is multiplied by the existence of Byzantine western outposts in Ravenna, Istria and some Dalmatian cities such as Zadar. This made the Adriatic, not only a frontier zone, but also a contact zone, the very definition of Parker’s ‘borderland matrix’” between two empires, a subject which is touched upon in the contributions of Basi¢ and Petrak, and, in the context of southeastern Europe, by Curta.® The aims of the volume are multiplicitous, but the most significant one is to enhance understanding of the Carolingian frontier zones, especially the ways local communities established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus. This volume brings 13 essays to a wider reading audience and its goal is to fill an important gap in literature. Because of the lack of English publications on the topic, most scholars are unaware of this area of study.9
The present collection of essays reflects a renewed interest in the eastern Adriatic region during the Carolingian age, an interest that is also illustrated by the recent publication of the edited volume Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic: Byzantium, the Carolingians and the Treaty of Aachen.° It aims to bridge the gap between the imperial centre and its periphery by exploring the ways in which the Carolingian empire affected communities on its eastern frontiers, especially those gravitating towards the Adriatic Sea. The Carolingian territorial expansion reshaped local communities, which began to negotiate cultural templates coming from the Carolingian and Byzantine imperial centres alongside existing traditions to produce unique and novel cultural interfaces."
A consequnce of this was the creation of new methods of power organisation and new ways to express power in local settings. This process of transformation is witnessed, not so much through the written sources, as through the vast body of archaeological material from excavations in the later 20th century. It is now possible to connect the establishment of early medieval political entities in early medieval Dalmatia, Pannonia and Istria to the larger process of social transformations and migratory movements on the Carolingian frontiers as argued in the contributions of Anci¢ and MiloSevi¢. This volume will also explore the complexity of social transformations occurring in the imperial frontier zone, and how they have been perceived in contemporary scholarship. A number of factors contributed to these transformations: the migration of groups after the destruction of the Avar Qaganate, the integration of local communities within cultural and political templates developed within the Carolingian imperial structure, and the development of complex social networks in the imperial periphery.
The first group of essays explores ‘how we know what we know’ about the early medieval eastern Adriatic and its hinterland — exploring and critiquing the existing narratives in local scholarship and macro-histories of the period. The focal point will be a critical reassessment of the contribution of the exhibition “Croats and Carolingians’, held in 2000 and 2001 in Split, to a major paradigm shift in local research, and increasing acknowledgement of the Carolingian role in the formation of early medieval local polities. The second group of essays discusses the impact of the Empire on migrations and population movements of Slavophone groups in the late 8th/early gth centuries, which were caused by the destruction of the Avar Qaganate and Carolingian expansion in central Europe. Previous scholarship either disregarded these migrations or embedded them within existing local national narratives as a part of national ‘biographies’.
The essays in this volume illustrate how these migrations were a complex combination of small-scale population movements and cultural change amongst local communities. The debate on migrations (especially the migration of the Croats) is a highly contested area, which this volume in no way attempts to resolve or explain conclusively, and the papers of Bilogrivic, Anci¢ and MiloSevié reflect this diversity of approaches in attempts to explain change in the material culture of early medieval Dalmatia.
The third group of essays contributes to a better understanding of the ways in which local communities on the eastern Adriatic coast integrated within new cultural and political templates, which were developed with the foundation of the Carolingian empire. The papers in the final part aim to advance the understanding of the different networks which were forming at this time between local communities but also extending towards eastern Europe, Italy, as well as the Carolingian and Byzantine empires.
2 The Exhibition “Croats and Carolingians” and its Impact
A significant part of this volume is framed around reasessment of the exhibition “Croats and Carolingians” held in the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments in Split in 2000/2001 and the accompanying 2-volume catalogue published in 2000. The significance of this exhibition was that, in presenting a significant volume of Carolingian finds, it attempted to break down the existing historical narratives connected with only the significance of Byzantium, and reorientate research on the early medieval eastern Adriatic towards the Carolingian world. As a consequence, it revealed that the early medieval eastern Adriatic, its hinterland as well as the Pannonian plains were part of an imperial frontier-society, which is a major focus of this collection.
In order to mark the 1200th anniversary of Charlemagne’s coronation, but also to emphasize the modern need of an alliance of European nations at the same time, a large international project entitled “Charlemagne — The Making of Europe at the dawn of the new millennium’, consisting of a cycle of exhibitions was developed. The problem of the Carolingian period is certainly a panEuropean topic, which is why the cycle of exhibitions within this project was sponsored by the European Commission’s “Raphael Program”.
Indeed, Charlemagne was called the ‘Father of Europe’ already by his contemporaries, because it was then when the foundations of a common European civilisation were laid. The influences of creative and intellectual forces, spread by the greatest European minds at the court of Charlemagne, can be felt even today. This common cultural heritage was even more directly manifested through the exchange and equalization of artistic works and archaeological finds in all exhibitions within the scope of the project. Thus, the exhibition in Paderborn (23 July to 1 November 1999), under the name “79g: Art and culture in the Carolingian Age: Pope Leo 111 in Paderborn’, presented the meeting between the Frankish King and the Pope in Paderborn in 799.
The exhibition in Barcelona (16 December to 27 February 2000), entitled “Catalonia in the Carolingian Age’, synthesized the problems of Carolingian heritage of the region. In the exhibition that took place in Brescia (18 June to 19 November 2000), under the name “The Future of the Lombards, Italy and the Construction of Charlemagne’s Europe’, the emphasis was on the Lombard culture as a component of Carolingian art. The exhibition “Croats and Carolingians” in Split (20 December 2000 to 31 May 2001) presented the Principality of Dalmatia/ Croatia at that time with its surrounding Sclaviniae as a peripheral region where both Carolingian and Byzantine influences are evident.
In the summer of 2001, the city of York organised the final exhibition from this cycle, entitled “Alcuin and Charlemagne — the Golden Age of York” dedicated to Alcuin, a distinguished teacher and advisor at the court of Charlemagne.! The exhibition in Split was then transported almost in its entirety to Brescia, to the Museo della cittaé —- Santa Giulia (9 September 2001 to 6 January 2002). The existing catalogue was translated into Italian and published by the publishing house Skira. The exhibition in Brescia served also as an occasion to organize the international scientific conference: “L’Adriatico dalla tarda antichita all’eta carolingia’, which resulted in the edited volume of the same name.
The exhibition “Croats and Carolingians” in this project, from almost two decades ago, was of paramount importance. Research conducted in the last decades of the 20th century significantly changed the perception of the Carolingian Age in the Adriatic hinterland and southern part of the Pannonian plains, with the result that the time was ripe not only for reexamining the historical narratives but also presenting those locally published finds to a wider audience.
The exhibition did not encompass the entire early medieval period, but rather focussed exclusively on the Carolingian Age. In the eastern Adriatic region, this period coincides with the possible (but still debated) arrival of the Croats in ca. 800 and the formation of the Dalmatian, later Croatian Principality during the 9th century. The fate of these areas, which had obviously played an important role in the processes of cultural and ethnic transformation in this area was thus closely connected to the Carolingians as its frontier zone.
The importance of the notion of the ‘Croatian return to Europe’ cannot be neglected as one of the possible ‘background agendas’ of the exhibition, as it was quite common in the public discourse in Croatia in the 1990s. Two processes made possible the revival of the public stress on Croatia's belonging to the West: the collapse of Communism in 1990 and the Croatian secession from the disintegrating Yugoslavia. These two entangled processes practically led to the removal of the ideological umbrella of the totalitarian Communist regime established after the Second World War, and, perhaps more significantly, the cutting of political bonds with other Yugoslav republics, primarily Serbia. However one interprets it today, and whatever theoretical approach one takes, the insider participants in these events felt this to be an historical moment. On the institutional level, this feeling of living at the watershed of history inspired a whole series of publications of varying quality which had different meanings for different audiences.!*
In order to grasp the essence of the paradigm shift promoted by the “Croats and Carolingians’, one needs to go back to the ‘historiographic roots’ of the project, rather than just link it with the historical context of national awakening in Croatia during the 1990s. This is not to say that it is unnecessary to review the history of Croatian historiography, but rather to stress the importance of a single paper which played perhaps the most crucial role in this paradigm shift — at least in the fields of history and archaeology.
This new historiographic paradigm was in part rooted in the deconstruction of the main source for the history of the eastern Adriatic and its hinterland in the 7th and 8th centuries — the treaty De Administrando Imperio (DAT). The DAI has been the sole framework for explaining the central questions of ‘who, when and how’ concerning the earliest Croatian state, but also a history of other South Slavic nations. Once this account has been discarded as the single reliable piece of evidence — something Croatian scholars did not dare to do in order not to lose the field of research — the way had been opened for new interpretations. The study of the par had a long and fruitful tradition in the local historiography and it was perhaps inevitable that its deconstruction started in this framework. An important step in this direction, and one of the central inspirations for the new paradigm, was a paper by law historian Lujo Margeti¢ published in 1977 in which he questioned the chronology of the Croatian migration offered by the par.!5 Margeti¢ himself later disowned this interpretation and the idea lay dormant for some time.!®
Originally treated with suspicion, the idea started to become more accepted among the next generation of scholars towards the end of the 1980s.!” Margeti¢’s basic idea was that the Croats — whose collective memory was supposedly preserved in the late 9th-century oral tradition and ‘textually fixed’ by the author of the 30th chapter of the par — moved into Dalmatia only at the end of the 8th century. In terms of methodology, there was nothing revolutionary in this re-interpretation. Also, the idea that the Croats moved separately from other Slavs — in the context of a great migration of the 7th century — had as its predecessors a number of authors who explained Croatian separation by the notion of ‘two migration waves’. What was revolutionary was his de-construction of the once almost sacrosanct arrival narrative of the Dal. The interpretation itself, at this stage, can hardly be described as nationalistic wishful thinking. In fact, the very idea of large-scale ‘late migration’ nowadays sounds somewhat anachronistic and its epistemological foundations fragile. Yet, in 1977, it sounded fairly iconoclastic. The vision proposed by Margeti¢ ‘erases two centuries of national history’, and goes against a very strong and widespread ecclesiastical tradition stressing the ‘thirteen centuries of Christianity among the Croats’.!® The proposed interpretation thus threatened to ‘deprive’ Croatians not only of two hundred years of history but also of the ‘title’ of the oldest Christian Slavic nation — hardly a nationalistic enterprise.
Be that as it may, the idea, incumbent for almost a decade, fell on fertile soil in not only a single discipline. The 1990s witnessed a series of significant projects that can be read as predecessors of “Croats and Carolingians”. One of the first such large-scale projects was a monumental series launched by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1991, given the telling name “Croatia and Europe”. Meant to provide an overview of Croatian scholarship, this series presented the cultural history of Croatia. The central aim of the first volume (Croatia in the Early Middle Ages) is clearly illustrated by the following sentence: “In these pages the authors, all Croats, demonstrated in an erudite, intelligent and brilliant way, that Croatia is both a culturally distinct and yet profoundly Western European component of the rich ensemble which constitutes Europe ...”!9 This explicit statement of Jacques Le Goff addressed precisely the two critical issues. The first was an attempt by the intellectual elite of the nation caught in war to prove its belonging to ‘civilized’ Western Europe. The other was a frustration —- common among Croatian scholars — that Croatia was absent from scholarship on early medieval Europe.?° This in fact meant that international audiences were deprived of up-to-date results of the local scholarship. It is no surprise that the words of J. Le Goff were read as pleasant, although somehow expected, approval and encouragement. Moreover, he also claimed that the volume “will bring blushes to many English-speaking readers, not least myself, on account of their ignorance.”2!
Besides the above mentioned “Croatia and Europe” project, archaeologists and art historians can boast of organizing conferences and exhibitions with significant names such as “Creation of the first Croatian cultural landscape” or ‘From Nin to Knin’.2? At the same time, an important impetus — not directly connected with the previous ones — was the foundation of the International Center for Research of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in 1993, which started gathering scholars on yearly conferences in Motovun and publishing their proceedings in the form of the glossy periodical Hortus Artium Medievalium. The Motovun conferences were obviously a melting-pot for many of the ideas that later surfaced in the “Croats and Carolingians”? The actors consisted of a group of archaeologists, art historians and historians at the time, as Dzino notes in this volume, in their prime age as far as creation of new scholarly paradigms is concerned. The reference to a group gathered around Hortus does not mean that they were the only ones anticipating some of the conclusions that were to appear. The exception is for example V. Sokol, who also consistently argued in favour of late 8th/early 9th century Croat migrations, from an archaeological perspective.*+
Analysis of the exhibition, its significance and impact on later scholarship is encountered frequently in this collection, in particular in the contributions of Dzino, Bilogrivi¢ and Budak. It is necessary to examine how the new knowledge and findings can be used in the interpretation of the events at that time in the eastern Adriatic region. It also seems an opportune moment to ask once again whether and to what extent the Split exhibition represented a break from previous perceptions of the early Middle Ages in Croatian historiography. The “Croats and Carolingians” — whatever we think about it today — was a landmark conference which opened new horizons of research, impacting the way the scholarship conceives of migration, integration and connectivity.
3 Contributions
3.1 Historiography
The section on the historiography begins with Danijel Dzino’s contribution, which positions the exhibition “Croats and Carolingians” in the context of local historical narratives of the Middle Ages. As he argues, the exhibition was a decisive break with the existing historical narrative. These narratives were shaped in the igth century, when local scholars developed ‘historical biographies’ of the Southern Slavs, as part of the wider political discourse of the time.
After 1945, the key player in the histories of the Southern Slavs was Byzantium, against which they could be shown to have the same origin, a common history, and a shared destiny fulfilled at the moment the Southern Slavic state, Yugoslavia, came into being. Apart from breaking up the existing narratives, the exhibition “Croats and Carolingians’, in Dzino’s view, also reflected new identity-discourses in an independent Croatia, which developed after the death of Yugoslavia. Neven Budak revisits the question of impetus for cultural change in the eastern Adriatic and its hinterland during the 9th century, asking, whether the terms ‘Carolingian’ or ‘Lombard Renaissance’ used in historiography are reflections of the cultural contact and outside influences, or incentives that began locally. Twenty years ago research in the field of art history and epigraphy supported by historical and archaeological studies led to the thesis that one may speak of a Carolingian ‘Renaissance’ in this area. Almost at the same time a thesis was presented on the Liutprand (Lombard) ‘Renaissance’ that preceded the Carolingian one by about half a century. At this time the 7th and 8th century were still seen as the ‘dark centuries’ in the area under consideration, in which all economic and cultural activities had ceased in a petrified society reduced to number of small islands of Byzantine urban life, as well as undefined Slavic local communities.
However, as Budak points out, there have been new insighst into this period which justify reconsideration of this problem and examining local communities as another driving factor for the changes which happened in the gth century.
3.2 Migration
The Croat migrations remain a hotly disputed point in the historiography, which is well demonstrated by the contributions in this volume. Mladen Anéié returns to the topic he explored in the “Croats and Carolingians” catalogue, published in 2000. His chapter reviews some recent interpretations of early Croat history and migrations in the Anglophone scholarship, showing ongoing problems in the dialogue between the local and ‘global’ scholarship. The chapter restates the opinion that those migrations were not of the order and importance to deserve mention in the few contemporaneous texts produced in the Carolingian political centre. Anci¢é points to changes in material culture in Dalmatia characterized by the massive presence of Carolingian objects, concluding that the most convincing explanation is found in the sudden emergence of small warrior elite groups that settled in the region between the Danube and the Adriatic. Similar to Anci¢, Ante Milosevic argues in favour of the Croat migration as an historical event occurring in the late 8th/early 9th century. His chapter focuses on the appearance of artefacts representative of the Germanic animal style in the Adriatic hinterland. Milosevié explains those artefacts as important symbols that displayed identity amongst the elites formed in recently established frontier societies on the eastern borders of the Carolingian empire.”5 In his opinion they bear witness to a shortlived and fluid frontier zone characterized by the establishment of new social networks, social mobility and demographic change brought by small warrior elite groups entering the Adriatic hinterland from northern Europe.
In contrast to Ancié and MiloSevi¢, Goran Bilogrivié challenges the idea of Croatian settlement in early medieval Dalmatia as Carolingian war-allies and vassals, which was one of the significant outcomes of the exhibition “Croats and Carolingians”. Some archaeological finds, discovered in recent years, try to blend into such depictions as new and firm evidence for the colonization of Croats under Carolingian leadership at the turn of the gth century. At the same time, the unyielding general discussion on ethnogenesis and early medieval ethnic identities at the global level shifted its main focus from solely migration issues to other problems, such as the use of material culture and narratives concerning its origin in the creation and communication of identities, legitimacy of power and presentation of ancient traditions. In this light, Bilogrivi¢ raises the question of whether grave finds from the turn of the gth century really point to the arrival of a new population or whether a continuity of burials exists, asking if the artefacts of Carolingian provenance are the consequence of migration, trade or perhaps gifts.
3.3 Integration
Peter Stih argues that the integration of the eastern Alpine Slavs into the Carolingian imperial networks had started already before the mid-8th century when the Bavarians subdued the Carantanians. Christianity and the Church in general played a central role in overcoming the barriers which divided different population groups within the Carolingian empire. Conversion to Christianity was the prerequisite for integration of the Slavic social elite into the ranks of the Frankish-Bavarian nobility and their political survival. Stih points out that marriages between members of the Slavic and Frankish or Bavarian nobility indicate that there were certain groups among the Slavs which the Franks and Bavarians regarded as equals. In this and similar ways a new social elite in southeastern Bavaria was formed, which acted integratively, but was also in the interest of the members of the reigning Carolingian dynasty due to the fact that it strengthened their power and stabilised the social conditions within their (sub)regna.
Miljenko Jurkovi¢’s contribution looks into early medieval Istria and its integration into the Carolingian realm.” Until the 1990s, early medieval Istria was perceived as ‘Byzantine’ by historians, art historians, and archaeologists. Largescale archaeological surveys, excavations and comparative analyses were undertaken at the beginning of the 1990s, and instead of a Byzantine Istria, they showed a Carolingian Istria in the early Middle Ages. Further research in the last fifteen years was concentrated on a few important problems — the settlements and the transfer of forms and functions. Comparative analyses have shown similar patterns of urban development of different types of settlements developing as a result of those integrative processes. Jurkovi¢ also explores the typology of early medieval churches in Istria. Looking into the typology of the churches, the chapter asks whether the typology could have been transferred even earlier, during the possible Lombard involvement in Istria after the fall of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751.
Kresimir Filipec’s chapter focuses on what he calls ‘Lower’ Pannonia in the Carolingian period.?’ In the last fifteen years, major progress has been made in the research of Carolingian-age southern/south-western parts of the Carpathian basin, particularly due to recent protective works on infrastructural installations. The archaeological record shows that the Avar-Frankish war in the late 8th century caused a demographic collapse in this area, but also that life was soon reinstated. Comparative material evidence provided by recent archaeological excavations shows very clearly that the Pannonian elites quickly integrated into the new imperial templates of power, in particular by accepting Carolingian Christianity.
3.4 Networks
The expansion of the Carolingian empire in the wider Adriatic area, created a unique contact zone with the Byzantines who ruled their overseas outposts in Istria and Dalmatia throughout the Dalmatian Dark Ages. Ivan Basi¢ looks into networks of ideas exchange in the frontier zone between the Carolingian and Byzantine empire through the work of Gottschalk (Godescalc) of Orbais. Within the context of his theory of predestination, his works contain valuable information on Dalmatia in the time of the Croat dux Trpimir, evidently picked up during his stay there. Basi¢ argues that the penetration of Byzantine diplomatic formulas into vernacular usage points to relatively regular administrative contacts between Carolingian Venice, Dalmatia and Istria and the Byzantine metropolis, via official documents during the first half of the gth century. Marko Petrak discusses traces of the Nomocanon of St Methodius in the 12th century Chronicle of Presbyter Docleas. By arguing that the Nomocanon existed, he discusses the problem of mutual relations between this oldest Slavonic adaptation of the Byzantine legal culture and the Western normative models in medieval Croatia as a Byzantine-Carolingian contact zone developing in the 9th century.
Nikola Jaksi¢é discusses the transfer of the cults of saints in early medieval Dalmatia, as a part of active Carolingian Adriatic politics, and the transAdriatic networks of contact. This chapter argues that the entire set of local saints in Zadar, especially two of its patron saints SS Chrysogonus and Anastasia, has its origin in the area of Friuli, where the veneration of all those saints in the Early Christian period is attested. Their implementation into Zadar’s ambience, in JakSic’s opinion, took place only in the 9th century, and not earlier as the tradition and earlier scholarlship would like us to believe.
Florin Curta’s chapter takes a fresh look at the first churches established in medieval Croatia under Carolingian influence, as well as in Greece and Bulgaria under Byzantine influence. Because scholarly attention has been paid to architecture or chronology, a comparative perspective on the relation between the building and the first burials inside or in the immediate vicinity of the church is still missing. Particularly interesting in this respect is the absence or presence of child burials next to the walls of the church, the so-called ‘eaves drip’ phenomenon. The contribution of Richard Hodges carries further the argument about establishment of social networks in the Carolingian frontier zone, by looking on the other side of the Adriatic. He begins his chapter by examining the question of how prestige goods exchange — which played such a major part in the genesis of early Carolingian commerce-networks in the North Sea and Baltic Sea — led to the economic evolution of central southern Italy. The phased archaeology of the Carolingian-supported monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno is reviewed, before examining the part played in this narrative by prestige goods — marine fish and material goods — in sustaining the evolution of the monastery. The essay ends by considering the broader issue of the transition from gift-giving to market-based economies in the course of the Carolingian era.
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