Macedonia, Northern Part

The volume 16 of the TIB “Macedonia, Northern Part” comprises the Early Byzantine province of Macedonia Secunda and parts of the provinces Macedonia Prima, Dardania, Epirus Nova, Praevalitana and Dacia Mediterranea. It is closely connected to “Macedonia, Southern Part” (TIB 11). Since the historical area of Macedonia is today divided between Greece, North Macedonia and Bulgaria, the volume “Macedonia, Northern Part” covers the whole territory of North Macedonia and two districts of Bulgaria (namely Kjustendil and Blagoevgrad). The volume on “Macedonia, Northern Part” thus bridges the gap between the volumes TIB 6 “Thrakien” and TIB 11 “Macedonia, Southern Part”. The research for this volume is based, in addition to regular surveys, on written sources (mainly in Greek, Latin, Old Slavonic and Ottoman), monuments, archaeological reports and a vast variety of toponyms, as well as an extensive secondary literature, mostly in the South Slavic languages.

The volume is enhanced by the application of new methods in Historical Geography, such as settlement theories (e. g. modified Central Place Theory) and by applications deriving from Geographical Information Science (GISc) (Historical Geographic Information Systems / HGIS). These were further developed in the Cluster Project “Digitising Patterns of Power (DPP; Principal Investigator M. Popović)” at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (cf. DPP – Case Study: The Historical Region of Macedonia (12th–14th Cent.) – The Transformation of a Medieval Landscape) and are continued to be developed in the Maps of Power: Historical Atlas of Places, Borderzones and Migration Dynamics in Byzantium initiative of the TIB.