This project explores the significance of the Caucasus and the Danube as frontiers and as contact zones of Byzantium and Orthodox Christianity from Late Antiquity to the Early Ottoman period, as it impacts Central and Eastern Europe, on the one hand, or the Middle East, including the Christian Orient, and the Eurasian Steppes, on the other. Processes of exchange as well as conflict are highlighted in their short- and long-term dynamics on the basis of written sources and material culture and examined from the perspectives of political, religious, economic and environmental history.

Cooperation partners


Publications


  • E. Mitsiou – M. Popović – J. Preiser-Kapeller – A. Simon (eds.), Emperor Sigismund and the Orthodox World (Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung 24). Vienna 2010, 158 p. (online)
  • Ch. Gastgeber – E. Mitsiou – I.-A. Pop – J. Preiser-Kapeller – M. Popović – A. Simon (eds.), Matthias Corvinus und seine Zeit. Europa am Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit zwischen Wien und Konstantinopel (Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung 27). Vienna 2011, 270 p. (online)
  • F. Ardelean – Ch. Nicholson – J. Preiser-Kapeller (eds.), Between Worlds: The Age of the Jagiellonians (Eastern and Central European Studies 2). Vienna 2013, 227 p. (online)
  • J. Preiser-Kapeller, The Climate of the Khagan. Observations on palaeo-environmental Factors of the History of the Avars (6th-9th century AD), in: J. Drauschke, E. Kislinger et al. (eds.), Lebenswelten zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte. Festschrift für Falko Daim zu seinem 65. Geburtstag. Mainz 2018, 311-324 (online)
  • J. Preiser-Kapeller, From one edge of the (post)Sasanian world to the other. Mobility and migration between the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf in the 4th to 9th centuries CE, in: N. Asutay-Effenberger – F. Daim (eds.), Sasanian Elements in Byzantine, Caucasian and Islamic Art and Culture. Mainz 2019,  9-17 (open access online)
  • J. Preiser-Kapeller, Aristocrats, mercenaries, clergymen and refugees: deliberate and forced mobility of Armenians in the early medieval Mediterranean and Near East (6th to 11th century), in: J. Preiser-Kapeller – L. Reinfandt – Y. Stouraitis (eds.), Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone (Studies in Global Migration History). Leiden - Boston 2020, 327-384 (open access online)
  • W. Seibt - J. Preiser-Kapeller (eds.), The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets as Phenomenon of Cultural History. Vienna 2011, 132 p. (online)