Under what circumstances did migrant peoples maintain traditional power structures and only slowly adapt them to their new environment? And in which cases did they modified their political practices soon after the formation of political units on foreign soil? In Europe, that was often accompanied by adopting the Christian religion, which, however, often led to resistance against its mostly top-down implementation. The project aims at tracing these developments by comparing various cases in a Central Eurasian perspective. It tries to identify patterns of competition and transformation, where diverging models of power relations were confronted and developed into something new.

The available sources on the origins of early medieval ethnic groups and political formations often present well known motives taken from a common literary stock. These literary motives are mainly used by authors from a Roman or Byzantine background describing ‘barbarian’ peoples, mainly invaders who managed to establish larger political entities, like, e.g., the Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Khazars etc. A frequently used pattern are migration stories, which were popular topics in the Middle Ages. Historical research often focused on their historical value, while more recently, their literary meanings were emphasised. This study proposes to broaden the scope by applying a comparative Eurasian approach, analysing a wide range of source material with a focus on East Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (see also Pohl/Mahoney 2018b).