Speaker
Description
The invasions of the Slavs, Avars, Antes, and Bulgars of the Balkan provinces of the Byzantine Empire during the 6th and 7th centuries have been used to explainthe changes in coin circulation observed in the Northern Balkans in this period. The FLAME Project database represents a unique accumulation of mapped data that can be used to challenge some of the monocausal explanations offered in past scholarship. My project investigates how FLAME's numismatic data can be used in conjunction with other types of evidence, such as archeological and pollen data, to better qualify the societal and economic changes in the Balkans during this period. The conclusion reached is that economic patterns of supply and demand and societal changes better explain earlier narratives of invasion, depopulation and loss of political control.
