The Monotheisation of Pontic-Caspian Eurasia: From the Eighth to the Thirteenth Century

Description

A comparative approach to the effects of monotheism on ethnicity and state-formation in Western Eurasia Offers a comparative approach to the study of previous understandings of ethnogenesis and state-formation across 8-13th-c. Western Eurasia Challenges conventional notions of ethnogenesis, state-formation and periodizationRelies on a variety of source materials and methodologies in order to facilitate a holistic rendering of archaeological and textual questions, offering new methodological combinations for future historians to consider What is the line between the ancient and medieval worlds? 330? 476? 800? Most historians acknowledge that these are arbitrary distinctions, but they remain nevertheless, taking on lives of their own. Alex Feldman challenging us to see them as the same world, except for the imposition of a given monotheism. In this process, he studies top-down, monotheistic conversions in Western Eurasia and their respective mythologisations, preserved both textually and archaeologically, serving as the foundation of recognisable state-formation. Applying this idea to Byzantium’s policies around the Black and Caspian Seas, he reveals how what we today call the ‘Migration-Age’ continued perpetually up to the Mongolian invasions and perhaps later. This book enhances our understanding, not only of Western history, but presents it in the context of global monotheisation.