Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: issues of ‘periodisation’ and ‘geo-history’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/2035-7362/31912Keywords:
Late Antiquity, Middle Ages, Time, History, continuity/discontinuityAbstract
Historical periodisation, still shaped by the work of Benedetto Croce, is re-examined here through the dialectic of continuity and discontinuity between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This paper traces how recent historiography has redefined this relationship, elucidating the paradigm of ‘the long Late Antiquity’, which puts the notion of decline into perspective and emphasises elements of continuum. Several key issues are briefly discussed: changes in urban socio-political structures; transformations in rural settlement patterns; the economy; and, above all, religious thought and monotheistic faiths. Geographically, the focus also shifts to the eastern Mediterranean, where the interaction between Roman-Eastern, Iranian and Islamic contexts foreshadowed the East–West divergence, even though the Abbasid Caliphate can be regarded as the heir to two imperial systems.
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