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The Micropolitics of Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages -19-20/07/2018, Tübingen (



Narratives of the age of migrations tend to privilege the large-scale mobility of ethnically denominated groups. Recent research has questioned this focus from many angles and has led to a growing consensus that new approaches are needed which put the large-scale migrations into perspective, integrate other forms of mobility into the picture, and develop a clearer understanding of the social processes involved, both among the mobile groups and individuals as well as within the societies where they arrive. This conference proposes to explore an approach to the age of migrations that takes account of these redirections in scholarship by focusing on the micropolitics of mobility in late antique and early medieval local societies in a broad timeframe from ca. 250 to 900 CE.


FECHA/DATE/DATA: 19-20/07/2018


ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Mischa Meier; Steffen Patzold; Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner


INFO: web - luisa.luiz@altegeschichte.uni-tuebingen.de. ; mischa.meier@uni-tuebingen.de ; steffen.patzold@uni-tuebingen.de ; sebastian.schmidt-hofner@uni-tuebingen.de.


INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: Gratis/free/gratuito


Se ruega enviar un email a /please contact /sono pregati di inviare una e-mail a luisa.luiz@uni-tuebingen.de


PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA: Aquí/here/qui


Thursday, 19th July


9.00– 9.15 Welcome and Introduction: Mischa Meier (Tübingen)

9.15–10.30 Keynote: Jean-Pierre Devroey (Brüssel): 'Manentes', 'forenses', 'vagantes`: Occupation du sol, mobilité et contrôle social au prisme de la seigneurie domaniale carolingienne.


11.00–12.30 Migration and Local Societies I: Frontier Areas in the North

Irene Bavuso (Oxford): Shaping Political Power in Frontier Areas: the Scheldt-Lower Meuse During the Merovingian Period (6th-8th c.)

Vince van Thiemen /Ewoud Deschepper (Ghent): Towards a Differentiated View on Mobility and Migration in the Transformation of Local Societies in Late Antiquity: the Archaeological Case of the Low Countries

Christopher Landon (Toronto): Decem milia hominem ex his ... transtulit: Forcible Migration in the Frankish Conquest of Saxony


14.00–15.30 Migration and Local Societies II: The Mediterranean Area

Andrea Colella (Wien): The Jewish Migration Waves in the Mediterranean Area: the Case of Southern Italy

Reuven Kiperwasser (HU Jerusalem): Galilean Micropolitics of Mobility

Hagith Sivan (Kansas): Naturalizing Gothicness in Spain: Children, Acculturation and Alienation


16.00-18.15 Conflict, Law and Identity

Ralph Mathisen (Urbana): The Reception of Arian-cum-Homoian Migrants in a Nicene World

Philip Rance (FU Berlin): Migrant Community and Religious Conflict in Constantinople in the 570s-580s: a Case-Study of the Micropolitics of Mobilty.

Stefan Esders (FU Berlin): Legal Identity and Mobility in the Early Medieval West (5th-10th cent.)

Edward Schoolman (Reno/Tübingen): The Micropolitics of Greekness in Early Medieval Italy


19:00 Evening Lecture

Ulrich Wiemer (Erlangen): Wenn aus Helden Greise werden: Die letzten Jahre Theoderichs des Großen



Friday, 20th July


9.00–10.30 Migration and Economy

Pavla Drapelova (Athen): Antioch on Orontes in the 6th Century: Some Remarks on Connections Between the Migration and the Local Economy and Numismatics

Elena Gritti (Bergamo): Syrian Migration towards Milan and Surrounding Areas in the 4th and 5th century AD

Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner (Tübingen): Agrarian Economy and the Visigothic Settlement


11.00-12.30 Archeological Perspectives and Methods

Angelo Barba (Palermo): New Incomers and the 'New Shape of the World': the Afterlife of Roman villas in Western Empire (300 – 800 CE)

Susanne Brather-Walter (Tübingen): Migration und Mobilität in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie - Eine Vergleichsstudie am Beispiel frühmerowingerzeitlicher Gräberfelder

Maite Iris García-Collado (Univ. of the Basque Country): Small Scale Mobility in Early Medieval Rural Communities from Visigothic Iberia (6th-8th c. AD) Based on Strontium Isotope Analyses


14.00–16:15 Border Regimes and the Military

Alexander Sarantis (Tübingen): State Control, Migration and Mobility in the Transcaucasian and Mesopotamian Frontier Regions of the Eastern Roman Empire, ca. 502-602

Ekaterina Nechaeva (Tübingen): John of Tella and the Micropolitics of the Roman-Persian Border

Aaron Beek (Memphis): Manipulating Social Status, the Army, and Immigration in Late Antiquity

Jeroen Wijnendaele (Ghent): Mallobaudes and the Genesis of Military Kingship


16.45–18.15 Forced Migration and Refugees

Helen Kaufmann (Oxford): The Micropolitics of Migration in Latin Poetry (4th to 6th c.)

Tina Sessa (Ohio): Local Refugee Crises and the Church in the Late Roman West

Geoff Nathan (New South Wales/San Diego): The Accidental Migrant: Paulinus of Pella and the Physical Dislocation of Roman Citizens in Late Antiquity


19.00 Keynote: Bernhard Palme (Wien): title tba




Saturday, 21st July


9.00–10.30 Clerical Refugees I: Clerics and Bishops

Samuel Cohen (Sonoma/CA): North Africans Exiles and the Bishops of Rome: Clerics, Heretics and the Politics of Belonging in Late Antiquity

Andrea Verardi (Rom): Migration and Social Mobility in an Ecclesiastical Milieu: the case of Rome in the 6th Century.

Steffen Patzold (Tübingen): Mobile Priests in the Carolingian World


11.00–12.00 Clerical Refugees II: Monks

Federico Montinaro (Tübingen): How Many Byzantine Monks Emigrated During Iconoclasm?

Marc Malevez (Büssel): Monastic xeniteia and Flight in the Desert, or How to Become a Foreigner Outside or in its Own Country


12.15–13:30: Keynote

Campbell Grey (UPenn Philadelphia): Finding Meaning in Mobility: Power, Politics, and Collective Identity in Constantius’ Vita Germani


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