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Historical and Archaeological Laboratory For the Advanced Study of the Byzantine Black Sea

Contract number
075-15-2022-1130
Time span of the project
2022-2024
General information

Name of the project:

A comprehensive historical and archaeological study of the Byzantine Black Sea and Mediterranean region.

Goals and objectives
Goals of project:

A comprehensive research of the historical and typological trends of the historical development of Byzantium and the Black Sea the, connection of this region with Kievan Rus, Western Europe, Eastern states, as well as discovering and publishing new archive sources, creating databases.

Project objective: 

  1. To determine and describe the social, political, economical and religious aspects of the existence of Black Sea and Mediterranean societies in the Middle Ages and the Early New Age.
  2. To research late antiquity/early Middle Age history in the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries from the viewpoint of the study of the social, economic and religious trends that have lead to the transition from the period of «Roman globalization» to the period of «regionalization» and the political conflicts of the subsequent period characteristic of the whole Greater Mediterranean region from the 7th–14th centuries up to the Ottoman conquests.
  3. To decrypt, transcribe, translate and analyze a large array of notarial acts and scribe books of 14th 15th  century Italian merchants.
  4. To study data on the economy of the Black Sea and Mediterranean region on the basis of notarial acts and scribe books of 14th 15th century Italian merchants.
  5. To study data on the social and ethnic composition of the population of the Black Sea and Mediterranean region on the basis of notarial acts and scribe books of  14th 15th century Italian merchants as well as data of Byzantine and Italian narrative sources of the same period.
  6. To trace the processes of symbiosis and cultural exchange between the civilizations of Byzantium, Renaissance and the East in the northern Black Sea region  using archaeological materials.
  7. To demonstrate the role and influence of the Byzantine Empire on the formation of problems of  urban planning in the northern Mediterranean.
  8. To demonstrate the role and influence of the Byzantine Empire on the formation of settled agriculture of the Christian population of the northern Black Sea Region.
  9. To characterize the features of the development of Byzantine cities of the northern Black See region and to determine new vectors their development that formed under the influence of the cultures of the Western European Renaissance and the East (the Mongol Empire, the Golden Horde).
  10. To verify data on Byzantine and Western European written sources on the basis of a study of archaeological  materials of the northern Black Sea region.
  11. To conduct a comprehensive analysis of cartographic sources to reconstruct  the historical geography and historical topography of the Byzantine presence in the northern Black Sea Region and its impact on the neighboring and successor states of Byzantium.
  12. To determine the role role of the Byzantine Orthodox Church the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the life of the peoples of the northern Black Sea region.
  13. To study the processes of religious and confessional interactions, including Orthodox Christianity-Islam and Orthodox Christianity - Catholicism and interactions within the Orthodox Christian peoples.
  14. To collect new data on religious and political confrontation between the West and the East of the Roman (Byzantine) empire caused by the cooperation and opposition of different  clerical and political  groups in the East as well as competition between the papacy that was striving towards political independence since the 5th century and the imperial power.
  15. To study both the clerical and political ideology (and the clerical power as a whole) and the power of the Roman (Byzantine) emperor based on Roman judicial notions and elements of clerical ideology.
  16. To develop education courses and programs for universities on the basis of the experience of the Laboratory’s team and newly acquired scientific data. 
Research directions: History and archaeology.

The practical value of the study
Planned project results:
  1. New knowledge concerning the crucial aspects of the life of the Black Sea and Grater Mediterranean regions: the social, political, economic, ethnic and religious.
  2. Refined and amended information on the history of Crimea and the Azov region contributing to a better understanding of the conditions of the existence of these regions within the Russian Federation and their international cooperation in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea area.
  3. New knowledge concerning the peculiarities of the interaction of the regional factors that traditionally control the territory of the Middle East as a result of a review of problems related to the history of the Eastern Mediterranean.
  4. A more stable scientific basis for the assessment of the viability of economic and political projects by studying the connectedness of the Black Sea, Eastern and partially Western Mediterranean regions.(Italy).
  5. An extended array of source materials concerning the history of the Mediterranean and Russia.
  6. A significantly amended corpus of decrypted, transcribed and translated notarial acts and scribe books of 14th 15th century Italian merchants.
  7. A developed concept of the formation of the zone of contact between civilizations in the northern Black Sea region on the modern territory of the Russian Federation where material monuments exist that were created by three key civilizations that influenced the formation of the Russian statehood and social mentality – the civilizations of Byzantium, the East and the Renaissance. This concept will be presented as a collective monograph.
  8. A developed and unveiled characterization of two different lines of the development of Byzantine urban development in the northern Black Sea region. This characterization will be presented as publication in journals indexed by the «Russian Science Citation Index».
  9. Determined causes of the emergence and development of the structures of the settled agriculture of the Christian population in the northern Black Sea region. The idea of the development of settlement structures will be presented in publications in journals indexed by the «Russian Science Citation Index».
  10. Determined and characterized urban planning vectors that were novel to the Byzantine northern Black Sea region introduced by Western European and Oriental civilizational cultures. A characterization of urban planning vectors that were new to the region will be demonstrated in publications in journals indexed by the «Russian Science Citation Index».
  11. New verified historical knowledge concerning individual objects of the topography of the Byzantine presence, neighboring states and states that succeeded them in the northern Black Sea region. These materials will be presented in a collective monograph.
  12. Determined boundaries of the dioceses of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on the territory of the Crimean peninsula. Articles covering the results will be published in journals indexed by the «Russian Science Citation Index database»..
  13. An extended source and analytical database devoted to the archaeology, historical topography and ethnogenesis of the nations of the northern Black Sea region. Articles covering the results will be published in journals indexed by the Russian Science Citation Index database.
  14. The role of the imperial and clerical ideology in the formation of the state and clerical structures and institutes of the Black Sea and Mediterranean world.
  15. Historical data to conduct substantiated dialogue in the modern times in relation to the interreligious, interconfessional and intraconfessional interactions as a result of an elaboration of the problem of religious interaction in the region.

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