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

Name of the project:

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

Research directions: History and archaeology.

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 5^th to the 8^th 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 7^th–14th centuries up to the Ottoman conquests.
3. To decrypt, transcribe, translate and analyze a large array of notarial acts and scribe books of 14^th – 15^th  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 14^th – 15^th 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  14^th – 15^th 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 5^th 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.