Transcultural Societies in Transition: Eastern Anatolia and Caucasus in the Late Middle Ages

Τhe area of Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus is a good example of transcultural societies interacting with each other. We are dealing a complex and multilayered contact zone inhabited by a great variety of cultural and ethnic entities, including Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, various smaller Caucasian peoples, and Muslims with a Turkish, Iranian, and, to a lesser degree, Arabic ethnic background. The close and centuries-long interaction between all these entities engendered the emergence of highly complicated phenomena of acculturation and hybrid mixtures.

This workshop aims at discussing transcultural processes and cultural interactions between ethnic groups and political entities in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. It will primarily focus on matters of methodology and source criticism in order to develop new approaches to these phenomena in question. The workshop will bring together a group of distinguished scholars in this field of Caucasian studies, who have expertise with different categories of sources and languages and are familiar with various methodological issues.

Contact:

Sima Meziridou
Jenny Oesterle
Heidelberg University, Institute of Transcultural Studies
Marstallstrasse 6
69117 Heidelberg
E-mail: sima.meziridou@gmail.com, oesterle@uni-heidelberg.de