The Ethnonym of the Vlachs in the Written Sources and the Toponymy in the Historical Region of Macedonia (11th-16th Cent.)

Description

The project entitled “The Ethnonym of the Vlachs in the Written Sources and the Toponymy in the Historical Region of Macedonia” focuses on the interplay between the resident population and the nomads (i.e. the Vlachs) in the historical region of Macedonia from the 11th to the 16th centuries. This project, which was successfully submitted by the project leaders Doz. Mag. Dr. Mihailo Popović and Prof. Dr. Toni Filiposki (Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, North Macedonia), is funded by the Centre for International Cooperation & Mobility (ICM) of the Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research (OeAD-GmbH) for two years (2016-18) and forms an additional, new case study within the “Maps of Power” initiative.

The historical region of Macedonia at the crossroads of Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Islam and the question of the origin of the Vlachs, who identify themselves as a separate ethnic group until modern times, as well as the ethnonym “Vlachs” and its derivatives in the form of toponyms and personal names are at the core of the joint research. That is why the project explores the medieval Byzantine and Slavic sources related to the Vlachs in the historical region of Macedonia. Moreover, historical and archaeological research will be combined with Digital Humanities. The Austrian side will build upon the manifold data provided by the volume Tabula Imperii Byzantini (TIB) 16 written by M. Popović with the aim to create a historical atlas of the historical region of Macedonia. In addition to identifying and evaluating Byzantine and Slavic sources (especially charters and historiography) and collecting additional secondary literature there will be journeys to the respective country of the cooperation partner with the aim to bring together the project partners, to strengthen their ties, to enable a thorough discussion of the relevant medieval sources on the Vlachs for reaching a common level of interpretation and for preparing to include the elaborated data into the “Maps of Power”-database.