Cultural Encounters on Byzantium’s Northern Frontier, c. AD 500–700: Coins, Artifacts and History. By Andrei Gandila.

Abstract

The book under review, Cultural Encounters (abbreviated from Cultural Encounters on Byzantium’s Northern Frontier, c. AD 500–700: Coins, Artifacts and History), is a monograph by Dr. Andrei Gandila, currently associate professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Cultural Encounters is the expanded and updated version of his PhD thesis, defended in 2013 at the University of Florida. The focus of the work is the Danube frontier of the Byzantine Empire in Late Antiquity (AD 500–700), which is today divided between Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Despite finishing his PhD research in the US, his background as a native of Romania, archaeological field work in Romania and Italy, and much research in museums and libraries in Europe and the US guarantee that the author’s work is of high quality and reliability, thus destined to be a great success in elucidating the complicated history of the interaction between the “Barbaricum” and Byzantium during the period under discussion. Since its publication, Cultural Encounters has received much attention from academics.1 Tracing the reasons for this, I think that—except for the author’s personal background and rich academic experience—the interdisciplinary analysis is its main merit. This guarantees that the author’s arguments are supported by strong written sources, material objects, and theoretical practice: these include rich historical sources (the works of more than 50 authors from antiquity are cited; see the bibliography on pp. 291–292), a wide range of archaeological evidence (including coins, pottery, amphorae, lamps, molds and metallurgical products, brooches and