Orbis Mediaevalis 3 - Ioan Stanciu

Exploring Dwellings and Manufacturing Spaces in Medieval Context (7th–14th Centuries)

The initiators conceived the idea of a series of biannual conferences under the title Orbis Mediaevalis, each of which would be highlighted by the publication of a volume including the contributions presented. The need to relaunch the research on the Migration Period and the Early Medieval Period within the Romanian scholarly environment is the aim of a project that has attempted from the outset to be open to collaboration between interested institutions. The investigation of the mentioned periods – important for the transformations that took place at the time – excludes the research set within rigid geographical frameworks. Contacts, interactions, and developments of similar tendencies existed between neighboring areas as well as between territories separated by a greater distance. That is why, the contributions published in the present volume, signed by colleagues from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, and Austria, are essential and encouraging, precisely from the point of view of complementary approaches, which contribute to a better knowledge on the medieval world in formation, regardless of its location on the eastern periphery of Europe. After a workshop held in Carei-Bobald in 2013, conferences were subsequently organised in Lipova (2016) and Arad (2018), both generously supported by the Arad Museum Complex. The two already published and available volumes are now followed by the third, which is the result of the workshop organized in Târgu Mureș, on the 27th of October 2020, by the Mureș County Museum, with limited direct participation because of the restrictions applied during the pandemic. (Foreword)