The author traces 150 years of the study of relations between Byzantium and various North Pontic nomads, with particular attention to how colonialist or national aspirations often triggered, hampered, biased, or otherwise influenced scholarship.

The author of the present volume aims to investigate the relationships between Romanians and nomadic Turkic groups (Pechenegs, Uzes, Cumans) in the southern half of Moldavia, north of the Danube Delta, between the tenth century and the great Mongol invasion of 1241-1242. The Carpathian-Danubian area particularly favoured the development of sedentary life, throughout the millennia, but, at various times, nomadic pastoralists of the steppes also found this area favourable to their own way of life. Due to the basic features of its landscape, the above-mentioned area, which includes a vast plain, became the main political stage of the Romanian ethnic space, a stage on which local communities had to cope with the pressures of successive intrusions of nomadic Turks, attracted by the rich pastures north of the Lower Danube. Contacts of the Romanians and of the Turkic nomads with Byzantium, Kievan Rus, Bulgaria and Hungary are also investigated. The conclusions of the volume are based on an analysis of both written sources (narrative, diplomatic, cartographic) and archaeological finds.

In The Pechenegs: Nomads in the Political and Cultural Landscape of Medieval Europe, Aleksander Paroń offers a reflection on the history of the Pechenegs, a nomadic people which came to control the Black Sea steppe by the end of the ninth century. Nomadic peoples have often been presented in European historiography as aggressors and destroyers whose appearance led to only chaotic decline and economic stagnation. Making use of historical and archaeological sources along with abundant comparative material, Aleksander Paroń offers here a multifaceted and cogent image of the nomads’ relations with neighboring political and cultural communities in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The Cumans are known to history as nomadic, mounted warriors. Some arrived in the Hungarian Kingdom in the mid-thirteenth century seeking asylum, eventually settling and integrating. This study collects historical, ethnographic and archaeological information on the animal husbandry aspect of the development of the Cuman population in Hungary.

In 13th century, the Szeklers were granted a territory (Terra Sirulorum) on the eastern border of the kingdom of Hungary. These lands were donated by the king to the community as a whole, in exchange for the armed border guard service. The use of Szekler customary law, based on a military-judicial -- and most likely multi-ethnic – clan structure was confirmed by the Hungarian crown. Based on extensive archival sources from the 13th to 16th centuries, this fascinating book examines how customary law maintains complex structures of clan membership as a condition of access to judicial and military dignities, and how the Szeklers developed rules for land ownership and devolution. These documents recall legal principles in which the clan has pre-eminence over individuals, all free and equal before their laws. In this period, one can observe an evolution towards individual property, a factor of inequality, constantly shaped and limited by the Szeklers' determination to safeguard their freedom. This unique text is vital reading for scholars interested in Hungarian history, medieval law, and clan structures.