Linguistic and Cultural Dynamics in a Frontier Society

By synthesizing new data and offering novel analyses of the early medieval landscape in a region of shifting political and cultural boundaries, this volume traces how and when interactions developed among socially distinct groups across ‘Bavaria Slavica’ and Western Bohemia. Historical-linguistic analyses of Germanic and Slavic place names and lexical material are brought into dialogue with evidence for settlement processes – including new radiocarbon dating of Carolingian-Ottonian grave sites – within a shared geographic framework through GIS-based spatial analysis. Individual chapters address toponymy, historical-linguistic interpretation, and material culture, complemented by a Slavic lexicon reconstructed from the toponymic record of ‘Bavaria Slavica’. Taken together, these studies provide an integrated basis for analyzing settlement and contact processes and offer a methodological template applicable to the investigation of frontier zones in other regions and periods.