THE SEVENTH CENTURY was a period of radical transformation in the Balkan world. On the one hand, the withdrawal of Byzantine power from the larger part of the region led to the collapse of ancient urban civilization and a severe demographic crisis. Simultaneously, the arrival of the Slavs (including that of the Croats and the Serbs) and the Bulgars resulted in the establishment of new political structures and modes of economic relations. Given that the surviving narrative sources provide relatively little information about these events, scholars studying the history of the Balkans at the advent of the “Dark Ages” must inevitably rely on archaeology to fill in the gaps and improve the knowledge and understanding of the socio-cultural and ethnic transformations that took place at that time. To be sure, the rapid development of medieval archaeology has produced an enormous amount of new evidence that can serve as a starting point for the larger discussion of the early medieval Balkans.

Undoubtedly, over the last few decades, scholarly debate has been dominated by the subject of population movement into the region. Both in the case of the Bulgars as well as that of the Slavs, the main questions posed are whether their migrations in the written sources represent descriptions of entirely real events.

PANOS SOPHOULIS is Associate Professor of History of Southeastern Europe at the University of Athens, specializing in the Balkans during the Middle Ages. He has written extensively on the history of the region. He is the author of two monographs, Byzantium and Bulgaria, 775–831 (2012) and Banditry in the Medieval Balkans, 800–1500 (2020).

GEORGIOS KARDARAS is Associate Professor of Medieval History of Slavic and Eurasian Peoples at the University of Ioannina. His academic interests focus on the history and culture of central, eastern, and south-eastern Europe as well as of Eurasia in the Middle Ages. He is the editor of several collected volumes and monographs, including Byzantium and the Avars, 6th–9th c. A.D. :Political, Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (2018) and Εθνογένεση και επέκταση των πρώιμων Σλάβων στον ευρωπαϊκό χώρο (5ος–7ος αι.). Επισκόπηση της έρευνας (2020).