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Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity. Edited by Ralph W. Mathisen and Hagith S. Sivan. Aldershot, England: Variorum (Ashgate Publishing), 1996. ISBN 0-86078-588-2. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 384. $89.95.
The twenty-seven papers collected here are the product of a conference on "Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity" held at the University of Kansas in March 1995. Its purpose seems to have been two-fold: to "clarify the role" of Late Antiquity (here the third through seventh centuries CE) as a "chronological boundary between antiquity, on the one hand, and the western medieval, Byzantine, and Islamic periods on the other" (p. 2); and to "offer alternatives to the conventional concept of linear-cum-geographical-cummilitary frontiers" (p. 4).
Part I, "Reevaluating Frontier Zones of Interaction," groups together sixteen...