Byzantine and Rus’ Seals (Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Rus’-Byzantine Sigillography Kyiv, Ukraine, 13–16 September 2013), edited by Hlib Ivakin, Nikita Khrapunov, and Werner Seibt. Kyiv, 2015. 340 pp. (original) (raw)

In September 2013, an international colloquium in Kiev discussed various aspects of Byzantine and Rus’ seals. Representatives of research institutes from seven countries – Austria, Bulgaria, France, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine – came to Kyiv and presented over 20 lectures. This volume is the columination of these lectures and the colloquium as a whole. The materials published in this volume present various aspects of sigillography and show the seals’ important role for the studies of particular and general topics of history and archaeology. A big group of papers introduces earlier unknown seals of Byzantine and Rus’ secular and church figures into scholarly circulation. General questions of the chronology and interpretation of Byzantine and Rus’ seals are discussed, as well as some aspects of Rus’ ideology and cultural reception from Byzantium. Attempts have been made to reconstruct Byzantine history and the empire’s administrative system by seals’ account. The papers on post-Byzantine seals uncover the continuity of cultural forms after the great empire ceased to exist.