This Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Project "ZOF - Ideas of Territory in the Carolingian Empire" is conducted by Katharina von Winckler under the supervision of Professor Giuseppe Albertoni at the University of Trento.

Under "About" the goals of project are described extensively, "Events" lists the Cycle of Lecture, Workshop and Sessions and papers at conferences.  "Repository" will contain articles, papers, the database and other publications of ZOF. At the end of the project, the future interactive map application "ZOF Map" will also be available from this site.

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Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, ZOF investigates the discourse on territory in the Carolingian empire. Focus of research are terms and names that where used to designate territoy at the southeastern edges of the empire: the areas east of the river Enns along the danube and Pannonia, the Eastern Alps and north-eastern Italy.  By investigating the discourse on the three main levels - imperial, regional and local - ZOF will shed light on the different strategies applied by Carolingian actors to appropriate territory and integrate it into the empire. Some of those strategies failed, but some where highly successfull.

The second objective of the project is to store the found terms and names in a database and to trace the different territories on an interactive online map. In this way the different perspectives and aims of the various actors can be identified more clearly, This will enable the user to bether understand the ideas and order of territorial spaces from a medieval perspective: fluid areas and spheres of (more or less) influence, power struggles and vague ideas of the actual territory and even some linear borders. Traditional ways of historical maps to visualise those entities are not able to grasp medieval ideas on borders and territory - ZOF aims to develop some methods to depict those more accurately according to medieval discourse. ZOF intends to broaden the scope of existing historical maps of the Carolingian Empire by researching and supplementing information from mediaeval source texts, such as spatial narratives as well as ideas and descripti0ns that have previously been dismissed as improbable. It will critically analyse sources through methods of discourse theory, critical cartography and digital humanities, especially geographic information systems, to create a more inclusive interactive map of the Carolingian Empire. The resulting online ZOF-MAP will provide a  comprehensive historical view of Carolingian territories.

Visit the Project at the University of Trento.