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The early Slavs in Byzantine Sources of the 6th Century.The Problems of the First Reports Regarding the Early Slavs, the paper tackles the testimonies of three Byzantine authors of the 6th century, Jordanes, Procopius and Pseudo-Caesarius, focusing on their credibility and the problems they arised from their examination. The critical approach of Jordanes’ testimonies, leaves no room for the historical connection of the Venethi (known from Plinius the Elder, Tacitus and Ptolemaios) with the Early Slavs (Sclaveni and Antes). Such a connection is rejected, taking into account, apart from Jordanes’ purposes, the plausible placement of the Venethi close to Vistula River and the ethnogenesis of the Slavs in Eastern Europe. On Procopius’ ethnographic account, the impression given is that it seems ‘‘isolated’’ from the rest of the Wars, it is more a kind of ‘‘general guide for the northern barbarians’’ than a pure excursus for the Slavs, with information often contradicting other fragments of the Wars. In Procopius’ description we can also distinguish elements of oral tradition. Although we could not attribute to Procopius an intentional misrepresentation of the reality, we draw the conclusion that, despite having direct contact with the early Slavs, he followed the literary tradition with many common places in order to present another northern barbarian, mixing information about the nomads and the Germanic peoples. In our opinion, Procopius’ account does not offer a credible image on the Early Slavs and should be used with reservations. Considering the credibility of Pseudo-Caesarius, namely his testimony on some primitive rituals of the Slavs we note that Pseudo-Caesarius discerned to Sclaveni another Scythian nation and in our view his testimony neither consists a description of original Slavic customs nor offers any particular – and additional – information for the Early Slavs. On the other hand, the identification of the name Physonitai/Danubians with the Antes, as some scholars suggested, is rejected in favour of a hypothesis for the native Christian populations on the southern bank of the Lower Danube.

Maintaining the function of the systems and recovering from shocks or chronic stresses is what, nowadays, refers to Urban Resilience. Resilience is a term derived from the Latin verb resilire, which means bounce. It was used as a synonym of resistance in different contexts such as medical, psychological, among others. However, since the 1980s, the concept of resilience was mostly associated with the ecological field and referred to as the capability of dealing with catastrophes (Fooken 2016: 13ff; Voss & Dittmer 2016: 179ff; Wink 2016: 1ff). Currently, it is a topic frequently discussed worldwide due to the Anthropocene, which is aggravating climate change at an accelerated pace. In this context, the term is used to emphasize the constant symbiosis between humans and nature (Prominski 2014: 6ff). The approach of this paper tackles flood risks in a specific neighborhood in the city of Hannover. For that matter, historic events and actions implemented by the municipality, as well as the study of data provided, will be mentioned in this document. After going through a research and discussion phase, the intention is to develop guidelines and propose design strategies to address flood threats at the study case site.

International audience; The Byzantine materiality, how it can be defined and did it exist beyond Byzantium? Evidently it can not be regarded as a simple continuity of Byzantine material culture abroad. However, it does not mean that in the modern "search of lost Byzantium" at the periphery of the Oikouménē researchers have no chances to find any traces of material elements of Byzantine civilization. In this "peripheral search" they could happen on texts and artifacts of Byzantine origin which did not preserve in the cultural space of the Empire. In recent years in various branches of Humanities a spectacular phenomenon was attested: medieval Eastern Europe of the 9th-15th centuries kept the synchronous cultural product of Byzantium under different material forms in amazing completeness .