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The origins of the Piast dynasty and its polity in historiographical perspective
Author(s) -
Dalewski Zbigniew
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/hic3.12638
Subject(s) - polity , historiography , narrative , perspective (graphical) , history , state (computer science) , scarcity , ancient history , literature , archaeology , political science , law , art , politics , economics , computer science , algorithm , visual arts , microeconomics
The Piast dynasty has a long history. It ruled Poland for several centuries until the late 14th century and its last male representative died in the late 17th century only. The origins of the Piasts are not, however, clear. Due to scarcity of sources, their earliest history is full of gaps and controversies. The traditional narrative presented the emergence of the Piast polity as a result of a long evolutionary state‐building process going back to the tribal times, a century and half before the information about the Piasts appeared in the written sources in the second half of the 10th century. In the last decades that narrative was seriously questioned. The new analysis of archaeological evidence using the dendrochronological method proved that the Piast polity emerged much later and much faster than thought before.