ABSTRACT
The territory covered by this book has been variously described as Eastern Europe,l East Central Europe,2 the 'Eastern Marchlands' and more recently the 'territory of the People's Democracies'. In this book, the region is not defined by any rigid physical or political boundaries and the material discussed is frequently compared to the evidence from neighbouring regions: the Baltic coast in the north, Greece, the east Mediterranean and the Near East in the south, the Rhine basin in the west, and the steppes and forests of the USSR in the east. The dominant drainage system of this region is the Danube, but not all the valleys studied in this book belong to rivers which drain into the Danube; some like the Dniester drain into the Black Sea, some like the Vardar and Maritsa drain into the Mediterranean, and others like the Elbe and Vistula drain into the Baltic. Thus the region discussed in this book cannot be said to comprise a single geographical or even political unit. Many different geographical areas, ecological zones and culture areas are contained within it.
