This volume presents twenty-seven papers from an international conference held in 2002 in Paderborn which exained the cultural processes that took place when Germanic and Roman populations met druing Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. A wide range of approaches are adopted with contributors examining such themes as ideology, language and communication, names, customs, religion, literature, historiography, crafts and technology. Much of the emphasis falls on the Merovingian and Carolingian cultures. Two papers in Italian, four in French, one in English and the rest in German.