Henriette Baron · Falko Daim (eds), A Most Pleasant Scene and an Inexhaustible Resource Steps Towards a Byzantine Environmental History (original) (raw)
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In: H. Baron / F. Daim (eds), A Most Pleasant Scene and an Inexhaustible Resource. Steps Towards a Byzantine Environmental History. Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident 6 (Mainz 2017) 9-14., 2017
This introductory text begins with the observation that the modern perception of Byzantium is strongly shaped by gen uinely »cultural« achievements, while the environments of the Empire barely play a role. A short history of research then outlines those frames in which knowledge of the en vironments was primarily gained: from the earliest works on Byzantine agriculture, mainly based on historical sources, to the interdisciplinary settlement archaeology projects which unlocked landscapes with surveys, beginning in the 1990s, to the boom of scienti c techniques and methodologies we still experience and which are increasingly applied in inventive interdisciplinary studies. This having been outlined, the mis sion of this book and the conference it relates to are stated: to present ideas and approaches, to create synergies and to gain a notion of how to proceed. In the end, a perspective is sketched that stresses mainly three points: that the sciences and humanities need to join forces in order to write environ mental history, that interdisciplinary communication is the only way, and that we should not leave aside questions of mentality – Byzantine or our own.
A Companion to the Environmental History of Byzantium, 2024
Published online 4 March 2024: https://brill.com/display/title/24910 (ed. Adam Izdebski and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Brill 2024, 570 pp.) How did humans and the environment impact each other in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean? How did global climatic fluctuations affect the Byzantine Empire over the course of a millennium? And how did the transmission of pathogens across long distances affect humans and animals during this period? This book tackles these and other questions about the intersection of human and natural history in a systematic way. Bringing together analyses of historical, archaeological, and natural scientific evidence, specialists from across these fields have contributed to this volume to outline the new discipline of Byzantine environmental history. Contributors are: Johan Bakker, Henriette Baron, Chryssa Bourbou, James Crow, Michael J. Decker, Warren J. Eastwood, Dominik Fleitmann, John Haldon, Adam Izdebski, Eva Kaptijn, Jürg Luterbacher, Henry Maguire, Mischa Meier, Lee Mordechai, Jeroen Poblome, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Abigail Sargent, Peter Talloen, Costas Tsiamis, Ralf Vandam, Myrto Veikou, Sam White, and Elena Xoplaki
In: H. Baron / F. Daim (eds), A Most Pleasant Scene and an Inexhaustible Resource. Steps Towards a Byzantine Environmental History. Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident 6 (Mainz 2017) 171-198., 2017
In Byzantine Studies, the exploration of human-animal relationships is a topic of minor interest. This applies to the archaeological branch as well as those branches that deal with written and pictorial sources. In the case of the written sources, this is largely due to the fact that animals do not feature much in them: they were perceived as common components of everyday life that did not require mentioning. Archaeology, however, being actually rich in relics of human-animal relationships, did not perceive animal bones as cultural artefacts for a long time and thus did not see the informational value of their analysis. Even though now this perception is widely regarded as outdated, little is known about the potential of human-animal studies beyond those circles primarily targeting these issues. An environmental history of the Byzantine Empire, however, is unthinkable without the consideration of human ac- tivities associated with animals. Large parts of the Byzantine population were engaged in professions that dealt with animals; most of all, of course, animal husbandry and agriculture, but also many processing occupations. Animals were led into the landscape (pasturing livestock), animals were taken out of nature (fishery), and people cohabited more or less harmoniously with animals (like dogs, rats, and mice). The objective of this contribution is to raise awareness of the role of animals in the living environment of the Byzantines. Focusing on 1) domestic livestock, 2) sh, and 3) other wild creatures, this role, as well as the question of how the environment shaped human-animal relationships is investigated. Hence, regional forms of animal husbandry, fishery and the wild fauna are considered. Another important question is whether these activities led to interdependencies between man, creature and environment, which can be detected in overexploitation or adaptation strategies (for instance the colonisation of cities by animals and strategies to keep vermin at bay). The exploration of these issues includes archaeological, as well as written and pictorial sources in order to show how different sources can contribute to a common research question. In the end, some perspectives for an interdisciplinary approach to a Byzantine environmental history are sketched, with regard to method as well as content.
In the first part of the article, infrastructural developments, technological progress and demographic changes in the world and in Europe, especially in the Balkan Peninsula, are addressed. This overview is provided in order to contextualise in which way the basis for historic-geographical research of the Byzantine World, conducted by the project Tabula Imperii Byzantini (TIB), has changed since 1966. In the second part of the article strategies are emphasised, how the race against time and the spirit of time should be approached, based on the current research of the TIB Balkans, by applying ‘regressive engineering’, Digital Humanities and Geocommunication. Cf. https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-590-2/a-race-against-time/
The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City
The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City From Justinian to Mehmet II (ca. 500 - ca.1500), 2024
The Byzantine world contained many important cities throughout its empire. Although it was not 'urban' in the sense of the word today, its cities played a far more fundamental role than those of its European neighbors. This book, through a collection of twenty-four chapters, discusses aspects of, and different approaches to, Byzantine urbanism from the early to late Byzantine periods. It provides both a chronological and thematic perspective to the study of Byzantine cities, bringing together literary, documentary, and archival sources with archaeological results, material culture, art, and architecture, resulting in a rich synthesis of the variety of regional and sub-regional transformations of Byzantine urban landscapes. Organised into four sections, this book covers: Theory and Historiography, Geography and Economy, Architecture and the Built Environment, and Daily Life and Material Culture. It includes more specialised accounts that address the centripetal role of Constantinople and its broader influence across the empire. Such new perspectives help to challenge the historiographical balance between 'margins and metropolis,' and also to include geographical areas often regarded as peripheral, like the coastal urban centers of the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as cities on islands, such as Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily which have more recently yielded well-excavated and stratigraphically sound urban sites. The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City provides both an overview and detailed study of the Byzantine city to specialist scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike and, therefore, will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine urbanism and society, as well as those studying medieval society in general.
Proceedings of the Plenary Sessions. The 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, 2022
OPEN ACCESS: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-590-2 The present volume collects most of the contributions to the plenary sessions held at the 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, and incisively reflects the ever increasing broadening of the very concept of ‘Byzantine Studies’. Indeed, a particularly salient characteristic of the papers presented here is their strong focus on interdisciplinarity and their breadth of scope, both in terms of methodology and content. The cross-pollination between different fields of Byzantine Studies is also a major point of the volume. Archaeology and art history have pride of place; it is especially in archaeological papers that one can grasp the vital importance of the interaction with the so-called hard sciences and with new technologies for contemporary research. This relevance of science and technology for archaeology, however, also applies to, and have significant repercussions in, historical studies, where – for example – the study of climate change or the application of specific software to network studies are producing a major renewal of knowledge. In more traditional subject fields, like literary, political, and intellectual history, the contributions to the present volume offer some important reflections on the connection between Byzantium and other cultures and peoples through the intermediary of texts, stories, diplomacy, trade, and war.
The Climate and Environment of Byzantine Anatolia: Integrating Science, History and Archaeology
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
ABSTRACT This article, which is part of a larger project, ex- amines cases in which high-resolution archaeological, textual, and environmental data can be integrated with longer-term, low- resolution data to afford greater precision in identifying some of the causal relationships underlying societal change. The issue of how environmental, especially climatic, disruptions affect human societ- ies and political systems has begun to attract a great deal of attention from the scientiac community and the general public. Recent stud- ies suggest that one possible result of certain climatic events is an in- crease in violence over contested resources—a conclusion that has signiacant consequences for, at least, policymakers, investment bankers, insurance companies, and the military. This article focuses on the Byzantine world—in particular, Anatolia, which for several centuries was the heart of that world—through regional and microregional case studies, addresses some of the challenges raised in those earlier discussions and promotes further collaboration between historians, archaeologists, and climate scientists.