'Urbanised' villages in early Byzantium, an overview (original) (raw)
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Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident 22, 2020
The concept of »transformation« or simply »reshaping« contains the elements of what remains, the conservative, the kernel of what continues, as well as the elements of what changes, the innovative. In the framework of this publication of articles from a conference in 2016 on »Transformations of City and Countryside in the Byzantine Period«, we draw attention to this dichotomy and investigate the social dynamics behind changes in urban and rural life in the Byzantine period that can be detected by archaeology, history and art history. The Byzantine Empire is an ideal subject for studying how social transformation proceeds, what triggers transformation, what factors underlie it and what the processes involved are. Who were the agents of transformation and how did they and their environment change? How flexible were the state or its citizens in handling external and internal pressures of innovation? In what manner and to what extent were the Byzantines able to preserve their identity and the internal cohesion of their empire in the course of these processes of adaptation?
Transformations of City and Countryside in the Byzantine Period
International Conference Organized by the Leibniz-WissenschaftsCampus Mainz Byzantium Between the Orient and Occident, 16 - 18 November 2016, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz. The concept of “transformation” or simply “reshaping” contains the elements of what remains, the conservative, the kernel of what continues, as well of what changes, the innovative. In the framework of this conference, we seek to draw attention to this dichotomy and investigate the extent to which change in daily life can be detected by archaeology, history and art history. Who were the agents of transformation and how did they and their environment change? To what extent did the state or its citizens, for example, show themselves to be flexible in handling external and internal pressures of innovation? In what manner and to what extent were the Byzantines able to preserve their identity and the internal cohesion of their empire in the course of these processes of adaptation? The focus will be on research projects concerned with processes of change or the consequences of transformations in the Byzantine Empire. For this four sections are planned: - Spacial Transformation - Economic Transformation - Processes of Transformation in the World of Faith - Bearers of Transformation Each section begins with an introductory lecture that sets the stage. In a concluding discussion the sections will be brought together and combined into a unified image.
Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City
The Byzantine city became identified as a discrete historical entity, worthy of dedicated research, in the 1950s. Since then it has generated a large and growing volume of scholarship. My task in this paper is to give a brief review of the material, pointing out its main landmarks and directions. The period under review will not correspond exactly to the chronological limits of this volume. It ends in the fifteenth century, with the fall of Constantinople, since I consider the Ottoman town to be a different phenomenon from its Byzantine predecessor, and there are virtually no studies seriously linking the two. On the other hand, I begin in the fourth century, with the foundation of Constantinople. Despite the deep discontinuities between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the problems of periodizing Byzantium, few Byzantinists would wish to exclude the age of Justinian from their domain, and between the empire of Justinian and the empire of Constantine no clean division can be drawn. Two of the most important monographs in the field are titled "The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century" 1. The geographical limits of my survey are similarly defined by the existence of the Roman Empire of Constantinople: I consider mainly those towns and cities that came within the political orbit of the Byzantine imperial court and its splinter states. Research on the Byzantine city has sought to answer basically the same questions that have driven the study of urbanism in the medieval West: Was it a continuation of the ancient city? What was its relationship to political and religious authority? Did the town and is inhabitants have a distinct status with regard to the rest of society, and particularly the population of its surrounding countryside? How was urban society divided, both vertically and horizontally, and what was the relationship between private, public and sacred space? What administrative, social, cultural and economic functions did it fulfil, and which of all these was its raison d'être? In particular, was the economic function paramount, and within the urban economy, did consumption take precedence over production and exchange? How did towns relate to each other, both spatially and in terms of size and importance, and what differentiated towns, within the hierarchy of settlements, from other settlement units? In short, what defined a city, what characterised the quality of urban life, and what made some towns more urban than others? The range of answers to these questions is necessarily limited and predictable for any pre-industrial society. In a comparison between Byzantium and the West, however, the
Aizanoi and Anatolia. Town and countryside in late Late Antiquity
Millennium 3, 2006
Aizanoi and other Anatolian towns witnessed a last urban building boom around A.D. 400. Colonnaded streets and squares, walls, large houses, and baths manifested urban status and distinguished towns from villages. That changed during the fifth and sixth centuries. Urban building other than churches all but came to a standstill. The existing buildings were allowed to run down and formerly prestigious houses were deserted. At the same time the countryside witnessed an unprecedented boom. The settled area and the number of settlements increased all over rural Anatolia, and the population would have done so too. Rural churches met the same regionally varying standards as the urban ones. The overall result was a convergence of settlement patterns in town and countryside. Where there are no older remains, there is nothing in the archaeological record to distinguish an urban from a rural settlement any more. The conjunction of urban decline and rural prosperity can be observed all over Anatolia and must have had some cause of more than local significance. The last urban building boom around A.D. 400 continued a Roman tradition that was based on the overriding importance of the polis in the political life of the empire. That seems to have changed, after the ‘flight of the curiales’ left the towns with a governing body of ‘notables’, who took little interest in urban affairs. This may explain urban decline as well as rural prosperity: resources that had been concentrated on the towns until about A.D. 400 seem to have been shifted to the countryside in the fifth and sixth centuries. It follows that these resources had not been generated by the towns themselves, otherwise the resources would not have been available any more when the towns were in decline. This lends some new meaning and justification to the old and much disputed label of ‘parasitical consumer city’.
European Journal of Post-Classical Archaeologies, 2020
Focusing on the use and abuse in the study of Byzantine archaeology and Urbanism of the idea of the “Invisible Cities” as introduced in literature by Italo Calvino, this article attempts to set a framework for understanding Byzantine cities within clear and scientifically defined analytical categories as part of a modernist agenda. At the same time the article examines the distorting influence of Constantinople, as the capital city, on any and all our efforts to understand Byzantine urbanism as a social phenomenon in its true scale. Italian: L’articolo vuole definire una cornice per la comprensione delle città bizantine attraverso categorie analitiche chiare e scientificamente definite come parte di un’agenda modernista, focalizzandosi sull’uso e abuso dell’archeologia bizantina e dell’urbanesimo e utilizzando il concetto calviniano di “Città Invisibili”. Allo stesso tempo l’articolo esamina l’influenza distorta di Costantinopoli, come città capitale, su tutti gli sforzi per capire l’urbanesimo bizantino come fenomeno sociale alla sua scala reale.
The Farms in Rough Cilicia in the Roman and Early Byzantine Periods
Upon the surveys of the eastern part of Rough Cilicia region, plenty of rural settlements have been discovered. The rural settlements found in the area show that agriculture played an important role in the region in the Ancient economy, and different patterns were used in the production. In this study, we focus on a limited number of farms since to scrutinize all the rural settlements in the area would go beyond the scope of this study. Although the number of farms investigated in the area is somehow limited, with the well protected remains within these farms, it is possible both to form a regional typology and to conduct a chronological study. The study aims to find answers to several questions concerning the farms in this area. These questions are as follows: (i) Is there a farm pattern peculiar to the region? (ii) Is there any proof to confirm the existence of landlords we have known to exist due to other studies in the literature? (iii) In which periods did the farms originate and develop, and what were the needs that gave rise to the birth and development of farms? (iv) What are the reasons underlying the increase in the number of farms in the Roman Period and afterwards? (v) What is the relationship between the villages and farms? (vi) What is the earliest date showing the starting point of the farm tradition that is observed both during and after the Roman Period?