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Makes the study of medieval Greek historical writing accessible by providing fundamental orientation and information.
Taking as its starting point an investigation into the physical topography and symbolism of the two cities of Athens and Jerusalem, this book offers a cultural history of the rival superpowers—the Byzantine Empire and Fatimid Caliphate—that between them dominated the Mediterranean world during the Central Middle Ages. It shows that the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on the orders of al-Hakim punctuated a century of heightened interaction resulting from changing patterns of warfare, trade and pilgrimage. Resettlement of both Christians and Muslims from Syria-Palestine in Asia Minor and the Balkans introduced these migrants’ host culture to new forms of reli...
This book investigates environmental issues traced through the epistolography of the late Byzantine period, which spans roughly the end of the twelfth century to the mid-fifteenth century. The book's overarching goal is to shed light on the complex ways in which the Byzantines conceptualised their connection to the natural world, both in broad strokes and in finer granularity, and to provide a general understanding of societal dependence on the environment. It offers further details of this relationship by drawing on a wide variety of literary sources, as well as archaeological and environmental data.
The volume – whose chapters originated at panels at the International Byzantine Congress in Belgrade and at the IMC in Leeds – seeks to offer an introduction into various aspects of social and geographical mobility, and the intrinsic relationship between the two, as well as into the microstructures of social action in the Byzantine world during the high and late Middle Ages. Based on a balanced approach to the role of personal agency and social structure, the authors of the individual chapters seek to clarify how and why various kinds of people mobilized to either change place and/or social position, or to form groups whose actions shaped social reality both at the imperial centre and the provincial periphery.
Argues that Late Byzantine rural communities were resilient and able to transform their socioeconomic strategies in the face of crisis.
This book is a collective reflection on the relationship between theory and methods, as practiced by American archaeologists of the Byzantine period in Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, and Egypt between the 1990s and 2020s. The eleven authors represent a generational voice that employed theory to redirect the established narratives of the golden age of Byzantine archaeology (1960s–1980s) that privileged art and religion. Beyond Icons: Theories and Methods in Byzantine Archaeology in North America originated in three conferences (2010, 2012, and 2013) organized by the Program of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Acknowledging the role that Dumbarton Oaks played in the golden a...
This collection of papers, arising from the conference series Late Antique Archaeology, examines the social and political structures of the late antique period and the ways in which they are manifested in the archaeological and textual record.
The theme of the 2006 International Congress of Byzantine Studies was display. This is explored under eight headings which highlight different aspects of the theme and different disciplines within Byzantine Studies: Empire, Works and Days, Infrastructures, Words, Texts, Orthodoxy, Byzantium as Display, and The Future of the Past. In the process many of the possible responses to Byzantium are examined, the most direct response being to ask whether there was a real Byzantium or only an imaginary modern construct. But the aim is to make this simple dichotomy more complex, and assess first what strategies the people of Byzantium used to express their thoughts, ideals, fears and beliefs, and then how these have been interpreted through various modern discourses. The first volume presents the texts of the 28 plenary papers delivered at the Congress; the second and third contain the abstracts of the approximately 700 papers written for the 64 separate panels and the sessions of communications.