Download PDF | The Archaeology Of Byzantine Anatolia From The End Of Late Antiquity Until The Coming Of The Turks By Philipp Niewohner
Pages : 481
Introduction
Philipp Niewdhner
THE ARCHAEOLOGY of Byzantine Anatolia is of special interest, because Anatolia was the only major part of the Roman Empire that did not fall in late antiquity. Anatolia remained continuously under Roman rule through the eleventh century, long after the western empire had been taken over by various Barbarian peoples, the Balkans invaded by Slavs, and the Near East as well as North Africa conquered by the Islamic Caliphate.
After the Fall of Rome, Anatolia was ruled from Constantinople, which used to be called Byzantium until Constantine the Great established his new capital there. From then on the eastern Roman Empire is also called the Byzantine Empire in modern scholarship, but the “Byzantines” themselves did not use that term and continued to think of themselves as Romans. The archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia does in fact comprise the last centuries of Roman rule.
In contrast to other, lost parts of the empire, Byzantine Anatolia can show what difference Roman administration continued to make once panMediterranean rule had collapsed. This also reflects on the preceding Roman Empire and its extraordinary bloom and prosperity that appears to have depended more on the large size of the empire and less on Romanitas, in so far as the latter was much less successful when the Roman state was reduced to Byzantine Anatolia. Accordingly, the empire’s early medieval successor states in the West and the Islamic Caliphate in the East may be better appreciated if compared with the contemporary Byzantine rump state in Anatolia rather than with the vast pan-Mediterranean realm of the preceding Roman Imperial period.!
In addressing these issues, archaeology is essential. The few surviving written sources are insufficient to establish Byzantine Anatolia as an independent case study; on their own, the written sources can be interpreted only in analogy with other case studies from outside Byzantine Anatolia, which, as the history of research has shown (see below), leads to contradictory results that depend on the chosen analogies or models rather than do justice to the uniqueness of Anatolia as the only surviving part of the Roman Empire.
Thanks to archaeology we now know that urban decline did not set in before the fifth century, after Anatolia had already been thoroughly Christianized in the course of the fourth century; that urban decline was paired with rural prosperity, an increase in the number, size, and quality of rural settlements and in rural population; that this ruralization was halted during the seventh to ninth centuries, when Anatolia was invaded first by the Persians and then by the Arabs and the population appears to have sought shelter behind new urban fortifications and in large cathedrals; that once the Arab threat was over in the ninth century, ruralization set in again and most cities seem to have been abandoned or reduced to villages during the middle Byzantine period, while the countryside experienced renewed prosperity and a resurgence of small rural church buildings; and that this trend was reversed once more, when the Seljuk Turks appeared on the scene in the eleventh century, devastated the countryside, and led to a revival and refortification of the former cities.
As far as Roman urbanism is concerned, the onset of ruralization in the fifth century appears as the turning point, after which the ancient tradition was irretrievably lost. The ceramic repertoire was most strongly affected in the seventh century, when the import of Near Eastern and North African wares came to an end and new local products emerged instead. The issue of new coinage also broke down in the seventh century, but old coins continued to circulate, and the causes as well as the effects of this monetary policy are as yet unclear.
Church building prospered, most importantly in the form of large urban cathedrals, until the middle Byzantine ruralization shifted the focus to small rural foundations with little relevance for the history of architecture. Monasteries survive mostly in the countryside, from both the early and the middle Byzantine periods, but the tradition seems to have lapsed during the intermediate Invasion Period (seventh to ninth centuries), and most middle Byzantine monasteries were new foundations. In contrast, houses that are also attested mostly in the countryside appear to have undergone a continuous development from the early to the middle Byzantine periods.
On the whole, the case of Byzantine Anatolia shows that Roman rule and urbanization were not synonymous. Anatolia became thoroughly ruralized during the last half-millennium of Roman rule. Prosperity appears to have been independent of both Roman rule and urbanization, as the early Byzantine period was already ruralized, but still prosperous, while the later Byzantine periods were still Roman, but not prosperous anymore. Prosperity failed when the Arabs conquered the Near Eastern and North African provinces and the empire was reduced to little more than Anatolia. Size seems to have mattered more than Romanitas. The later Byzantine Empire appears to have been too small to uphold prosperity on the earlier scale and to have gained little by escaping the Barbarian migrations and by acquiring a relatively homogeneous identity, ethnically, language-wise, and also in respect to Orthodox Christianity.
In comparison, the strength of the earlier Roman Empire as well as its later successor states, the medieval Roman Empire in the West and the caliphates in the Near East, appears to have been derived from size and the ability to integrate smaller neighbors. The Roman Empire fell when it failed to integrate Barbarians, who—in the shade of the overpowering empire—were left with no other option but to join a political unit that was large enough to ensure prosperity. Once the Roman Empire had given way to the Barbarians, Byzantium seems to have survived for another half-millennium mainly because it was small enough not to be in anybody’s way. The caliphate could expand in other directions, showing little interest in permanently occupying Anatolia with its alien Greek-speaking and Christian population. Thus, when the Turks arrived on the scene in the later eleventh century, the marginalized and impoverished Byzantine rump state was the weakest player in the region and gave way first.
HISTORY OF RESEARCH
When Byzantine archaeology started to be practised in the twentieth century, the ground had been prepared by historians, travelers, and art historians. The eighteenth-century historian E. Gibbon dedicated an enlightening study to The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, including the Byzantine period, and identified the rise of Christianity as a main reason for the breakdown of the empire.” This was before, around the turn of the twentieth century, European travelers started to document and publicize late antique and Byzantine churches as some of the finest monuments of Anatolia.?
Consequently, the Viennese art historian J. Strzygowski hailed Byzantine Anatolia as worthy of art-historical research and, in 1903, published a scholarly monograph on some of the churches.‘ The number of known monuments has greatly increased ever since, as more and more ancient cities started to be excavated in the course of the twentieth century,’ followed in more recent years by archaeological surveys of the rural hinterland.
The proliferation of archaeological evidence led C. Foss in the 1970s to oppose the notion of decline.’ According to his scenario, the Christian empire remained prosperous throughout late antiquity and the early Byzantine period, which was followed by a sudden collapse due to a cocktail of catastrophic events, the outbreak of the plague in the mid-sixth century, the Persian war in the early seventh century, and the Arab invasion as well as the loss of pan-Mediterranean rule thereafter. More recently, W. Liebeschuetz made a distinction between a prosperous earlier late antiquity including the Theodosian period, until the middle of the fifth century, and “late” late antiquity thereafter, when urban decline set in well in advance of the before-mentioned catastrophic events.
Liebeschuetz therefore returned to the concept of gradual decline, which he blamed mainly on a changed administrative regime,’ which disadvantaged the cities and alienated the urban elites.!°
Most recently, and as outlined in this volume, the notion of general decline is again being challenged by archaeological evidence for rural prosperity during “late” late antiquity or the early Byzantine period. In addition, the scenario of urban collapse due to plague, Persian war, and Arab invasions, which was based mainly on ceramics and coins or the absence thereof, is being qualified by a reevaluation of these genres. Other evidence indicates urban continuity during the Invasion Period. Afterwards, when according to Foss’s catastrophic scenario urbanism should have recovered again during the peaceful middle Byzantine period, most cities appear to have finally disintegrated. Dependable archaeological evidence for the later Byzantine periods is becoming available for the first time, and this requires as well as enables the devising of a scenario that extends beyond late antiquity through the Seljuk Turkish conquest of Anatolia.
PERIODS AND THEMES
The volume in hand aims to account for the period from the later fifth to the eleventh centuries, that is from the Fall of Rome and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire through the breakup of the Eastern Roman Empire and loss of pan-Mediterranean rule until the Turks arrived in Anatolia. Earlier late antiquity until the mid-fifth century, including the last urban building boom around ap 400 during the Theodosian period, when Anatolia still shared roughly the same fate as many other parts of the late empire, is mentioned only in passing.
This earlier period is relatively well attested both in the written sources and in the archaeological record, well researched, understood, and published, and serves as a starting point for the account in hand that covers the next six centuries or so. This brings the story up to the later eleventh century, when the arrival of the Turks reduced Romano-Byzantine rule in Anatolia to the northwestern provinces and brought about fundamental changes in historical geography, material culture, and the archaeological record. What followed is beyond the scope of this volume, because the Roman tradition had already lapsed earlier on during the early and middle Byzantine periods, in the countryside as well as in most cities, and because the latest period of ByzantineTurkish coexistence would require a different approach and expertise.
Thematically, the volume is divided into a dozen syntheses that each addresses an issue of general interest for the archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia, and two dozen case studies on individual sites. The syntheses deal mainly with the historical topography (chapters 1 and 2), settlement history (chs. 3-7), history of architecture (chs. 7-11), and some aspects of material culture (chs. 12-14). Other topics like dress or social practices do not (yet) lend themselves to aregional, Anatolian approach and will have to wait until future excavations provide more and better evidence; yet other topics like early Byzantine floor mosaics are relevant to only one period and, beyond their disappearance and replacement with other forms of flooring, contribute little to the understanding of what went on in Anatolia during the Invasion Period and thereafter.'!
For the same reason, the case studies are focused on such settlements that have yielded datable evidence for the whole time under investigation. The case studies are arranged in counterclockwise geographical order, starting with Nicaea in the northwest (ch. 15), followed by the Aegean region (chs. 16-23) and the south coast (chs. 24—26), then central Anatolia from south to north and west to east (chs. 27-36), and finally the Black Sea coast (chs. 37-38). At other sites, for example at Andriake in Lycia,’” the archaeological record lapses after the early Byzantine period, and yet other sites, particularly fortifications, seem to have been established later, both of which are duly recorded in the relevant syntheses, but not discussed in separate case studies, as they would not lend themselves to an investigation of the overall development.
GEOGRAPHICAL, CHRONOLOGICAL, AND FORTIFICATION TERMS
In principle, “Anatolia” and “Asia Minor” are synonymous terms. !? However, in a Mediterranean context the scholarly literature tends to prefer “Asia Minor,” for example with reference to ancient harbor cities like Ephesus and Miletus.“ “Anatolia” is more often employed when the focus is on the inland, in particular the central Anatolian High Plateau.’ During the Byzantine period the inland gained in importance relative to the harbor cities, as many of their former overseas connections were severed and the center of gravity shifted from the Mediterranean Sea to the Anatolian landmass, and Byzantine scholarship tends to use that term.'
Unless otherwise stated, dates are always apD/cE. “Late antiquity” may be understood to start as early as the third century and to last into the seventh century, but in this volume the term “early Byzantine” is given preference from the fifth century onwards, because it expresses proximity to the “middle Byzantine” period. Notwithstanding other usages in some scholarly literature, the “early Byzantine” period is here understood to end in the seventh century, when the Persian war and Arab invasions resulted in considerable change. The “Invasion Period” has sometimes been called a “Dark Age” due to a lack of source material,'” but considering the increasing amount of archaeological evidence for this period, such a term appears to be misleading. Peace returned in the ninth century and brought about the “middle Byzantine” period that lasted until the Turkish conquest in the late eleventh century and thereafter.
Fortifications may be either extensive “city walls” or small “fortresses,” some of which may be no larger than a defensive house. Intermediary cases may conveniently be called kastra, particularly where this term is also used in contemporary Byzantine sources, for example in the case of Miletus, the Kastron ton Palation. City walls, fortresses, and kastra may include smaller “citadels,” for example the city of Miletus and the fortress/kastron of Ancyra. Byzantine fortresses or kastra have also been called “castles” in the scholarly literature,'*® but this volume avoids the term due to its Western medieval connotations, which do not apply in Byzantine Anatolia.!”
SPELLING
The English spelling of Greek toponyms gives preference to whatever form appears to be in common use. ‘This varies greatly. Famous ancient or Christian sites are often latinized, for example Nicaea. The same vowels are sometimes transliterated and sometimes transcribed, for example Balboura and Prusa, but also Pompeiopolis. “Makri” transliterates « as &, but transcribes y as i.
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