Download PDF | Byzantine Epirus: A Topography of Transformation. Settlements of the Seventh-Twelfth Centuries in Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania, Greece, (Medieval Mediterranean) by Myrto Veikou (Author), Brill 2012.
905 Pages
PREFACE
The investigation of settlement in Middle Byzantine Epirus was the project of my Doctoral Studies at the Universities of Athens and Paris. Yet in fact it has been quite a long venture, starting in the year 2000 and ending in this book. It sprang from an idea that came to me at just the right moment in my specialization in Byzantine Studies. My interest in the subject stemmed from my undergraduate studies in History and Archaeology at the University of Athens from 1990–1994. And the idea took shape during my specialization in Byzantine Archaeology at the Universities of Birmingham in the UK, of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in France and of Athens, Greece, and periods spent at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris between 1996 and 2007.
A great deal of this experience has been incorporated in this book, yet it was above all the inspiration and support offered to me by certain people during my studies and I would like to express my gratitude to them here. I would like to thank the Greek State Scholarships Foundation for its long-term financial support of my postgraduate and postdoctoral studies as well as my supervisor, Professor Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, University of Athens. I am also grateful to Professor Jean-Pierre Sodini, who co-supervised part of the project. I am most indebted to Dr Archibald W. Dunn for his thorough and profitable revision of my manuscript; Dr Dunn has also been for me an intuitive teacher who not only first stimulated my interest in critical approaches and alternative interpretations of Byzantine culture at the CBOMGS of the University of Birmingham in 1996–1998 but also indicated the potential for archaeological research in Epirus.
I thank Professor N. Spyrellis for microscopic examinations of archaeological evidence performed at the School of Chemical Engineers of the National Technological University of Athens. I wish to also thank Maria Panayotidi, John Haldon, Evangelos Chrysos, Olga Gratziou, Constantinos Tsouris, Platon Petridis, Stavros Mamaloukos, Athanassios Paliouras, Vassiliki Foskolou, Kostandinos Moustakas, Nikolaos Kaponis, Peter Soustal, Petros Themelis, James Wiseman, Anna Lambropoulou, Yannis Pikoulas, Yannis Nerantzis, Babis Charalambopoulos, Tina Gerolymou, Efi Syngelou, Litsa Diamandi, Yannis Delimaris, Angeliki Stassinopoulou-Skiada, Tassoula Vervenioti, Anna Psari, and Maria Siadima for making productive contributions to this project by offering information, help or advice at different stages.
I wish to thank the following inhabitants of modern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania for having offered their disinterested guidance in the field: Dinos Kolovos, Maria Gouvelou, Dimitrios Roussis, Panayotis Karandrikas, Vassilis Triandafyllou, Michalis Zacharias, Jimmy Konidaris, Leonidas Kanellos and Vassilis Zissis, Spyridoula Kaponi, Konstandina Tsioli as well as Aikaterini and George Isaias. I would like to express my gratitude to Ms Valerie Nunn for her careful proofreading of my demanding manuscript.
My wholehearted thanks to Ms Sophia Michou who was in charge of graphics, she designed the maps and edited the plans and figures. The occasional unsatisfactory quality of a few illustrations due to their origin from old publications could not be avoided since their inclusion in this book has been considered necessary for the readers’ personal ability to evaluate specific archaeological arguments. The following institutions have allowed the photography of archaeological sites or the reproduction of figures and plans for this work: Google Earth, Pr. P. Vocotopoulos, Dr Anastasios Portelanos, Pr. Jost Knauss, Pr. N. Moutsopoulos, 18th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Arta and Preveza, 24th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, 22nd Ephorate of Byzantine antiquities of Aetoloacarnania, 36th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classic Antiquities of Aetoloacarnania, TAPA – Greek Ministry of Culture, École Française d’Athènes, University of Ioannina, Danish Institute at Athens, Trustees of the American School of Classical studies in Athens, Albanian Academy of Sciences, Archaeological Society at Athens, Christian Archaeological Society, Historical and Archaeological Society at Agrinio, Etaireia Nafpaktiakon Meleton, Etaireia Lefkadikon Meleton, Skoufas Association in Arta, Center of Byzantine Research – Thessaloniki, Etaireia Makedonikon Spoudon, Metropolis of Ioannina, Patriarchiko Idryma Paterikon Meleton, and Lambrakis Foundation.
Finally, I am indebted to my family whose life-long support has enabled me to complete this lengthy project: Theophilos Veikos, Christina Veikou, Nikos Spyrellis, Mariangela Veikou, Ruth and Karin Brinck. Last but not least, I am most grateful to my life-partner, Thibault Brink, who not only gave me his wholehearted moral support in this 10-year venture but also courageously participated in its realization in action on the mountains of Western Greece! May they all find here an expression of my profound gratitude.
Chapter one On the remains of Middle Byzantine Epirus To write a book one needs to have a story, yet bare events are not enough for the reader: s/he also needs to have the story placed within a specific spatial and temporal context. Perhaps that is why Kant considered space and time as a priori conceptual representations conditioning our ability to understand the world around us.1 The long history of modern philosophical debate on the nature of space and time has involved the investigation of distinctive ways of comprehending their function in human life not only as absolute but also as relative and relational concepts.2 Space seems to have been attributed an even more complex involvement in historical development than time; it has been suggested that social space is constituted as a concept by the integration not only of the triad of aspects mentioned above (absolute, relative, and relational space) but also involving another: materially sensed, conceptualized and lived space.3 This involution is, in practical terms, very noticeable in everyday life: it is remarkable how many aspects of our culture are reflected in our constant use, re-use, forming and transforming of the spaces we exist in and how our ways of life are in turn, partly yet fundamentally, formed and transformed by them.
Therefore, the investigation of this transformation and uses of space constitutes an excellent source of information not only as regards modern but also historical cultures and societies, such as the Byzantine. The history of settlement reflects exactly those different understandings of the ways in which space interacts with human agency, the opportunities it can provide and the limitations it can set on this agency.4 At a time when ecology is under the spotlight not only in archaeology but on the world stage, we are particularly aware that a profound understanding of this diachronic interaction between space and human agency is essential in evolving environmentally friendly lifestyles. Finding the right methods to interpret this interaction correctly could prove a great help in creating an-Other way of living. I shall be discussing examples of Byzantine settlement to show that a combination of various methodological tools, offered not only by landscape archaeology and topography but also by geology, geography, modern history and critical social theory, supported by a counter-modern interdisciplinary theoretical approach, can contribute to that end. One of my main focuses is on proposing ways in which to make the most of a specific type of archaeological survey with a view to developing a historical interpretation of habitation.
This type of survey, when used in combination with a thorough investigation of historical sources and earlier literature, allows cultural features of settlement to be detected in a specific historical context.5 The interaction between space and human agency in the domain of settlement, that I chose to reconstruct using this type of research, was that between the Western Greek mainland and its inhabitants during the Middle Ages (seventh to twelfth centuries).6 This area is nowadays a diverse but beautiful landscape, ranging from the inhospitable to the highly fertile and accessible. Trying to investigate what was going on in this area in the Byzantine period has been very challenging for several reasons. Located on the western borders of the Byzantine Empire, Epirus was important for defence purposes and for maintaining communications with the Central and Western Mediterranean. For these very reasons, it was constantly threatened by enemy attack from the seventh to the twelfth centuries – and even later.
As explained in the title, I have used topography, associated with relevant contemporary texts and archaeology, in order to examine the changes in settlement. I define these changes with the term “transformation” which, I think, accurately describes the notion of constant and dynamic change through time. I take this chance to explain why I have avoided using “transition” in this book, a term commonly assigned to relevant developments of the earlier centuries concerned with in this study (seventh–ninth).7 There are several reasons for this absence. The first two reasons are rather technical. First of all, transition designates a passage from one specific phenomenon to another; however, both late antiquity and the Middle Ages involved processes of multilevel change at different paces as well as great variety.
Secondly, the use of the term “transition” requires defining a starting and an ending point of such a process; those points are impossible to define, since slow or rapid change was constant both before the seventh century and after the ninth. The third reason, however, for avoiding the term “transition” in this study is more intrinsic having to do with its theoretical background. The term, deriving from grand narratives of development and progress, implies a linear course of historical progress where later developments have emerged as consequences of earlier ones.8 Taking that as a prerequisite, we often end up evaluating features of the material culture of one period by comparison to features of a different period, i.e. with features which have not real relevance to that culture. For example, as a rule, bad quality in material culture is usually associated with a convincing historical context of economic recession and decline – significantly called the Byzantine “Dark Ages” – as compared with good quality production during earlier and later periods of growth in the Byzantine Empire.
However, there may be a better way to deal with that material, since what may be the most important conditions behind the production of some – indeed lower-quality – material culture might in fact be experimentation, invention, novelty and a variety of solutions to common problems, instead of decline. Therefore, considering a sequence of events per se, in its own terms, and not seeing historical development as a linear course towards progress, may help us focus on a more just understanding of traits that different periods have instead of those they don’t have. My effort was to consider material culture from seventh–twelfth-century Epirus with the latter prospect in mind. Apart from all the aforementioned theoretical concerns, the reader will notice that a large part of this book is dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of archaeological material, which formed the basis of any reflections on settlement. Extensive analysis of this material was required due to one particular – and unexpected – gap in the information available on this important Byzantine region: almost nothing was previously known about settlement during the Middle Byzantine period (seventh–twelfth centuries inclusive).
Given that this period was a time of profound social transformation, widely reflected in habitation patterns, this gap was both intriguing and astonishing. But the truth is that it has not been uncommon in earlier research to neglect modest finds and Middle Byzantine Epirus is a typical case of such neglect. State of Previous Research Thus Middle Byzantine Epirus has as yet been very much a ‘grey area’ in research. Historians would simply analyze the historical evidence, carefully avoiding any links with the material remains, while most archaeologists simply glossed over it, concentrating instead on the Early Byzantine era of Nikopolis and the Late Byzantine Independent State of Epirus (also known as the ‘Despotate’) – shedding little light on the period in between. The reason for this seems to have been that the archaeological evidence for the seventh to the twelfth centuries was limited, dispersed and mostly rather small-scale, while researchers appear to have been looking for highly visible structures and impressive minor objects. The lack of these led to some – ongoing – arguments in the literature, suggesting the abandonment or depopulation of this area during the period in question due to enemy attacks. The relevant literature mentioned no traces of settlement or economic and social activity, apart from a handful of churches labeled ‘modest provincial monuments’.
The fate of the prolific site of Nikopolis, the large late antique city which became the capital of the province of Epirus Vetus, remained a mystery. And yet, there are plenty of earlier studies on Byzantine Epirus. When it comes to the historical topography of the area seven archaeological surveys have taken place in the area of which only three – two intensive and one extensive – have so far been fully published: by the Austrian Academy of Letters, the Danish Archaeological Institute and the University of Utrecht respectively.9 As regards the survey project on Southern Epirus recently conducted by the University of Boston and the Greek Archaeological Service, so far only the geological research has been published.10 Of the remaining three projects, conducted by the German Archaeological Institute and the University of Ioannina, only brief reports are available so far.11 Other archaeological studies by Greek researchers have been of smaller scope yet very essential.12 N. Hammond’s work always contains very useful information, but it involves only brief descriptions of archaeological remains of all periods.13 Equally useful, though focused on the history of Epirus in antiquity, is the similar work by W.M. Murray.14 When it comes to the historical geography of Byzantine Epirus, this has been very successfully reconstructed in the third volume of the Τabula Imperii Byzantini, entitled Nikopolis und Kephallenia, published by the Austrian Academy of Letters.15
This major work is particularly useful for its global approach, its evaluation of historical evidence and the recording (by extensive survey during the 1970s) of sites, many of which are now lost. However, the archaeological evidence in that volume needs to be updated, since almost thirty years have elapsed since its publication. As far as the archaeology of Byzantine Epirus is concerned, it has been investigated in several projects. The Greek Archaeological Service has been conducting research in Epirus and Aetoloacarnania for many decades. For reasons unrelated to archaeology this research has consisted mainly of small-scale operations, usually involving salvage or preservation projects by the ephorates rather than extensive projects involving a large number of sites; an exception was the Nikopolis Excavation Project and the aforementioned Nikopolis Survey Project.16 Other institutions have conducted a number of systematic excavations: the German Archaeological Institute at Stratiki and Paleros, the University of Athens at Oeniades and the University of Ioannina at Ag. Triada Mavrika near Agrinio, at Kato Vassiliki and at the Ag. Nikolaos monastery-cave on Mt Varassova.17
Religious monuments are the only sites which have received more careful and relatively exhaustive investigation.18 By contrast Byzantine fortifications have been more or less totally neglected by Byzantinists; only a handful of brief accounts can be found in the literature.19 On the other hand two cases of Byzantine fortifications have been investigated by classicists, because they had been built as superstructures of antique fortifications.20 There is only one instance, the Byzantine city walls of Nikopolis, where fortifications have undergone systematic excavation.21 Last but not least, the history of Byzantine Epirus has been the subject of more thorough investigation by P. Soustal, E. Chrysos, G. Prinzing, D. Nicol and several other scholars.22 The Project I first encountered the challenge of bringing together the large amounts of earlier, diverse, as yet un-contextualized data with new evidence in order to investigate the problem of settlement in Epirus during the Middle Byzantine period while working on my doctorate.23
The main aim was to investigate settlement patterns and the ways in which those patterns were being transformed during these six centuries.24 In order to carry out an indepth investigation of this issue it was necessary to restrict the geographical area to be examined quite drastically. Therefore a smaller zone within Byzantine Epirus was selected for investigation. This zone (Map 16), about 8,000 km2, included the greater part of the Prefectures of Preveza and Arta, the entire Prefecture of Aetoloacarnania, a very small part of the district of Dorida (Phocida Prefecture) and three islands: Lefkada and Kalamos in the Ionian Sea and Kefalos in the Ambracian Gulf. The exact boundaries of the investigated area as well as the criteria for their selection are explained in Chapter 2 below. Specific Research Aims The project developed around two main axes: i) examination of the archaeological evidence, both original and previously published, consisting of architectural remains, pottery, metalwork, glass, sculpture, seals, coins and inscriptions (discussed in Part 2 below), ii) contextualization of the archaeological evidence by correlating it with historical evidence concerning the same area and timeframe (discussed in Parts 3, 4 and 5 below).
The research general aims relate mainly to specific aspects of settlement within the period in question and include the following issues, which much of the fieldwork was intended to address: 1. What can current archaeology reveal about activity in this area in the seventh–twelfth century? 2. Which sites were settled and what are their attributes? 3. How can this activity best be interpreted to show human-land relationships and the corresponding changes over time? 4. What was the density of sites and the significance of their geographical locations within this historical context? 5. In what ways have human-land relationships affected habitation and transformed settlement patterns? 6. What is the meaning of this interaction within this historical context? What can the research contribute to questions of demography, the economy and other aspects of the history of this area during the seventh–twelfth centuries? Methodologies The research planning initially required a methodology to be selected from the fields of geology, geography, Byzantine archaeology, history and historical topography.
So, first of all, published data on the geological history of the region was assembled, so as to investigate the geography of the landscape in the seventh–twelfth centuries as well as the geological phenomena which might have interacted with medieval habitation (discussed in Part 1, Chapter 2). Secondly, the geography of the region was examined, so as to understand the different qualities and limitations of various locations within the region (see Part 5). Common practices in Byzantine Studies were used to investigate archaeological evidence and evaluate historical texts. Finally, as regards the overall strategy involved in the assembling of original archaeological evidence, a particular type of survey was selected from the different types of archaeological survey: I shall call it the ‘extensive non-systematic survey making optimal use of privileging local descriptions’. I have appropriated the first part of this definition from T. Tartaron, as this type of survey seems to be very close to what he has recently defined as an “extensive non-systematic survey, involving scouting and geomorphological evaluation coupled with archaeological testing”.25
This type of work, including geographical and archaeological recording, was carried out at a number of sites which were selected because recorded archaeological remains or place names or historical references identified them as possible settlement locations in the seventh–twelfth centuries.26 Furthermore, this procedure was enhanced by a method introduced by Y.A. Pikoulas in 1995, based on what he called the ‘principle of locality’.27 According to this principle, “the best expert on a place is its indigenous inhabitant, not only because he is in close contact with it all his life and all year long but also because he is the vehicle of oral tradition”.28
This is what the anthropologist, C. Geertz, first defined as ‘local knowledge’ in 1973.29 Pikoulas has proposed a number of stratagems which develop this local knowledge:30 – preparatory consultations so as to identify the right local people to consult through the local authorities or other agencies, – being accompanied by indigenous guides during surveying – the so-called ‘work-at-the-kafeneio’, kafeneia being local coffee-shops where male members of the local community gather and where a comparative evaluation of the diverse information regarding village lands can be made – assuming that one can enter the discussions.31
All the above methods were used to increase the efficiency of the extensive surveying method together with research into local publications, found by visiting municipal or other local libraries. The methodological diversity made it possible to overcome several problems. The most important of these was the general scarcity of published evidence and the lack of systematic archaeological investigation. Another confusing and time-consuming aspect of the research was that several archaeological sites were referred to in the literature by a variety of place names (being identified with more than one nearby village, name and/or location etc.): in these cases the number and exact location of finds had to be identified as well as their association with older references to archaeological investigations. Finally, it allowed safer evaluation of the importance and dating of different sites, which had often been incompletely documented and dated in the past. Theoretical Framework and Interpretation Postmodern and critical theories used in the Humanities and Social Sciences have been employed to create the framework for this study.
In order to explain this framework in more detail, I will now describe my approach to various different concepts. Postmodern theories have had a big impact on both historical and archaeological studies. My understanding of history is best described by the definition given by G. Leondaritis and G. Kokkinos: “History is a multiplicity of processes involving space and time. (. . .) The different interpretations of several moments in historical time are subjected to the same process of analysis, since they are themselves derivatives of historical processes”.32 Counter-modern thought in historical studies, which privileges the notion that human discourse (or the human mind) cannot explain the past, has been founded on the works of H. White from the 1970s onwards.33 Their key position has recently been described by Brown as follows: All History-writing, all History research, everything the professional historian and the student of History are doing, is morally charged. History is never neutral. We are informed by our concerns with moral issues, political and ideological issues, and the here and now.
History-writing is the history-record of the present – of its contemporary disputes, its passions, its obsessions.34 With the consciousness of this position, I considered that the purpose of an investigation of settlement in Byzantine Epirus could not confine to a proposed reconstruction of settlement patterns and buildings with the help of archaeology and texts. Instead such an investigation also ought to contribute some ideas on the development, perception and interpretation of settlement, which might be meaningful and useful nowadays. The theoretical and methodological framework for this kind of work was offered by ‘post-processualist’ or ‘counter-processualist’35 or ‘counter modern archaeological approaches’.36 By ‘post-processualism’ or ‘counterprocessualism’37 or ‘counter modern archaeology’ I mean those archaeological theories which favour ‘borrowing’ useful tools from other fields of scholarship and adjusting them so as to offer interpretations (‘bridges’) in archaeological situations.
However, while borrowing tools from other fields was not new as it had been practiced for decades by processualist archaeologists, counter-processualist theories suggested a radical annulment of established, and pre-considered as given, dichotomies among different fields. Also, in contrast to processualist approaches, they have questioned the concept of cultural evolutionism in which set historical processes lead to a specific outcome within a system. Instead, they have introduced a discussion of archaeological situations focusing on a series of relationships: between general rules and individuals, processes and structures, material and spiritual, object and subject. In other words they have switched the focus from socio-economic history to cultural history.38 Yet the most important change that counter-processual archaeologies have introduced and which was fully adopted in this study, was that they did not adopt an one-size-fits-all approach nor did they suggest developing an agreed methodology.
Instead they evolved through a critique of earlier research, building on it, while changing direction completely: though questioning holistic approaches towards the past, they came to realize that the process of reconstructing and representing it required both archaeology and history. That is why they were characterized by debates and uncertainty over fundamental issues which had never before been questioned. Counter-processual archaeologies involve diversity and lack of consensus; they focus on asking questions rather than providing answers.39 When it comes to critical theories in historical studies, I refer to those theories which were developed as a critique of postmodernism, known as the New Historicism, Historical Criticism, Positive Postmodernism or Historical and Contextual Focus.40 These theories took the postmodern legacy one step further by suggesting that the human mind does not have to explain the past but it does have to explain what has been written about the past. This development marked a return to positivist opinions, according to which the human past is something which must be recorded, described, evaluated and comprehended.
According to J. Warren, the new approaches: “attacked the postmodern contention that the objective historian writing about the real past and doing so in a way which is ‘truthful’ is a modernist myth”.41 One may agree or disagree with a rejection of traditional history-writing and its claims to historical knowledge, yet these critical theories evolved as a reaction to over-generalizing, postmodern explanatory models and some of their ideas have been now been universally acknowledged. One of the must fundamental ideas was the necessity for contextualization against postmodern theoretically “unlimited freedom” in practice: historical phenomena must always be inscribed in their context – thus allowing the appropriate criteria for explaining the causes of the phenomena to be identified.42 Going against modernist ideas, these theories prioritize theory over traditional empirical and positivist approaches, since the aim of such research is to reveal those mechanisms through which the present constructs historical versions of the past that meet its own needs.43 Finally, they continued postmodern efforts to meet the need for theoretical and methodological pluralism.44
In the same way that modern, postmodern and new-positivist histories grew out of learning more about social theory and processual and postprocessual archaeologies grew out of learning more about anthropological theory,45 landscape archaeologists are, in my opinion, also bound to look over their shoulders at theoretical developments in related fields of social studies, principally geography.46 Counter-modern thought had a similar impact on geography as it did on historical studies, encouraging the abandonment of the positivist insistence on defining general rules about spatial organization. Instead the corresponding research has stressed the diversity and uniqueness of places, the non-homogeneity and multiculturalism of space and the need for it to be studied in an interdisciplinary fashion.47 Counter-modern geography rejected meta-narratives in favour of local narratives; it rejected structural causality in favour of alternative approaches to socio-spatial interaction. New methodologies indicated that landscape analysis had passed from ‘spatial production’ to ‘spatial representation’.
This ‘cultural about-turn’ provoked a shift of focus from ‘spaces’ to ‘places where history, monuments and cultures co-exist through time’; the main question became ‘how’ and ‘why’ cultural identities are constructed in a particular space.48 Counter-modern theories also changed the understanding of the notion of space in geography. Space is no longer perceived as the external framework for human relations but as an integral part of them: it is now considered a vital element in human communications and interaction.49 Social relationships are also spatial relationships and vice versa; spaces are produced by societies and they produce social relationships in a ‘circular motion’ which is better comprehensible to researchers adopting interdisciplinary approaches. ‘Landscape’ is understood as a ‘cultural place’, i.e. as a product of human agency, a place which produces culture and is produced by it.50 Thus, in the study of social life the focus shifted from ‘communities’ to ‘networks’.51 Critical approaches to postmodernism, on the other hand, called for the rejection of deterministic ways of understanding relationships between the spatial and the social.
Instead they proposed an investigation of ‘how’ and ‘to what extent’ the spatial can be social and vice versa.52 Specific Theoretical Concerns of the Research The theoretical framework outlined above has set the following axes in the aims and strategy of this work, thus distinguishing it from previous archaeological fieldwork in the area (details for which are given in the section State of Research, above). 1. It has “legitimized” the combination of a wide variety of tools, offered not only by history, archaeology, landscape archaeology, historical geography, and historical topography, but also by geology, modern geography, modern history and critical social theory, which is otherwise uncommon in works of historical topography. This methodology has consequently determined the range of questions and aims of the work. 2. This framework has meant that the principal orientation of the research has been towards discerning average chronologies of habitation as well as networks and relations among settlements, based on the investigation of archaeological and textual evidence (see Parts 2 and 5 below).
Yet not only being aware of the fragmentary nature of this (or any) remaining evidence but also sharing postmodern concerns about historical subjectivism and relativism, I have avoided any attempt at a general or “final” reconstruction of historical processes in Byzantine Epirus from the seventh to the twelfth centuries. Instead of holistic interpretations, I have shifted the emphasis onto defining local narratives on different qualities of medieval lived spaces and on cultural traits of recurrent settlement practices. I have considered the specific Byzantine territory as an absolute, relative and relational space (by providing detailed descriptions and historical reconstructions of medieval sites and landscapes and their relation with the modern ones, in Part 1 – Chapter 2, as well as in Parts 3 and 5 below) and I have treated it as a materially sensed, conceptualized and lived space by discussing Byzantine practices in settlement and land-use (in Parts 2 and 3 of this work).
3. Part of this emphasis on spatial considerations is represented by my main focus on proposing ways in which to make the most of this specific type of ‘non-systematic extensive archaeological survey’ with a view to developing a historical interpretation of habitation. This type of survey, when used in combination with a thorough investigation of historical sources and earlier literature, allows a whole range of features characterizing settlement in a specific historical context to be identified. These features relate, for example, to cultural aspects of a historical society, such as the perception and use of space, its construction and transformation or its emerging as an agent of the historical development, as explained below in Part 3, Chapter 2. 4. Finally, I have tried not to let the fragmentary state of the available evidence or the lacunae and uncertainties caused by the old, incomplete information on – now lost – material remains stop me from asking questions just because I might not be able to come up with any answers. I have therefore tried to patch my several local narratives into the extensive discussion of medieval habitation by shifting my focus onto the small pictures that we do have rather than looking for the bigger detailed picture that we don’t as yet have. Furthermore, the aforementioned theoretical orientation emerged really through an interaction with the scientific problem, the material, and the methods used in research.
In practice, an interdisciplinary approach, combining without hesitation different tools provided by research in fields, which traditionally are not directly linked to historical studies, has been the main expression of this theoretical background. Similarly, the interpretation of the results has also allowed new, flexible or ‘open’ (non-final) analytical categories and interpretative schemes to be used. The main aim was to find ways of broadening the scope of work in landscape archaeology and medieval Mediterranean history even further. As regards archaeological theory in particular, the aim of this study was to look more closely into ways of developing counter-processual and critical approaches to landscape archaeology.53 The archaeological method of ‘extensive non-systematic survey privileging local descriptions’ in fact provided many opportunities for such developments.
It allowed several observations about the use (and re-use) of space, spatial diversity and similarities among sites belonging to a specific historical context. Covering extensive geographical areas largely on foot offered opportunities to ‘feel’ the landscape in a different way from that in which modern travellers usually experience it. In some ways, a researcher during survey is attempting to understand the practical potential for space management in particular historical periods. In other words a researcher experiences the limitations that a certain landscape imposes on human beings acting within something approaching a ‘preindustrial’ context. This can help to distinguish many qualities in natural space: firstly, qualities of the landscape as a whole and secondly, qualities of the specific places where the archaeological sites are located as compared to their surroundings. Hence the scope of the interpretation of the archaeological evidence on settlement was broadened in order to include reflections not only on the use of space but also on the historicity of space in a particular geographical area and period of time, i.e. on the ways and to what extent space can be identified as a factor in historical development as far as settlement is concerned.54 Aspects of the relationship between human agency, structure, natural environment and the archaeological record are also featured in the work.55
A set of hypotheses are constructed and tested against relevant historical evidence, as shown below in Part 3, Chapter 2. Contextualization of evidence is indispensable to its correct interpretation, thus the archaeological evidence has been put into context in Part 2. A discussion of all archaeological, geological and historical evidence within the specific geographical area is included in Part 3, Chapter 1 while a discussion of it in the context of medieval settlement in the Mediterranean is included in Part 3, Chapter 3. A consistent approach has determined several details in this book, such as issues of terminology. Terminology has been kept as simple and limited as possible, in an effort not to introduce dichotomies unless absolutely necessary. The term ‘Middle Byzantine’, for example, has been used to refer to the period from the seventh to the twelfth century, which accords with some opinions in the literature but not others.56 This periodization minimizes the ruptures in a long and complex period of transformation while at the same time acknowledging the profound change that occurred around the seventh century in all aspects of Byzantine culture.57
There is no similar cut-off point at the end of the twelfth century, yet the rupture here is political. From the early thirteenth century the course of life in Epirus underwent changes due to the fact that it was ruled by a different political entity, the Independent State of Epirus. While, at first glance habitation in the thirteenth century seems to have been not so very different from that in the twelfth, methodological reasons suggest that the institutional discontinuity should be acknowledged. In any case, the exact ways in which the extensive political change affected habitation from 1204 onwards could be a very interesting subject for another study dealing with the material remains of the mixed demographic and the interaction between multiple identities in Byzantium during the thirteenth century
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