Download PDF | Sophia Germanidou (editor) - Secular Byzantine Women_ Art, Archaeology, and Ethnography of Female Material Culture from Late Roman to Post-Byzantine Times- Routledge,2023.
245 Pages
Secular Byzantine Women
Secular Byzantine Women examines female material culture during the Late Roman, Byzantine, and Post-Byzantine eras to better understand the lives of ordinary and humble women during this period.
Although recent scholarship has contributed greatly to our knowledge of Byzantine and medieval women, such research has largely focused on female saints, imperial figures, and prominent women of local communities. What about secular and non-privileged women? Bringing together scholars from various fields, including archaeology, history, theology, anthropology, and ethnography, this volume seeks to answer this important question. The chapters examine the everyday lives of lay women, including their working routines, their clothing, and precious possessions.
This book will appeal to scholars and students of Byzantine history, art, and archaeology, as well as those interested in gender and material culture studies.
Sophia Germanidou is currently a Marie Curie Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University. Her main interests include Byzantine iconography, vernacular architecture, and the investigation of rural activities in medieval communities.
Preface
Angeliki Laiou, the renowned Byzantinist and second woman elected a member of the Academy of Athens, when commenting on her intention to take part in the XVI International Conference of Byzantine Studies in 1980 with the paper “The role of women in Byzantine Society,” observed how the unprecedented proposal was considered (rather negatively) by her colleagues. However, she proved to be an early exponent in the emerging field of Gender Studies, because by the late 1970s, the first significant publications on the medieval women of the western Middle Ages had begun to be published. Almost ten years later, in 1991, Alison Wylie, the Canadian philosopher of archaeology, in the seminal volume Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, analyzed the underlying causes of the question “why is there no archaeology of gender?” in which she addressed in-depth the methodological and research problems of (patriarchal) archaeology: “... femininity becomes inaccessible in archaeological contexts because of lack of resources, socio-political and economic conditions and above all, because archaeology operates much more closely to its image than its practitioners like to admit.”
Of course, since then, there has been tremendous progress in the fields of historical and iconographical studies into Byzantine women. We are now aware of the roles, living conditions, appearance, and actions not only of female saints and nuns but also of the court aristocracy, the upper urban classes, and of the local ruling hierarchy. Recently, “ordinary women” are also being investigated — those working or operating in public life, be they in the countryside, engaged in outdoor tasks, or those at home, multi-tasking in various ways. This anonymous mass of common and everyday women, among the “invisible...marginalized Others” as intriguing stated by Linda E. Mitchell in the Introduction of Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 43/1(2017), is definitely not homogeneous in its make up — and it is not the purpose of this volume to distinguish between them; nonetheless, we find it opportune here to treat them collectively so.
On the other hand, it is in the scope of the essays to reach out to this relatively unknown, “silent” multitude in this volume, to bring forward to our attention some groups of these working women: the indigent ones, the slaves, and the drudges, those that laboured in the house and the fields, the virgins and the spouses, of all ages — girls, young, middle-aged, or elder ones (Figures 0.1 and 0.2). It is in this group that we are seeking, among others, the “stamp” of their existence, in the (humble) objects they left behind, the (few) texts they were involved in and the (neglected) images they inspired, aspiring to cast light on the wider perspectives and the specifics of their life circumstances.
The volume is divided to three parts and an apprendix. The first part investigates unpublished archaeological testimonies and material expressions of ordinary women’s vanity: objects of beautification, and of low-cost and common manufacture. The second part is more prolonged, as expected, since it combines inter disciplinary approaches related to women’s daily labour routine: iconography, historical sources, bioarchaeology focus on the critical context of the (hard-) working women in “menial” and manual tasks. The third part juxtaposes a manifestation of the simplest earthly delight, dancing, to the attempt of ascribing a “transcendental” quality to lay women of Early Byzantine times. A “glimpse” at women from the side of ethnography contributes, even rudimentary, to the understanding of the multifaceted working chores that women undertook — and perpetuated — up to the recent times, in house and in the fields.
The majority of the articles is geographically centered to Greek territory. However, there are short references to the artistic and other evidence of the Balkans, Europe, Anatolia, and Mediterranean. The main time period is vaguely the Byzantine era; however, contributions deal with Late Roman up to Post-Byzantine contexts. The volume is accompanied by detailed indexes as well as abundant pictures from manuscripts, wall-painting, minor-arts objects, photographic archives, including maps, tables, and plans.
This scholarly attempt to reconstruct the images of these women face some matters, indeed problems of methodology and interpretation, already identified by previous scholars. They still remain open and detrimental, in various degrees. Here is a list of a few of them:
¢ The male-centric bias found not only in the written sources handed down to us (almost entirely composed by literate men of their times, addressed to same-sex well-educated public), but also of long established traditions of research. Extreme feminist approaches to the subject can prove also equally misleading.
* Until a few years ago, more specifically focused Gender Studies volumes, theses and articles that collected information from a wide range of historical, artistic, and archaeological sources were limited in number. This lack resulted in women being treated only incidentally and circumstantially as “subjects” rather than extensively and detailed as “objects” of the inquiry.
* The fluctuating chronological, cultural and geographical contexts in which many studies are conducted (and of necessity the present one too!) don’t add to a clarified approach of the subject-matter. However, despite the confusion pertaining to methodology, this research path can lead to interesting comparisons, arguably opening up challenging horizons.
¢ The investigation of Medieval/Byzantine female working/labour opportunities is an essential academic development of our time, currently “streaming.” Issues such as the female apprenticeship, the part-time/ occasional/permanent working activity, the acquisition of specialized skills, and the practice of unusual professions or ones requiring unexpected physical strength (for example in salt pans or watermills), over and above the risks, difficulties and the “gender-pressures” they were exposed to, make up a large part of this volume.
At this point, we should stress that long surpassed is the previously thought domestic seclusion of women; their energetic presence in various spheres — ranging from outdoor work to the marketplace, all done alongside keeping the household running (impressively parallel to modern-day women), is progressively well documented. Adding here, in theological terms, the very interesting figure of the “active virgin,” the so-called and considered “feminist” persona of Christian times.
¢ The woman’s focus in her appearance — through her clothing, jewellery, hairdressing, cosmetics and other beauty aids, is already an established field of research. Of particular interest, however, and still neglected in academic studies, is the expression of femininity by those women who had limited means or did not have the resources to satisfy their vanity. Inquiring into the appearance and low-cost solutions devised by these women, both in the workplace and at their leisure, offers a much-desired glimpse into their everyday life and the research of material culture in a more general perspective.
This volume is thematically dedicated to women, it is written by working women — but it is not just addressed to women. In all the research approaches here represented, the male persona remains strikingly present and this has a catalytic effect on the shaping of their living and working conditions (Figure 0.3). In whatever role he plays — as a partner and assistant, a customer, even as a tyrannical figure, he inevitably enjoys the primary role, takes centre stage.
I owe heartfelt thanks to all who contributed to the birthing of this volume — that really was a women’s job! They have placed their trust in me and spent heavily of their energy and time, gifting the volume of essays with much original material from a wide range of sources — archaeological, iconographical, historical, and ethnographic. This has proved of true benefit, because through this methodology, involving multiple sources and interdisciplinary approaches, there emerges this multi-faceted likeness of the secular, ordinary woman and in so much detail. I hope they enjoyed the efforts expended, when they behold the result; moreover, keeping sight of the big picture, they can “identify” themselves with the multiple roles that women have always taken on.
I am grateful to the Professor Ecaterina Lung, Historian-Medievalist at the University of Bucharest, for doing us the honour to join us, sharing her insightful thoughts on the subject and introducing the content of the volume. Her article “Depictions of Women in the Works of Early Byzantine Historians and Chroniclers. Between Stereotype and Reality” in the journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 43/1(2017), 4-18, is one of the most recent contributions to issues such as the emotional outbursts of women or the mirroring them as “legitimate” sexual objects.
My warm thanks go also to the ever-active Maria Leontsini, Senior Researcher at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Section of Byzantine Research in Athens. She has contributed to a great extent to the first phase of the venture, assisting, advising, and encouraging us.
A great part of the study is owed to the highly skilled and quick-working ladies, Georgia Karaiskaki and Pepi Nikolaidou from the National Documentation Centre of the National Research Foundation in Athens, that so eagerly locate and provide useful and expert bibliography.
My best friend and colleague Alexandra Konstantinidi was very helpful to me through the various stages of the venture; I thank her cordially for all her input.
One man has been behind the whole initiative, and its final realization is thanks to him: Michael Greenwood, editor of Routledge Publishing, who was always open-minded, ever helpful, and available to resolve the many matters going with the publication of the volume. I thank him cordially for the confidence he showed — not only in me personally, but also in the project he accepted, evidence of his far-sightedness. Many thanks should also be addressed to the assistant editors, who were in charge of solving the numerous issues that come with such a publication. I hope with their assistance this volume will add to the pioneering and high-quality publications on less highlighted academic subjects.
Last but not least, the family always plays the most significant role in a woman’s life; and it isn’t otherwise for me. I express my gratitude to my husband Vasilis, and my children, for their understanding, support, and unconditional love.
Introduction , Ecaterina Lung
A volume which proposes to study the “unheard voices” of secular, lay women is not another fashionable attempt in the now long line of works pertaining to gender placed within a multidisciplinary approach perspective. Today, the idea of linking Gender Studies and the research focused on Byzantine culture is some decades old, and there can be some disagreement relating to whom we should consider as the “founding mothers” of the issue. As said in the Preface, Angeliki Laiou was, in the 1980s, one of the pioneers of the gendered approach to the social and economic history of Byzantium and it was not until the early 1990s that the issue attracted wider scholarly attention, as shown the foundational collective volume edited by Liz James.! Since then, works dealing with gender in the context of the Byzantine culture multiplied by scores, as can be seen from the always expanding international bibliographical resources, but there is still work to be done in order to embrace the complexity of the lives and actions of women during the millennium in which the Eastern Roman Empire existed.”
So, the volume proposed by its editor and authors responds to a perceived lack of scholarly attempts focused on the lived experience of Byzantine femininity based on wider categories of sources pertaining to different areas of representation, circulation, and reception in society. These sources deal with different categories of women than those usually found previous works. If elite women, or at least those coming from the well-off milieux are now better known due to the pioneering works of ground-breaking researchers like Angeliki Laiou, Linda Garland, Judith Herrin and others following. There is a lot to do in relation to those coming from less privileged groups, be them simple working women, artisans, slaves, courtesans.*
One of the main merits of this volume is that it aims to deal with non-elite women, and this poses the problem of where to find them. A major difficulty comes from the nature of the available sources, the written ones being focused on empresses or lay women from the aristocracy, and in a lesser proportion, on religious ones. Furthermore, the written sources were usually created by men and even when the author is a woman, like the princess Anna Komnene, the ideology underlying her work was the same as of her contemporary male fellows.*
Older historiography used historical narrative works for the reconstruction of women’s lives and experiences. They were considered the best sources.> These kinds of written sources were not the only ones available, but they were preferred for being more vivid; more related to literature than the law codes or archive documents; and less biased than the writings authored by clergymen. Even if there were differences between categories of written narrative sources, the overall impression they gave was that women were thought to be inferior, irrational, highly emotive, and unable to control their impulses. Byzantine (secular/lay) women were seldom given an identity of their own, and when this did happen, they were almost always thought to be a reflection of a male.
Historians and chroniclers from Byzantium believed that the ideal behaviour for women was to remain secluded in their houses. However, when they wrote about real individuals, they were almost always those who didn’t confine themselves to the women’s quarters. Church Fathers believed that a woman can reach salvation if she became a man, meaning that she achieves the spiritual fortitude they thought to be a male prerogative. Similarly, the authors of historical narratives claimed that women’s main avenue of entering written history was to behave like men, renouncing their gender and acting in an independent manner. This was not seen as something positive because, to quote Leonora Neville’s very expressive formulation: “Good men were supposed to be masculine, according to Medieval Roman ideals, and good women were supposed to be feminine.”° The presence of strong women in written sources might have been the explanation of the image created in the mind of Western European intellectuals, starting with the 16th century, about Byzantium as a place were gender relations and identities were different, men being effeminate and women more masculine than their fellows in the West.’ The reality could have been that of women holding more social and political power in Byzantium than in the Medieval West, as convincingly advocated by Judith Herrin.° It is also true that, even if discussions of masculinity and femininity permeate many Byzantine texts, it is unquestionable that most Byzantines valued quite the same cultural ideal of a “true” manliness as their Western counterparts.’ For the people living in the Byzantine society, the generally accepted idea was that of separate feminine and masculine spheres, with limits that are difficult to surpass. The articles in this volume show that the limits of the separate spheres did exist, but they were permeable and the image of Byzantine women’s lives and experiences can still be nuanced.
It is interesting to note that the overall image that results from the articles compiled in this collective work is sometimes very different that the one created through the more traditional analysis of texts and iconography pertaining to elite women. The narrative sources spoke of a society in which women were allowed to do little else excepting marrying (or alternately, entering a monastery), giving birth and raising children, and getting involved in domestic textile production. Some of them had political authority; and alesser number, moral and intellectual. Other kinds of textual sources show us women who owned and ran factories, mills, rural estates, and commercial enterprises, and who were important donors supporting the building of churches.
The main problem we see is that the great majority of Byzantine women were considered “silent,” because they were not given voices in written sources. The authors of this volume intended to show that this kind of usually invisible and silent woman can be seen, and they speak to us though the objects they made, used and left behind. We have to say that some attempts to find these invisible women, who were not present in the written and usually not even in the iconographical sources, were made before, especially by authors using archaeological finds or material objects preserved in museums. As early as the 1990s, Roberta Gilchrist offered innovative insight into the relation between material culture and social construction of gender, using sources about Western (especially English) society, and the example she gave was seminal.!° Joli Kalavrezou used material evidence to illuminate the Byzantine women’s life, in an exhibition which also occasioned a very useful catalogue.!!
The authors of this volume, confronted with the necessary interrogation about where and how to find the non-elite women from the Byzantine society, were naturally inclined to take into consideration not only written and iconographical sources, but material ones too. The development of Material Culture Studies offers new and insightful avenues of approach. Once again, studies on material culture first began to occupy a special place in researches conducted on Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Interdisciplinary approaches made possible the modification of traditional paradigms used by archaeologists and historians, who are now interested in the social life of things, or in the agency which characterizes objects in any society.!* The revival of concern with the materiality of social and cultural life was related with what was recently called “the Material Turn,” which looks at the roles that objects play in human action, as well as at their significance. Many articles in this volume underline the importance of the Material Culture, whose study is dealing not merely with things, but with the meanings they hold for humans. The authors put forward the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviours, norms and rituals that the objects imply. Archaeological material or different other kinds of artefacts are understood in relation to specific cultural and historic contexts, communities and belief systems. The study of Byzantine women is enriched by this renewed interest in objects and meaning and in the meaning of the objects, leading to the investigation of new (gender) perspectives.
The focus on women involved in economic activities opens the volume toward labour history, a field which is able to offer insightful perspectives on human activity even after the weakening of the Marxist meta-narrative that took place after the political changes started in 1989. Histories of beauty, physical appearance and adornment, placed in the social context of those less privileged women, are other novelties the current approaches propose using an oxymoronic but suggestive concept of “modest vanity”. Girls being girls, even the poorer ones, tended to find ways of adorning themselves with modest jewellery made from ordinary materials, using cosmetics and trying to be fashionable through their clothes which could be elegant while remaining simple. In a wider perspective, this can not only designate the “inner” need of women for the display of femininity by all-even humble— means; it can also be a way of communicating their social and economic status or even their ethnic and cultural identity, as investigated by the articles in Part I.
Another interest of the volume consists in opening new avenues of understanding the life of women in Late Antique, Byzantine and Post-Byzantine periods by placing them in a Braudelian /ongue durée, which is a better way to approach this issue, taking into consideration the fact that women’s existence throughout history was often defined by different rhythms than that of men. This idea of different gendered temporalities was first expressed by one of the pioneers of Gender Studies, Joan Kelly (1928-1982), who asked in the 1970s a path-breaking question: “Did Women have a Renaissance?” putting the traditional schemes of periodization into perspective.!? Her answer was a shocking “no,” which came after a convincing demonstration that women’s historical experience differs sometimes substantially from men’s. To acknowledge the differences between the gendered experiences of individuals became a kind of norm. It was normal to address the same question to realities pertaining to other historical periods, as Julia M.H. Smith did, asking if women had a “transformation of the Roman World.” She was using a concept which was then fashionable, but nonetheless showed that the historiographical innovation linked with the transition from the Roman World towards the medieval one still remained gender-blind.'4 Even if this could be seen as counter-intuitive, the chronology of a volume about Byzantine women’s lives can begin with the Late Antique period and end almost in our days. This doesn’t mean that changes did not occur, but in the way of living a woman’s life, those occured more slowly in the Byzantine and postByzantine regions than in other European ones. Of course, things changed at different paces in different areas of women’s life and activity, thus leading towards some tensions between modernity and tradition, that this volume seeks to present and explain.
Some decades after those pioneering works, the question of the specificities of Byzantine women’s lives is still worth asking, even if the historiographical production on women history and gender history in the Eastern Roman Empire is becoming huge.!> Thus, the present volume intended to offer new perspectives on old issues and also to present new or lesser known sources on Byzantine women’s experiences, especially archaeological and iconographical ones. The articles edited by Sophia Germanidou further consider women’s historical experiences according to texts and material culture, using paradigms that appear divergent, such as cultural history, archaeology, ethnology, philosophy or natural sciences (physical anthropology), inevitably expanding beyond geographical and chronological limits. Cultural continuities or contradictions, transmission of traditional values and updated conservatism or establishment of new-fashioned labour, and living female realities may account for the least insight into the Post-Byzantine and pre-industrial communities — and the diversity of academic approaches.
The volume starts with the article written by Marina Vogkli and Stavroula Papanikolopoulou, Women’s accessories from a bath house on Santorini (Thira), Cyclades (2th—4th centuries), which analyses small objects made from bone used for cosmetics and daily life, found in a Late Roman villa. Despite their modest dimensions, the objects used for embellishment by the women on Santorini were imports, which confirm the status of secular women in this society during that transformation of the Roman world into the Early Byzantine one.
The next piece, written by Susanne Metaxas, Unheard voices of Early Byzantine girlhood. On the custom of adorning secular girls with earrings as seen through the evidence of burials, observes that modest jewels have been neglected by the archaeologists and art historians for a long time, before starting to interest them in the context of contemporary funerary archaeology. Suzanne Metaxas’ paper addresses an issue still underrepresented in recent scholarship: the study of adornment practices related to young girls, especially earlobe piercings in order to wear earrings. Gender and age are combined in an analysis of material culture discovered through archaeology and discussed in its broader anthropological signification. The custom of piercing the earlobes of girls early in their lives is not documented in written texts, but parallels could be found in contemporary practices still used in the Balkans and Romania, where girls’ earlobes are pierced soon after birth and the godparents give them their first pair of earrings at their baptism.
The same issue of modest jewels is addressed by Florentia EvangelatouNotara and Kalliope Mavrommati in the article Not even a band on my finger? Rings of non-elite women. The authors question the information that can be offered by the rings made from ordinary metal, which were probably worn by persons of low status. Based on the archaeological context and some parallels that can be made with ethnographically documented practices, the authors suppose that these rings of non-precious metals (copper, bronze, iron) must have been pre-fabricated and sold at local festivals, inferring that these modest objects encapsulated larger social and cultural signification than their apparent lack of sophistication suggests.
In Women and beekeeping — a forbidden liaison (?). Scattered evidence with emphasis on Christian era (Byzantine and Medieval culture), Sophia Germanidou uses source-pluralist methodology and interdisciplinary approaches, with a focus on the relatively newly emerging scientific field of cultural entomology, which has recognized the impact of insects on the history of civilization and underlined the meaning attached to bees, ants, and wasps through history. In a world that created a lot of prescriptions justified by the need of a ritual purity which considered sexual relations and some physiological functions as polluting, beekeeping by women was forbidden, especially because of menstruation, which was seen as source of un-cleanliness. Scarce Byzantine evidence seems to point that this interdiction persisted in Eastern Christianity longer than in Western Christianity. Only in the 20th century, ethnographical documentation shows that the ancient practices began to fade and, eventually but not completely, to disappear.
Konstantina Gerolymou, in Eve at the forge: Byzantine women and manual labour. Comments on a rare iconographical theme and its connection to reality, puts two pieces of iconographic evidence of different types, provenances, and dates to use; related to depictions of scenes from the Old and New Testaments that show either Adam and Eve or a pair of artisans working in a forge. After the Fall, Adam and Eve were depicted working in the fields, but in some rare depictions, they are represented not as farmers, but as blacksmiths, especially in ivory carved images on caskets probably used to hold precious items. The author stressed that this kind of representation had a rather symbolic meaning, than depicting a reality of a hard and demanding manual work undertaken by women. She believes that there are some sources that suggest the possibility of women participating in “unfeminine” tasks, such as those specific to a smithy, because of their role in contributing to family businesses.
The position and importance of women within the family during the Late Byzantine period is questioned by Eleni Barmparitsa in Female family status during the Late Byzantine period; evidence from MS Parisinus graecus 135. The miniatures in a manuscript, which is an interesting hybrid of Byzantine and Western European cultural origins, illustrate the Book of Job. Faithful to Byzantine iconography’s conventions, the images analysed in the article shed light on the multi-dimensional role of women in all aspects of life and their family. The normative character of prescriptions leading to the way of representing human figures in the Byzantine art does however allow reality of everyday life to be rendered to a certain extent through painted images. Under the biblical illustrations we can glimpse the iconography of the Byzantine family, which includes details that reveal the prevailing mentality regarding gendered roles of men and women. Although women’s position is considered inferior and is depicted as such in the manuscript’s illustrations, it is also profoundly complementary to that of men.
The article Ordinary women in Byzantine funerary contexts from Greece; a view from the bones, written by Paraskevi (Voula) Tritsaroli, uses bioarchaeology to tell a fascinating story about the lives, the daily chores and challenges of women from lower classes, which remain largely unknown in the light of written and even traditional archaeological sources. The author points out that the skeletal remains of past individuals offer much information about the people’s behaviour during their lives and the way they were treated when dead. Much of women’s life experiences that cannot be reconstructed using traditional sources are ‘written’ in their bones and can be deciphered from their burials. Women’s bones tell that they were less resilient than men against early mortality, despite their stronger immune response, but they also had a lower rate of violent death than men. The age-at-death was lower for females than for males, but paleo-dietary reconstruction does not suggest differential access to food commanded by gender. Also, the ideology of women’s inferiority and the lack of equality in life is not reflected in funerary practices. “Women were equally treated in the mortuary sphere as integral parts of the community and of family groupings in prominent or less prominent areas of the Byzantine cemetery,” said the author. Skeletal health indicators suggest more pronounced gender differences in urban lifestyles than in the countryside, and maybe unexpectedly tell us about women in rural areas being more stressed during growth, but enjoying more social equality with men than their urban fellows.
Nevena Dimitrova proposes a theoretical discussion on femininity in her article about The ‘transcendental’ role of woman in Early Patristics (theological and philosophical insights). She insists on the complementarity of men and women in the Byzantine world, where a woman’s social role was to be simultaneously subordinated to men and also to lead the “spirit” of the family. The somewhat paradoxical image was further complicated when authors from the Late Byzantine period wrote about a kind of rebirth of women in the image of Holy Mother Mary.
Interpreting the Female Dances of “Ainoi” (Laudes) in the Post-Byzantine painting, written by Magdalini Parcharidou, analyses some frescoes that offer a rare representation of dancing women. The last three psalms of the Psaltery inspired paintings of male dancers, and usually only from the 16th century on ward, there are some depictions of dances performed by women in this religious context. The use of models taken from older artifacts is the rule, but the author questions if the frescoes can also offer ethnographical information about the real dances of the period in which they were painted. She thinks that murals offer “a realistic spectacle where the movements, the costumes, the jewellery and, generally, the iconography of the dancers reflect the perceptions and habits of their contemporaneous age.”
Sofia Menenakou continues the discussion about later realities in her article Illustrating the everyday life of women in Mani during the Post-Byzantine period. A small contribution to the subject. She tries to decipher some aspects of the everyday life of Maniot women during the Post-Byzantine period, from 1460 to the beginning of the 19th century, using mural painting, dedicatory inscriptions, prayers/invocations/supplications, and architectural characteristics of churches dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. The author observed that the sources revealed women who “were dynamic and when circumstances demanded (widowing, warfare), they assumed leadership or engaged in fighting as the equal counterparts of men.”
Women’s work in pre-industrial rural Greece. An ethnographic point of view, written by Andromachi Economou, proposes an anthropological approach of gender in relation to labour division. Her analysis shows the evolution of women’s implication in economic activities in rural Greece, from the preindustrial period until today. Women were involved in agriculture, resin collection, and the exploitation of forest resources such as charcoal and lime production, livestock farming, silkworm farming, silk production, textiles, cheese making, and other tasks and crafts. Despite their economic contribution, they formed, together with children, “a cheap, non-recognised, invisible, informal, albeit real and reliable labour force.” Women’s work was, and still is, labelled as lower, unskilled, cheap labour; socially underestimated and financially remunerated with lower wages. The situation changed in the last decades with the involvement of migrant workforce in agriculture, so women in the Greek rural areas turned to services, especially tourism, but “do not seem to be overturning radically and to their benefit this change of roles and status in the productive-manufacturing process, while they have almost totally ‘disappeared’ from the primary production process.”
To conclude, we think that the multiplicity of points of views offered by the contributors to this volume can vastly benefit any scholar interested in Gender Studies, women’s history and material culture of the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine period. The articles convincingly show how concepts like ideology, objects’ agency, and social roles and statuses inform social and cultural definitions of femininity in Byzantium and beyond. They try to reveal how the women’s identity was constructed with the help of images, objects and texts, and how the femininity defined during the Byzantine period showed an incredible force of continuity during the next centuries. The variety of sources and approaches constitutes the strength of a collective work that expands our horizons of knowledge about this fascinating area of civilization which was the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine successor states and cultures were and are marked by its inheritance, in what Nicolae Iorga, a great Romanian historian from the 20th century, called Byzance apres Byzance, that is Byzantium after Byzantium.
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