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253 Pages
Shifting Paradigms in a Shifting Background
An Introduction
The idea for this book was first conceived during the planning of a one-day conference, organized by the two editors of this volume. Originally entitled Perspectives on Byzantine Archaeology from Justinian to the Abbasid Age (6th-9th Centuries), the conference was to be held in Rome in March 2020 at the Escuela Espanola de Historia y Arqueologia in Rome.
Unfortunately, the conference never took place because of the dramatic rise and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, we have decided to convert the conference into a book, both to justify the great efforts made by the invited speakers and to present a series of new and ongoing research projects in different areas of Byzantine history. For making this volume possible, we wish to extend our deepest thanks to Rosie Bonté at Brepols and the editorial board of the new series, Archaeology of the Mediterranean World.
But why this book? The editors of this volume are in charge of two ongoing projects in two key areas of the Byzantine world, one in Sicily (Castrorao Barba and others 2021) and the other in the Horn of Africa (Castiglia and others 2021), specifically in present day Eritrea. As our projects grew, we felt the need to figure out their place within the larger context of Late Antique and early medieval society, taking advantage of the fact that we could have at our disposal brand new and unreleased data. We wanted to compare these data with other areas and key contexts, and so the idea of organizing the conference (and publishing this book) was born.
A first key issue that we would like to raise is the use of the term ‘Byzantine’; given the fact that the papers collected in this book embrace a very wide and multifaceted geographical (and cultural) context, we are fully aware of the fact that the concept of ‘Byzantine’ does not apply in the same way in every area discussed. For example, Byzantine Thessaloniki has different connotations from Byzantine Spania.
Nevertheless, we believe that the term ‘Byzantine’ frames well the geographical, political, and cultural setting that influenced the different areas in the Mediterranean and beyond. As an example, the kingdom of Aksum, in the Horn of Africa, was never fully under the control of Byzantium, but the direct contacts and influences it had with the Eastern Empire, mostly under Justinian, played a crucial role in shaping the evolution of Aksum as a leading force in the formation of an African Christianity (see Castiglia and Pergola, this volume). Thus the authors involved in this volume will use the term ‘Byzantine’ with a wide perspective, well aware of the different peculiarities and traits it had in the specific geographic areas under debate, and with no pretension to extend it as a unifying model and even less as an all-encompassing and comprehensive overview of every single macro and micro region under Byzantine rule.
It is in fact well known that during the last decade interest in Byzantine archaeology has increased in various contexts, with a major focus on regional studies of the eastern Mediterranean, for example Anatolia (Niewohner 2017; Kontogiannis and Uyar 2021), Cyprus (Zavagno 2017), Naxos in the Aegean (Crow and Hill 2018) or the Levant (Avni 2014; Eger 2014). Within the field of Byzantine studies, archaeological and material culture perspectives are increasingly valued (Crow 2008), and the role of archaeological data has become more and more prominent in historical studies (Bohlendorf-Arslan and Schick 2021; Consentino 2021). Material culture and trade (Mango 2009; Vroom 2014) is another aspect of Byzantine archaeology that is continuously providing fresh data from new discoveries, e.g., the Yenikapi Byzantine shipwrecks in Istanbul (Kocabas 2008) or the recent Ma‘agan Mikhael B shipwreck in Israel dated to the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries (Creisher and others 2019).
With these premises, then, the aim of this book is to collect new advances and perspectives from the field of ‘Byzantine’ archaeology over the longue durée, from the Mediterranean basin and beyond, by providing an updated overview of many different geographical contexts (Jordan, Greece, the Danube region, the Italian peninsula, Sicily, Spain, and the Horn of Africa).
One of the innovative keys of this book is the fact that it compares well known areas and contexts (such as Thessaloniki or Ravenna) with other areas that in the tradition of Byzantine studies have always been somehow marginal, like Spain, Aksum, or others that until a few decades ago were a sort of periphery to post-classical archaeology, but today are experiencing a new flourish of interest characterized by many projects on the Byzantine period such as Sicily or Southern Italy. Moreover, the book presents what is in many cases brand-new archaeological data, that will contribute to enrich the debate, sided also by new approaches to some key contexts, like the process of Christianization of the defensive system of Rome, the provocative approaches to architecture in the Iberian Peninsula, or the ‘Justinianic Renaissance’ in the Near East, just to mention a few.
Using original and new data coming from surveys, excavations, material culture, and written sources, this volume addresses many different questions. What was the impact of the reconquest of Justinian? How did the territory change across the Byzantine Empire? What are the archaeological indicators of the urban and rural transformations that occurred in this historical background? Did architecture represent a marker of socioeconomic and cultural change in the cradle of a ‘Byzantine space’? What issues of connectivity developed across the Byzantine and Islamic worlds?
The volume is organized in three sections, beginning with cities, passing through landscapes and, in the end, focusing on material culture. Since we could not hope to cover all the contexts, we preferred to concentrate our attention on those sites where significant new research is in progress. Konstantinos T. Raptis’s essay on Thessaloniki offers a brilliant perspective on the longue durée of the imperial city, focusing on its evolutions from Late Antiquity until the sack by the Saracens in 904 aD. It is well known that the city gained its pivotal role with the tetrarch Galerius, who, after 308 AD, transferred his official court here from Serdica. One of the most interesting points offered by Raptis is the fact that Thessaloniki was not characterized, in either its topography or its monuments, by what we might call a ‘Justinianic mark’, since the extensive building programmes promoted by Anastasius I (and also by Justin I) left
basically ‘nothing [... ] to be done’ (see Raptis, this volume). Indeed, the erection of the great Christian monuments represented a turning point in the urban assets from the fifth century onwards, reshaping the topography of the town. Thessaloniki, in these phases, changed its internal balance, with its core no longer being the ancient forum, but the southeastern area, around the imperial palace and the Rotunda (already built by Galerius), and the monumental decumanus maximus, which crossed the whole southern part of the city. The only activities attributable to Justinian are those relevant to the restoration of the decumanus itself and the building of the small funerary church of Hosios David, at the northernmost edge of the town.
Another key point offered by Raptis deals with the long transition period from the seventh to the ninth centuries. Despite the incursions of the Slavs and the Avars in the IIlyricum and the intense seismic activities that affected the area, it is possible to document a general trend of continuity in the urban framework, even though significant and irreversible metamorphoses irremediably changed the profile of the city. Notwithstanding the repairs to the fortifications and in parts of the decumanus, we can see from the seventh century onwards a reconfiguration of most of the former spaces and structures. This is the case of both the decumanus and the agora, which were partially abandoned and then partially reoccupied with private and artisanal facilities, thus conforming to a trend found in many towns of the Orbis in these centuries. Thessaloniki, then, went through a contraction of its density, with most of the population concentrated in its southern area. Moreover, in this period — mostly after the earthquakes of the 620s — many of the churches were restored as well, even though they probably never went back to their original magnificence, with the exception of the Saint Demetrius pilgrimage basilica, the only one erected ex novo in the seventh century. To sum up, then, Thessaloniki, despite going through many evolutions and difficulties, culminating in the Saracen raids in the early tenth century, proved its resilience, as Raptis says, with a ‘continuous urban life’
Lucrezia Spera’s paper offers an interesting and original view of sixth-century Rome by focusing on the urban defensive system at the time of the Gothic War. During the conflict, in fact, the Aurelian Walls saw significant interventions, with a peculiar innovation represented by the accentuation of Christian elements, ‘evoking in various forms the presence of the Saints’ (see Spera, this volume). This process was marked both by the frequent renaming of the city gates (such as the Porta Tiburtina, which became Porta San Lorenzo, or Porta Ostiense, renamed as Porta San Paolo), and by the building of churches and oratories in strict relation to the gates and the walls themselves. Spera also highlights a major connection with cults of military saints coming from the eastern bounds of the Empire. One of the best examples is the case of Saint Theodore, the martyred soldier from Amasea, whose presence had significant topographic repercussions, not only in Rome (for example in the Church of Cosmas and Damianus in the Roman Forum or in the cult building by the Palatine hill), but also in Ravenna and Constantinople. The author, moreover, suggests that ‘the foundation of the San Teodoro church near Porta Prenestina-Labicana is to be associated with the period of church building that unfolded when Rome was under Byzantine control’ (Spera, this volume). This leads to one of the most important conclusions of the paper: the topographic distribution of the sixth-century Christian buildings near the Aurelian Walls may have been directly related to the presence of Byzantine troops (like the Theodosiaci). Enrico Cirelli’s work presents an updated overview of Ravenna in the long term, summing up many years of research on this key city of Late Antique Italy. Cirelli offers different thematic approaches by analyzing the evolution of the urban defensive system (which was widely enlarged under the emperor Honorius when the capital was transferred from Milan to Ravenna in 402 AD), places of power (both secular and religious), the economy, private housing, changing patterns in building materials, and the ‘landscapes’ of the dead. It is well known that the heyday of Ravenna began with its ‘promotion’ to capital status, with numerous churches and places of imperial authority, such as the palace and the mint, appearing in the urban fabric. This zenith continued until at least the eighth century, which has been understood to mark the beginning of the city’s decline. Nevertheless, Cirelli stresses how even in the eighth century it is possible to discern the presence of different settlement units, all ‘organized around the main ecclesiastical buildings, close to the great monuments of the Imperial Palace and the Episcopal area, or along the river that ran through the inhabited area’ (Cirelli, this volume). This reveals on the one hand how Ravenna — perhaps also because of its crucial position as trade centre — experienced regression and crisis later than other towns in the West and, on the other hand, the role played by these centres of power. Churches and the imperial palace acted as crucial cores that shaped new urban topographies, guaranteeing a sort of ‘selective maintenance’ (as recently defined in Dey 2014), meaning the ability of the central powers to guarantee
1. SHIFTING PARADIGMS IN A SHIFTING BACKGROUND
the continuity and monumentality only of selected buildings and areas in post-classical towns.
Basema Hamarneh provides a very useful and important reconsideration of the sixth century in the Levant. Using both written sources and archaeological data, the author focuses mostly on the sixth-century plague and the effects that it had on the social and economic fabric of the Byzantine Empire. The interpretation given by Byzantine historians regarding the outbreak of Yersinia pestis was inevitably related, in most cases, to divine punishment and anger. It is evident that these same authors somehow emphasized the impact of the plague on the population. But as Hamarneh rightly points out, since we lack exact demographic data, current interdisciplinary projects are still debating the extent of the impact of the Justinianic plague (Eisenberg and Mordechai 2019; Mordechai and Eisenberg 2019).
Another breaking point of the sixth century was the significant climatic downturn that had lasting effects on agriculture and, more generally, on daily life. Turning attention to the archaeological data, one of the richest sources of information lies in the epigraphic record; while Hamarneh underlines that the cause of death was almost always omitted from inscriptions, there are some recurring formulas that may quite reasonably be attributed to the effects of the plague, as well as some changes in standard burial practices. Nevertheless, Hamarnel’s final conclusion is that ‘the plague was certainly one of the factors that led to a short period of decline and recession, but not necessarily the most serious one. The wars and enemy incursions of first the Persians and then the Arabs were often accompanied by mass deportations and migratory movements, while natural disasters such as earthquakes and climatic downturns undoubtedly contributed to the gradual transformation of the social and economic fabric of the empire’ (Hamarneh, this volume).
The paper by Carmelo Pappalardo proposes new readings on a landscape along the Limes Arabicus in transition between the Byzantine and the early Islamic periods, by analysing the site of Umm alRasas / Kastron Mefa‘a in central-eastern Jordan, and its changes from a military post to an inhabited settlement with numerous churches and agricultural installations. The use of resilience theory and the adaptive cycle (Redman and Kinzig 2003) — which in recent years has had great success in many archaeological applications, even if more as a metaphor than as an analytical tool (Bradtmller and others 2017) — have framed a new perspective on the changes that occurred in this area. Pappalardo has identified specific indicators of resilience and evidence of the reaction of the local community to new political, sociocultural, and environmental changes: development outside the city walls in relationship to the weakening of military needs; the iconophobic phenomenon in the churches of Jordan beginning in the first half of the eighth century, which may be read as an attempt by Christian communities to adapt to the emergence of Islam; the planning of rainwater harvesting and distribution systems for residential, quarrying, and agricultural purposes; and the continuous building and restoration phases in residential areas and in the churches.
Another Limes, along the Lower Danube, was analysed by Ivan Gargano using an approach focusing on written sources. The paper is a critical perspective on the use of Procopius’s De Aedificiis, which Gargano believes cannot be considered a reliable source on changes in the administrative structure of Dacia Ripensis in the sixth century. Gargano also argues for the need to integrate the reading of De Aedificiis with other texts, such as the Iustiniani Novella. Gargano, based on a comparative analysis of De Aedificiis and Iustiniani Novella, hypothesizes that the definition of Aquae as a ywptov was not a reflection of its legal status.
A reconsideration of early Byzantine (fourth to sixth centuries aD) Peloponnesian settlements and Christian churches has been proposed by Priscilla Ralli within a dataset of archaeological (excavations and surveys) and documentary sources. As underlined in Gargano’s paper, the use of written source data needs a substantial critical reconsideration and may indeed come to inform an indispensable comparative approach, as evidenced by the comparison between the settlements mentioned in the Synekdemos administrative list and the Tabula Peutingeriana.
The formation of a Christian topography is fundamental to understanding cities such as Corinth, Patras, and Argos in the early Byzantine period. In particular, the city of Argos reveals various phenomena also found in other cities of the Late Antique Mediterranean: an urban shift from the ancient monumental centre, settled around the Larissa hill; new road layers showing resurfacing with spolia and reused building materials; the reconfiguration of the entire agora into a private residential space; the repurposing of the ancient monumental centre for craft and metallurgical activities from the late fifth century; and the foundation of a great baptismal basilica around the sixth century in the south-eastern area, which was later replaced by a new, bigger church located on the Profitis Ilias hill, incorporating the structures of the former temple of Apollo. In the interaction between city and countryside, the emergence of ‘third-spaces’ is emphasized (Veikou 2009) — something beyond the usual dichotomy of urban
and rural. For example the ‘ruralization’ of Nemea involved a Christian community building a church close to the gymnasium and burying their dead in the area of the temple of Apollo. Some of these burials contained jewels that attest to the presence of rural elites. Rural aristocracies are also attested in the countryside, as in the case of the lavish Late Antique villa of Loukou (Eua, Arcadia).
The landscapes of Byzantine Italy — or the many Byzantine Italies (Zanini 1998) — have received renewed interest in recent years in parallel with the growth of post-classical archaeology, especially in southern Italy. Paul Arthur in his article asks: ‘What effects did half a millennium of Byzantine rule have on medieval and modern Italy and the Italians?’ (Arthur, this volume) In light of many years of research in Salento (southern Puglia), this question is at the centre of Arthur’s ambitious new project called ‘Byzantine Heritage of Southern Italy’
The impact of the Byzantine presence in Italy is presented in the light of new questions and new interdisciplinary approaches (isotope analysis, environmental archaeology, archaeometry) aimed at understanding the change in the management strategies of agricultural spaces due to shifting political conditions and climate change, the formation of new settlement models and defensive structures, new regional productions (such as the so-called ‘Rocchicella’ or ‘a stuoia’ cooking pots identified in Sicily in the late eighth to ninth centuries) and Mediterranean economic connectivity, the transformations in food habits reflected in archaeo-botanical findings and changes in material culture, as well as the impact of new waves of migrations.
In the framework of this renewed interest in the archaeology of Byzantine southern Italy, Sicily has provided new and interesting data in recent years regarding the archaeological approach to the formation of both rural and urban Byzantine landscapes and the complex dynamics of transition into the Islamic period. Angelo Castrorao Barba and Giuseppe Cacciaguerra (this volume) reveal the presence in the Byzantine countryside of Sicily of elements that break with the previous villa system through the various rounds of reuse and reoccupation of the Roman and late Roman aristocratic villae.
In spite of this, continuity of occupation and complexity with respect to the late Roman past is recorded in the large secondary settlements (e.g., Sofiana/Philosophiana) — the so-called agro-towns — which constituted crucial edges in the settlement network until the early Middle Ages. The formation of the thema of Sicily during the late seventh century was identified as the key moment for structuring new settlement patterns. The planning of a terri-torial defence based on the castra system (e.g., the state fortification of Monte Kassar in Castronovo di Sicilia) in the face of the insecurity brought by the first Islamic raids, as well as unprecedented forms of occupation like the circular huts found in Contrada Edera (Bronte) in eastern Sicily (late eighth to ninth centuries), are all examples of these new patterns.
Gabriele Castiglia and Philippe Pergola (this volume) give a broad overview of a geopolitical context not often considered from the perspective of the Byzantine world: the Horn of Africa. By analysing both written sources and new archaeological data (mostly from the town of Adulis in present day Eritrea) they describe the long process that led to the birth, formation, and full development of early Christianity in the Aksumite kingdom. Although the ‘new’ religion was already rooted in the kingdom from the first decades of the fourth century (following the conversion of King Ezana and his court), it was only from the sixth century onwards, with the first instances of church building, that Christianity took off as a monumental and topographic asset. At about the same time Aksum entered into direct contact with Byzantium, first with Justin and then with Justinian, in the wider context of the Persian wars and the subsequent struggle for a monopoly over the silk trade. What Castiglia and Pergola stress is that this link with the siege of Constantinople may have represented the definitive catalyst for the affirmation of Christianity, with an architecture that revealed deep influences coming from the Byzantine koine.
Joanita Vroom focuses mainly on the shifting and changing patterns of commercial networks in the eastern Mediterranean from the seventh to the ninth centuries by exploring them with ‘resilience’ as a key metric. One of the main points of her essay is that ‘archaeological data can contribute to the understanding of how the Byzantine Empire managed to maintain the economic and commercial domination of its shrinking territory after the seventh century by carefully looking at the circulation of ceramics between the capital and its core areas during this period’ (Vroom, this volume). The author deals with three larger subjects: the distribution of imperial ceramics within the Byzantine Empire, the early Byzantine amphorae from a general point of view, and an in-depth analysis of the ‘LRA 2/13’ amphora type.
One of the crucial points stressed by Vroom in her chapter is the fact that from the seventh century onwards the trade of amphorae with small-status ships proved to be ‘more prevalent than previously known. This interpretation is well supported by the detailed overview of the ‘LRA 2/13’ type. Dated mostly from the mid-seventh to the early ninth cen-
1. SHIFTING PARADIGMS IN A SHIFTING BACKGROUND
turies, these amphorae had fairly standardized forms and were related mainly to ‘coastal small-scale local and regional pottery workshops near oil and wine producing areas. This trend is evidence that after the seventh century, despite a general crisis, the central administration of the Byzantine Empire still had a top-down control on trade, often functional, to supply the army. Vroom also stresses that the church may have had a crucial role as a production centre of such amphorae. All of this, then, may be a sign of the resilience of the empire itself, capable, as we have seen, of maintaining a ‘system of (military or ecclesiastic) exchange nodes, of connected and interlocking urban centres, and of durable coastal networks.
Flavia Marani offers a very interesting and useful overview on the monetary circulation in Rome and Naples during the early Byzantine periods using a comparative approach. Both cities played a central role in the turbulent events of the Gothic War, being sites of important mints. Despite the disparity of the indicators coming from the two cities, with Rome being inevitably better known than Naples, the author presents some significant comparisons, thus bringing new light to some outdated interpretations. In Rome the crucial evidence is still that of the excavations carried out at the Crypta Balbi, which revealed indications of significant circulation of various goods, mainly related, in the seventh century, to the monastery of San Lorenzo in Pallacinis. Among this evidence, the study of coins — already completed by Alessia Rovelli — shows a meaningful continuity in the minting activities in Rome anda good amount of monetary circulation between the seventh and the eighth centuries, mostly related to the use of the minimi produced in the fifth and sixth centuries, and is a clear indicator of the long term use of such coins. It was only after the 730s, in Marani’s analysis, that the minting activity in Rome ended, in strict relation to the progressive dismissal of Byzantine power.
The situation in Naples was in many ways similar to that in Rome. The opening of a mint in the middle of the seventh century represents a crucial aspect of the economic and political scenario and, just as in Rome, it is possible to document a prolonged circulation of minimi, probably minted in Rome itself. However some fundamental differences can be traced, and it is worth quoting directly Marani’s words: ‘The difference between Rome and Naples lies in the possibility of the former to melt down the coinage left by the Ostrogoths, and specifically by Totila (thus erasing the propagandistic message), for the minting of new coins, while in the latter the Byzantine authority could not apply the same con-on Rome for supply’ (Marani, this volume).
Critical reflections are discussed by Maria de los Angeles Utrero Agudo about the Byzantine influence in Visigothic religious architecture and on the real material consistency of Byzantine Spania ( 5 52-624), limited to the south and east coastlines of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. In light of recent re-evaluation, Utrero Agudo proposes a radical reimagining of the traditional vision of the influence of Byzantium on Visigothic churches. Furthermore, the evidence does not indicate any specific characteristics reflecting a Byzantine ‘patronage’ of religious architectures in Spania between the fifth and seventh centuries. Churches from this period maintain the typical elements of Late Antique Mediterranean architecture, such as the presence of a wooden roof, vaulted apses, rough stone masonries, and the use of single elements of spolia.
Furthermore, some churches traditionally considered typically Byzantine have recently been reconsidered. For example, the basilica of Algezares (Murcia) is most likely from the early seventh century and not the second half of the sixth century; the church of La Alcudia (Alicante), whose mosaic pavement with a Greek inscription had been previously dated to sixth century, has been redated to the late fourth century; and the site of El Monastil (Elda, Alicante), which has recently been defined as ‘the first Byzantine monastery’, actually appears to be a Late Antique complex, and ‘no solid reasons can be shown to defend the presence of a Byzantine monastery’ (Utrero Agudo, this volume). However, a connection with the Byzantine Mediterranean is attested by the material culture, especially in the Balearic Islands, although many religious buildings seem to have been built before the arrival of Byzantine militias in Iberian territory and continued to be used afterwards. This article by Utrero Agudo seriously questions the archaeological indicators of an effective definition of ‘Byzantine’ with regard to certain architectural and material evidence, and concludes that for many contexts, ‘although they are located in the Byzantine strip, this fact does not make them necessarily Byzantine’ (Utrero Agudo, this volume).
With this book, then, we present a series of different observations on the Byzantine world using some well-known contexts and also brand-new areas and perspectives. What emerges is a heterogenous fresco with many shifting paradigms (economic, social, and religious) in a shifting background, a mirror of an ever-changing ‘Byzantine world’ The data presented in this book, moreover, often also pushes us to go beyond the canonical debate over continuity/ transition, since we can often see traits of osmosis and resilience that contribute to shape an even more multifaceted complexity in a ‘global’ world that, even though it may not have been ‘Byzantine’ everywhere in the same ways, it was indeed the result of a series of influences that often had Byzantium (lato sensu) as a common denominator.
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