Byzantine Athens, 10th - 12th Centuries

Byzantine Athens, 10th - 12th Centuries PDF Author: Charalambos Bouras
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351596977
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
In this masterful synthesis, Charalambos Bouras draws together material and textual evidence for Athens in the Middle Byzantine period, from the mid-tenth century to 1204, when it was conquered by Crusaders. What emerges from his meticulous investigation is an urban fabric surprisingly makeshift in its domestic sector yet exuberantly creative in its ecclesiastical architecture. Rather than viewing the city as a mere shadow of its ancient past, Bouras demonstrates how Athens remained an important city of the Byzantine Empire as the seat of a metropolitan, home to local aristocracy, and pilgrimage destination for those who came to worship at the Christian Parthenon. Byzantine Athens explores the relationship of the Byzantine infrastructure to earlier configurations, shedding light on the water supply, industrial facilities, streets and fortifications of medieval Athens, and exploring the evidence for the form and typology of Byzantine houses. Thanks to Bouras’s indefatigable study of all available archaeological reports the first part of the book offers an overall picture of the Middle Byzantine city. The second part presents a fully documented and illustrated catalogue of nearly 40 churches, including synthetic treatments of their typology and morphology set in the wider Byzantine architectural context. Finally, Bouras joins his unrivalled knowledge of the surviving remains and exhaustive scrutiny of the relevant scholarship to offer a historical interpretation of the Athenian monuments. Byzantine Athens is a unique achievement that will remain an invaluable compendium of our knowledge of one of the most complex, yet relatively unknown, Byzantine cities.

Byzantine Athens, 10th - 12th Centuries

Byzantine Athens, 10th - 12th Centuries PDF Author: Charalambos Bouras
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351596977
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this masterful synthesis, Charalambos Bouras draws together material and textual evidence for Athens in the Middle Byzantine period, from the mid-tenth century to 1204, when it was conquered by Crusaders. What emerges from his meticulous investigation is an urban fabric surprisingly makeshift in its domestic sector yet exuberantly creative in its ecclesiastical architecture. Rather than viewing the city as a mere shadow of its ancient past, Bouras demonstrates how Athens remained an important city of the Byzantine Empire as the seat of a metropolitan, home to local aristocracy, and pilgrimage destination for those who came to worship at the Christian Parthenon. Byzantine Athens explores the relationship of the Byzantine infrastructure to earlier configurations, shedding light on the water supply, industrial facilities, streets and fortifications of medieval Athens, and exploring the evidence for the form and typology of Byzantine houses. Thanks to Bouras’s indefatigable study of all available archaeological reports the first part of the book offers an overall picture of the Middle Byzantine city. The second part presents a fully documented and illustrated catalogue of nearly 40 churches, including synthetic treatments of their typology and morphology set in the wider Byzantine architectural context. Finally, Bouras joins his unrivalled knowledge of the surviving remains and exhaustive scrutiny of the relevant scholarship to offer a historical interpretation of the Athenian monuments. Byzantine Athens is a unique achievement that will remain an invaluable compendium of our knowledge of one of the most complex, yet relatively unknown, Byzantine cities.

The Byzantine Neighbourhood

The Byzantine Neighbourhood PDF Author: Fotini Kondyli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429764987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The Byzantine Neighbourhood contributes to a new narrative regarding Byzantine cities through the adoption of a neighbourhood perspective. It offers a multi-disciplinary investigation of the spatial and social practices that produced Byzantine concepts of neighbourhood and afforded dynamic interactions between different actors, elite and non-elite. Authors further consider neighbourhoods as political entities, examining how varieties of collectivity formed in Byzantine neighbourhoods translated into political action. By both acknowledging the unique position of Constantinople, and giving serious attention to the varieties of provincial experience, the contributors consider regional factors (social, economic, and political) that formed the ties of local communities to the state and illuminate the mechanisms of empire. Beyond its Byzantine focus, this volume contributes to broader discussions of premodern urbanism by drawing attention to the spatial dimension of social life and highlighting the involvement of multiple agents in city-making.

Byzantine Greece: Microcosm of Empire?

Byzantine Greece: Microcosm of Empire? PDF Author: Archibald Dunn
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000929477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This volume offers a structured presentation of the progress of research into the internal history of a part of the Byzantine world – Greece – in the centuries before the multiple changes induced or accelerated by the Fourth Crusade. Greece is a large area (several Early andMiddle Byzantine provinces), with records, archival, literary, archaeological, architectural, and art-historical, most of which are unequalled in terms of their density and range. This creates opportunities for useful synthesis, and for dialogue with those now engaged in the rewriting, or writing, of the inner history of Byzantium, from Italy to the Caucasus, who have been stimulated by, or involved in, the editing of archives and inscriptions (including sigillographic), and in the publication of monuments, excavations, and surveys (for all of which the ‘Greek space’, the elladikê khôra, is a particular, and fertile, focus of activity, as the conference showed). Much of the material presented here can usually only be found in specialised publication, and indeed much in Greek alone. But, properly contextualised, this material about the ‘Greek space’ deserves to be brought into the dialogues or debates at the heart of Byzantine Studies, for instance about the Late Antique ‘boom’, urban life, the ‘Dark Age’, economic change, the nature of the ‘Byzantine revival’, and of social, socio-economic, and ethnic groups. The studies here synthesise such research, enabling the ‘Greek space’ as a case study in the evolution of a significant region to the west of Constantinople, to take its place more fully as a point of reference in such dialogues or debates. Equally, it provides frameworks for archaeologists dealing with Greece from Late Antiquity onwards – and there are now many – with which to engage, and it makes available a rich source of comparative material for those studying the other regions of the Byzantine world, whether historically or archaeologically, in Southeastern Europe, Italy, or Turkey.

The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610–1204

The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610–1204 PDF Author: Luca Zavagno
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030843076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book explores the Byzantine city and the changes it went through from 610 to 1204. Throughout this period, cities were always the centers of political and social life for both secular and religious authorities, and, furthermore, the focus of the economic interests of local landowning elites. This book therefore examines the regional and subregional trajectories in the urban function, landscape, structure and fabric of Byzantium’s cities, synthesizing the most cutting-edge archaeological excavations, the results of analyses of material culture (including ceramics, coins, and seals) and a reassessment of the documentary and hagiographical sources. The transformation the Byzantine urban landscape underwent from the seventh to thirteenth centuries can afford us a better grasp of changes to the Byzantine central and provincial administrative apparatus; their fiscal machinery, military institutions, socio-economic structures and religious organization. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of the history, archaeology and architecture of Byzantium.

Beyond Icons

Beyond Icons PDF Author: William R. Caraher
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040146228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This book is a collective reflection on the relationship between theory and methods, as practiced by American archaeologists of the Byzantine period in Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, and Egypt between the 1990s and 2020s. The eleven authors represent a generational voice that employed theory to redirect the established narratives of the golden age of Byzantine archaeology (1960s–1980s) that privileged art and religion. Beyond Icons: Theories and Methods in Byzantine Archaeology in North America originated in three conferences (2010, 2012, and 2013) organized by the Program of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Acknowledging the role that Dumbarton Oaks played in the golden age of Byzantine archaeology, Program Director Margaret Mullett designed these conferences as exercises in conceptualizing the field’s future. The chapters consider theories of fragments, methodologies in regional surface survey, stratigraphy, habitus, phenomenology, gender theory, craft, dreams, and sound. In doing so, they capture a moment in the study of Byzantine archaeology and material culture and chart out future directions for the field. This book will appeal to scholars and students alike, as well as all those interested in Byzantine Studies, medieval archaeology (particularly of the eastern Mediterranean), and Byzantine material culture. It will also be of interest to anyone seeking to understand the emerging narrative of a global Middle Ages. The chapters reflect the ways in which the study of Byzantine archaeology was shaped by the scholarship of those working in the United States and Canada.

The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City

The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City PDF Author: Nikolas Bakirtzis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429515758
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 719

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Book Description
The Byzantine world contained many important cities throughout its empire. Although it was not ‘urban’ in the sense of the word today, its cities played a far more fundamental role than those of its European neighbors. This book, through a collection of twenty-four chapters, discusses aspects of, and different approaches to, Byzantine urbanism from the early to late Byzantine periods. It provides both a chronological and thematic perspective to the study of Byzantine cities, bringing together literary, documentary, and archival sources with archaeological results, material culture, art, and architecture, resulting in a rich synthesis of the variety of regional and sub-regional transformations of Byzantine urban landscapes. Organized into four sections, this book covers: Theory and Historiography, Geography and Economy, Architecture and the Built Environment, and Daily Life and Material Culture. It includes more specialized accounts that address the centripetal role of Constantinople and its broader influence across the empire. Such new perspectives help to challenge the historiographical balance between ‘margins and metropolis,’ and also to include geographical areas often regarded as peripheral, like the coastal urban centers of the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as cities on islands, such as Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily which have more recently yielded well-excavated and stratigraphically sound urban sites. The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City provides both an overview and detailed study of the Byzantine city to specialist scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike and, therefore, will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine urbanism and society, as well as those studying medieval society in general.

Rural Communities in Late Byzantium

Rural Communities in Late Byzantium PDF Author: Fotini Kondyli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108985416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Late Byzantium faced economic, political, and demographic crises. This book argues for the ability of rural communities to transform their socioeconomic strategies and maintain resilience in the face of these, especially in the context of islands. It seeks to reinstate ordinary people in the historical narrative and reintroduce them as active participants in the events of the period, pointing to their ability not only to react to change, but also to initiate it. Combining new archaeological evidence with archival material pertaining to the islands of Lemnos and Thasos in the Northern Aegean, it provides concrete examples of Byzantine socio-economic strategies that successfully mitigated the various crises and thus contributes to a diachronic perspective on crisis management. The result is to rethink the nature of the Late Byzantine period, and to question the ways in which we have come to divide historical periods into 'good' or 'bad'.

Wisdom’s House, Heaven’s Gate

Wisdom’s House, Heaven’s Gate PDF Author: Teresa Shawcross
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031352637
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description


A Companion to Latin Greece

A Companion to Latin Greece PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004284109
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
The conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the armies of the Fourth Crusade resulted in the foundation of several Latin political entities in the lands of Greece. The Companion to Latin Greece offers thematic overviews of the history of the mixed societies that emerged as a result of the conquest. With dedicated chapters on the art, literature, architecture, numismatics, economy, social and religious organisation and the crusading involvement of these Latin states, the volume offers an introduction to the study of Latin Greece and a sampler of the directions in which the field of research is moving. Contributors are: Nikolaos Chrissis, Charalambos Gasparis, Anastasia Papadia-Lala, Nicholas Coureas, David Jaccoby, Julian Baker, Gill Page, Maria Georgopoulou and Sophia Kalopissi-Verti.

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens PDF Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108484557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
This book is a comprehensive introduction to ancient Athens, its topography, monuments, inhabitants, cultural institutions, religious rituals, and politics. Drawing from the newest scholarship on the city, this volume examines how the city was planned, how it functioned, and how it was transformed from a democratic polis into a Roman urbs.