Cities Fortresses And Villages Of Byzantine Asia Minor
Download Cities Fortresses And Villages Of Byzantine Asia Minor PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get Cities Fortresses And Villages Of Byzantine Asia Minor book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
History and Archaeology of Byzantine Asia Minor
Professor Foss has been a leading figure in pointing out to Byzantinists the necessity of taking archaeological evidence into account when making any historical reconstruction. These studies have as their purpose, in large part, such an evaluation of the archaeological data, including the evidence of coin finds, weighing it against and combining it with the information gathered from written sources. They demonstrate the vital importance of such material for some of the central issues of Byzantine history, notably the question to what extent did towns and cities, the centres of civilised life in the classical world, perpetuate this into the Byzantine period. As Foss shows, the physical record makes it plain that the structures inherited from Roman times fell into decay, and that the land took on a new medieval aspect of fortresses and villages. The first articles in this volume deal specifically with this transformation in the Byzantine heartlands of Asia Minor, and attribute a key role to the destructive Persian invasions of the 7th century. The following pieces, based extensively on the results of survey work, explore how the patterns of settlement evolved in particular areas, from the Roman up into the Turkish periods.
Cities, Fortresses, and Villages of Byzantine Asia Minor
These essays deal with the history and archaeology of Byzantine Asia Minor from the 4th to the 14th century. They include regional surveys of the southwest (Lycia and Pamphylia) and discussions of specific sites and monuments elsewhere. These include many fortifications which have never been analysed or integrated into the archaeological or historical record of Byzantium. The work puts all kinds of surviving remains into the context of history, to show that the archaeological record is essential for recreating and understanding the nature and development of the Byzantine empire.
The Archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia
Author: Philipp Niewöhner
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2017
This book accounts for the tumultuous period of the fifth to eleventh centuries from the Fall of Rome and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire through the breakup of the Eastern Roman Empire and loss of pan-Mediterranean rule, until the Turks arrived and seized Anatolia. The volume is divided into a dozen syntheses that each addresses an issue of intrigue for the archaeology of Anatolia, and two dozen case studies on single sites that exemplify its richness. Anatolia was the only major part of the Roman Empire that did not fall in late antiquity; it remained steadfast under Roman rule through the eleventh century. Its personal history stands to elucidate both the emphatic impact of Roman administration in the wake of pan-Mediterranean collapse. Thanks to Byzantine archaeology, we now know that urban decline did not set in before the fifth century, after Anatolia had already be thoroughly Christianized in the course of the fourth century; we know now that urban decline, as it occurred from the fifth century onwards, was paired with rural prosperity, and an increase in the number, size, and quality of rural settlements and in rural population; that this ruralization was halted during the seventh to ninth centuries, when Anatolia was invaded first by the Persians, and then by the Arabs---and the population appears to have sought shelter behind new urban fortifications and in large cathedrals. Further, it elucidates that once the Arab threat had ended in the ninth century, this ruralization set in once more, and most cities seem to have been abandoned or reduced to villages during the ensuing time of seeming tranquility, whilst the countryside experienced renewed prosperity; that this trend was reversed yet again, when the Seljuk Turks appeared on the scene in the eleventh century, devastated the countryside and led to a revival and refortification of the former cities. This dynamic historical thread, traced across its extremes through the lens of Byzantine archaeology, speaks not only to the torrid narrative of Byzantine Anatolia, but to the enigmatic medievalization.