Browsing by Subject "Islands"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Open Access
Brief notes on the Byzantine Insular Urbanism between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages
(Center for Cyprus Studies-Eastern Mediterranean University, 2020) Zavagno, Luca
This paper aims at reassessing the concept of peripherality of the Byzantine insular world. It is suggested that Sicily, Crete and Cyprus (and to a lesser extent Malta, Sardinia and the Balearics) acted as a third political and economic pole between the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean Sea in the Byzantine Mediterranean. This will shed “archeological” light on some parallel economic and political trajectories of the urban centers located on two of the abovementioned islands: Salamis-Constantia on Cyprus and Gortyn in Crete during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.
Open Access
“Going to the extremes”: the Balearics and Cyprus in the early medieval Byzantine insular system
(Routledge, 2019-04) Zavagno, Luca
This contribution mainly focuses on Cyprus and the Balearics, islands located at opposite geographical extremes of the Byzantine Mediterranean, during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Historians have often regarded these islands as peripheral additions to the Byzantine heartland of the Aegean and the Anatolian plateau; this article argues that, in fact, archaeological and material indicators (such as ceramics, lead seals and coins), paired with the scarce textual sources, point to a certain degree of economic prosperity in the abovementioned islands during the period under scrutiny, suggesting that they continued to play an important role in the political, administrative and religious structures of the Byzantine Empire. A resilient insular economy and continuity of local production of artefacts was ensured by the persistence of demand from local secular and religious elites and regular, if infrequent, contacts with other areas of the Byzantine heartland or the Muslim Mediterranean.
Open Access
“Islands in the stream”: toward a new history of the large islands of the Byzantine Mediterranean in the early Middle Ages ca.600-ca.800
(Routledge, 2018) Zavagno, Luca
Byzantine historiography has often regarded the large Mediterranean islands (Cyprus, Crete, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearics) as mere peripheral additions to the Byzantine heartland-defined as the coupling of two different geographical zones: the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean. As a result, Byzantinists seem not to have fully moved away from an interpretative framework which regards islands as either strategic military bulwarks along the Arab-Byzantine Mediterranean frontier, or as neglected marginal outposts soon to be lost forever. A partial exception to this historiographical periphericity of large islands is represented by Sicily, because of its relevance as a secure source for grain after the disruption of the Egyptian tax-spine in the 640s. In fact, by comparing material and archaeological evidence with literary and documentary sources, an alternative interpretation of the political, economic and cultural role played by large islands will be proposed, this by pairing two main themes: the first revolving around the economics of insular societies; and the second stressing the importance of islands as connective hubs with peculiar local political, social and cultural structures which remained within the Byzantine sphere of influence for longer than previously thought. This approach allows us to tip the unbalanced dialogue between margins and metropolis by pointing to a relatively higher welfare of the insular world as stemming from the uninterrupted, although diminished, “connective” role the abovementioned islands played within the Mediterranean shipping routes linking the eastern and western basin of the Mediterranean. In this light, the adaptive strategies of insular administrative structures as influenced by the political or military difficulties of the hour, as well as the urban socio-political and economic structures on some of the abovementioned Byzantine islands, will also be documented. This is because the construction of urban models, settlement strategies and infrastructures-although often based on diverse political and administrative policies-nevertheless point to the presence of common, cross-cultural insular developments such as: the role of members of urban-oriented aristocracies as cultural brokers; the creation of commercial and artisanal facilities; the construction or restoration of religious buildings as foci of settlement and regional as well as interregional pilgrimage; the resilience of local elites as catalysts of patronage; and the persistence of levels of demand often based upon regular if not frequent regional and sub-regional trans-maritime contacts.
Open Access
Urbanism in the Byzantine heartland and the coastal/ insular koine
(Palgrave Pivot, 2021-10-07) Zavagno, Luca
This chapter will navigate through the many incarnations of Byzantine urbanism in three different geographical areas of the empire: Anatolia and Aegean (the two constitutive pillars of the Byzantine heartland) and the so-called insular/coastal koine. Each of these played a changing and diverse role in the political, administrative, fiscal, and military strategies of the empire, as well as betraying peculiar economies of scale. It will examine by proposing a brief historical and archaeological overview of a selection of urban centers in different geographical contexts. This should help the reader see through the various functional trajectories of the Byzantine city (sometimes contemporary, sometimes diachronic) from a comparative perspective. It allows to extrapolate the reality of Byzantine urbanism from the historiographical and terminological debate as presented by the literary sources.