Islands: not the last frontier. insular model in Early Medieval Byzantine Mediterranean c. 650- c. 850

Abstract

The present volume aims at offering a less detailed but chronologically broader survey of the agents of the above mentioned matrix of communications across the Mediterranean basin from the early Medieval to the Modern era. Rather than indulging upon the supposed and catastrophic mid-seventh century caesura (as advocated by Pirenne), or moving from the second trade cycle (as described by Wickham) this collection of articles stresses the continuities in the dynamic connectivity of the Mediterranean. By observing the faces of those who continuously build these networks and goods which travel across, the reader will enact Penelope and her loom where endless threads and knots were made and destroyed in a fortnight. In a similar vein (loosely in tune with a Braudelian longue durée), the volume offers an interdisciplinary and encompassing digest over the manifold actors of this incessant weaving and undoing of communications across different periods of Mediterranean history.