Book Series Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology, vol. 5

Feeding the Byzantine City

The Archaeology of Consumption in the Eastern Mediterranean (ca. 500-1500)

Joanita Vroom (ed)

  • Pages: 350 p.
  • Size:178 x 254 mm
  • Illustrations:37 b/w, 107 col., 14 tables b/w., 4 maps b/w, 35 maps color
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2023

  • € 75,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-60566-1
  • Paperback
  • Available
  • € 75,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-60567-8
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The book offers innovative perspectives on consumption and production, exciting historical insights on markets and exchange systems, as well as often astonishing archaeological data from Byzantine cities and their surroundings in the eastern Mediterranean between ca. 500 and 1500.

BIO

Joanita Vroom is Professor of the Archaeology of Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University (Netherlands).

Summary

This book offers new and innovative perspectives on the archaeology of consumption in Byzantine cities and their hinterlands. Case-studies range from towns in eastern Macedonia, north-western and central Greece, and Crete to urban centres in Serbia, Bulgaria and western Turkey. The archaeological data and historical insights presented in this volume are always of great interest, often exciting, and more than once outright astonishing. The commodities discussed in the volume are dated between the 6th and the 16th century CE and include pottery (e.g., glazed table wares, amphorae, cooking pots, storage jars), textile fragments, metal objects, bronze and golden jewellery, marble carved slabs and columns.

Feeding the Byzantine City sheds compelling light on a world which was much more complex and interconnected than has often been assumed, which makes it essential reading for scholars and a larger audience alike.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Joanita Vroom (series editor) – Preface.

PRODUCTION & CONSUMPTION IN BYZANTIUM: A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Archibald W. Dunn – The Medieval Byzantine town: Producers, suppliers, and consumers.

EARLY & MIDDLE BYZANTINE PERIODS

Vesna Bikić – Caričin Grad (Justiniana Prima) as a market: Searching for an Early Byzantine model of pottery production and consumption
Myrto Veikou – Geographies of consumption in Byzantine Epirus: Urban space, commodification, and consumption practices from the 7th to the 12th century.
Natalia Poulou – Production and consumption in Crete from the mid-7th to the 10th century AD: The archaeological evidence.
Evelina Todorova – Mapping Byzantine amphorae: Outlining the patterns of consumption in present-day Bulgaria and in the Black Sea Region (ca. 7th-14th centuries).

MIDDLE & LATE BYZANTINE PERIODS

Philipp Niewöhner – Not a consumption crisis: Diversity in marble carving, ruralisation, and the collapse of urban demand in Middle Byzantine Asia Minor.
Stefania S. Skartsis & Nikos D. Kontogiannis – Central Greece in the Middle and the Late Byzantine periods: Changing patterns of consumption in Thebes and Chalcis.
Joanita Vroom, Elli Tzavella & Giannis Vaxevanis – Life, work and consumption in Byzantine Chalcis: Ceramic finds from an industrial hub in central Greece, ca. 10th-13th centuries.
Elli Tzavella – Consumption patterns of ceramics in town and countryside: Case-studies from Corinth and Athens in central Greece.

EARLY TO LATE BYZANTINE PERIODS: AN OVERVIEW

Joanita Vroom – Production, Exchange and consumption of ceramics in the Byzantine Mediterranean (ca. 7th-15th centuries).