The view from Byzantine archaeology

Abstract

This chapter offers a more complex and yet “flexible” image of Byzantine neighbourhoods that does not easily conform to rigid expectations of spatial and social organization. In the Middle Byzantine period, Athens was densely inhabited following the demographic boom witnessed throughout the Empire in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The physical geography of the city had changed little since antiquity, but the built environment had changed dramatically. Numerous burials dated to the Middle and Late Byzantine periods have also been found inside and around the church. The numerous Middle Byzantine houses and small streets surrounding both churches attest to their location within intensely inhabited areas, and further point to the spatial, religious, and social interaction among nearby residents and these churches. Leonora Neville’s work on Middle Byzantine provincial administration has emphasized the mode of operation in the provinces in which a hands-off central administration did not intervene unless there was a visible threat to its authority.