Byzantine Research Articles

Continuity, Resilience, and Change in Rural Settlement Patterns from the Roman to Islamic Period in the Sicani Mountains (Central-Western Sicily)

This study aims to analyze the dynamics of change in settlement models from the Roman, late antique, and Byzantine periods, focusing on how these transformations influenced the formation of Islamic societies in the rural landscapes of western Sicily. The study is centered around the territory of Corleone in the Sicani Mountains (central-western Sicily). This region, strategically located between the significant cities of Palermo on the Tyrrhenian Sea and Agrigento on the Strait of Sicily, has been pivotal in the communication network spanning from the Roman era to the Middle Ages and beyond. The area has been subject to extensive surveys and excavations, revealing diverse dynamics of continuity, resilience, and innovation in settlement patterns from the Roman to the Islamic periods. Beyond presenting the results of archaeological fieldwork, this study employs GIS-based spatial and statistical analyses and utilizes a range of topographic (elevation, slope, aspect, topographic position index (TPI), and distance to water sources) and ecological factors (vegetation series). These analyses aim to assess the evolving relationships and site positioning within the territory over time. Combining archaeological data with topographic and ecological landscape analysis, this integrated approach elucidates the complex transition dynamics from the Roman settlement system to the Islamic age’s landscape formation in western Sicily’s rural areas. The study thereby contributes to a deeper understanding of the intricate interplay between historical developments and environmental factors in shaping rural settlement patterns.

«IT WILL BE USEFUL FOR YOU TO TAKE US TO YOUR ALLIANCE»: ABOUT AVAR-BYZANTINE DIPLOMATIC RELATIONSHIPS IN 557–565 A.D.

Nomad Avar horde, which migrated to the Balkan region from Asia, soonly was included in the diplomatic system under the supremacy of Constantinople. After using territorial claims nomads on Romei lands, a short form of the institution of the supreme ruler and a small number of Avars, Roman Emperor Justinian I (527-565) signed the federative agreement with nomads. During the alliance, Avars tried to develop their independent political course. Such circumstance contradicted Eastern Rome’s interests and, in perspective, created a direct threat to the Empire. Using centuries of weakening the Byzantium on the Danube border, nomads started a series of raids against Empire allies and broke the deal with Constantinople. The diplomatic corps of nomads focused on disinforming the autocrat. As a result, it caused deterioration in relations between sides in the last years of rule of Justinian I and finally to a protracted military confrontation after the death of the Emperor, which lasted with breaks to the first third of VII cent. The main thesis of the article is the Avar-Romei political relations, which topic is considered primarily in the context of the wars. At the same time, the only basileus who succeeded in managing the long-term alliance with the future enemy of the Empire was Justinian the Great. In our opinion, the consideration of Avar-Romei political relations in this period illustrates, on the one hand, the specifics of the attitude of ‘Latin’ Byzantium to folks whose military potential it wanted to use. On the other hand, the peculiarities of the formation of another ‘steppe empire’, which by the way, turned out to be more stable in ethnic and political aspects than the Huns. Based on the messages of Romei historians in the second half of VI cent., the article recreates the terms and the precedents of concluding and further observance by the parties of the Avar-Byzantium alliance during the final period of Justinian the Great rule. The author tried to chronologically recreate the picture of the initial step of Avar-Romei relations that primarily evolved in mutually beneficial coexistence. This was primarily caused both by low numbers of Avars and insufficient formation nomads’ elites, as well as the political experience of Justinian the First. The focus is on the relations between nomad folks and Empire federates, such as Alans, Antes, and Gepids. Against the background of military-political connections of Avars with their neighbors, their first initial steps are noticeable. Analyzed factors that promoted Avars’ initial transition under Rome’s supremacy and the slow creation of their own policy course by Avar Khagan Bayan.

Collapse Studies in Archaeology from 2012 to 2023

AbstractThe study of collapse in archaeology and history has continued to grow and develop in the last decade and is a respectable target of investigation in and beyond these fields. Environmental determinism and apocalyptic narratives have become less acceptable and collapsology has matured into a more nuanced, self-critical, and sophisticated field. This review explores recent work on collapse in archaeology between 2012 and 2023. It demonstrates how collapse, and associated concepts such as resilience, fragility, and vulnerability, are studied in the light of present-day threats, how collapse studies are increasingly recognized to have application in the present day, where they can contribute to discourses of resilience and sustainable development, and shows the diversity present in collapse studies. It also discusses the language and concepts of collapse. I explore these areas with reference to general works on collapse and to six specific historical episodes of collapse: Old World collapse, eastern Mediterranean collapse, the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Classic Maya, Tiwanaku, and Rapa Nui.

Art and female agency in late Byzantium: three methodological case studies.

This essay employs the anthropological notion of female social agency to analyse a selection of case studies in the art history of the late Byzantine Empire. They concern three women – Nicoletta Grioni, Isabelle de Lusignan, and Maria d'Enghien-Brienne – who lived between the mid- to late fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth. All three were part of a Greek-Latin Mediterranean socio-cultural context. While their stories are not fully represented in textual primary sources, the present essay examines a selection of heterogeneous visual and cultural materials that help to reinstate their role in history and overcome the male-logocentric nature of the written evidence related to them.

‘The sublime objects of liminality’: the Byzantine insular-coastal koine and its administration in the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (ca. 600–ca. 850)

This paper focuses on the historical development and dynamics of political and administrative structures in regions of a fragmented empire that cannot be simply described as marginal ‘mouseholes’. Rather, it should be acknowledged that these spaces were part and parcel of a wider area (the Byzantine insular and coastal koine), which encompassed coastal areas as well as insular communities promoting socio-economic contact and cultural interchange. More importantly, they also boasted a peculiar set of material indicators suggesting a certain common cultural unity and identity. The koine coincided with liminal territories and the seas on which the Byzantine Empire retained political and naval rulership. Such liminal territories showed varied – yet coherent– administrative infrastructures and political practices on the part of local elites.

Changes in Town and Country in Late Antiquity and into the Early Medieval Period in Greece and the Aegean Islands

The Greek Aegean in the Late Roman era (5th-mid-7th centuries AD) offers a degree of uniformity, developing further the novel urban and rural patterns that mark the previous Imperial centuries. Characteristically, small towns with fortifications and lavish Christian monuments are surrounded by commercial villa estates, while populations shrink drastically from the mid-6th century. In the 7th-8th centuries fundamental regional divergences appear. Most of mainland Greece is lost to the Eastern Roman (aka Early Byzantine) Empire based at Constantinople, the largest towns and coastal ports excepted, following waves of Slavic settlement. A second model is found on the Aegean Islands, where reduced populations largely survive Arab raids and alien settlement through settlement displacement and negotiation. A third model is represented by the large island of Crete, free from invasion until Arab conquest in the 9th century, ironically when a revived Eastern Roman (Middle Byzantine) Empire regains control of the mainland and remaining Aegean Islands. This paper will present the evidence from archaeology for these scenarios, varying in time and space.

The Uniqueness of the Medieval Persian Art

I examine the symmetry used in the ornamentation of various medieval civilizations and interpret it as a characteristic feature of each cultural group. I first classify the symmetries according to the 17 wallpaper groups of crystallography, then determine their frequency and apply statistical methods to obtain quantitative and comparative information for each of these groups. The calculations show that the civilizations can be divided into two groups according to their habits: the Islamic group of Seljuks and Arabs and the Greco-Roman group, which includes Armenians, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Andalusia. Remarkably, Persia stands out from this division with its own art movement until the 16th century.

Identifying Cultural Habits and Economical Preferences in the Islamic Period, Mount Zion, Jerusalem

Archaeological and historical sources describe differently the course of events that occurred during the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem. Was the transition from the Byzantine to the Islamic period a short and dramatic event or a long and steady process? This study aims to examine the Islamic cultural influences over Jerusalem during the Byzantine/Umayyad period and later post-earthquake of the 8th century CE. Thus, we carried out a study of Mount Zion’s (seasons 2018 and 2019) faunal assemblages, analyzing the species discovered at the site, their demography and distribution between the different architectural contexts. The focus was on evaluating the cultural identity and economic preferences of the local population. The remains we found indicate that the economy was based mainly on caprines, pigs and fish. As the site was located inside the Jerusalem walls, the locals gained their meat supply from the local markets and might have been involved in agriculture outside the walls. Although the site experienced architectural alterations between the two periods, the Christian population remained, and their faunal economy did not change from the Byzantine period till after the earthquake.

Historical evolution of the passenger ship's doctor.

The authors examine the evolution of the role of resident doctors on cruise ships dating back to the Roman and Byzantine empires, then in the Middle ages. In the past surgery was rarely performed by doctors, but by barber-surgeons, who, with their razor skills, did everything from haircuts to amputations. More recently, as in the last century, the first royal decrees were issued, pillar by pillar, forming the regulatory basis governing health care on board Italian or foreign ships travelling to and from national ports.

Vizantijskij tranzit yuridicheskoj iudaiki v otechestvennoe ugolovnoe pravo

he purpose of this work is to study the historical and legal phenomena of penetration into the legal space of Russia provisions of Hebrew law in the process of global reception of Christianized law of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 11th 17th centuries. Judaica not only influenced the formation of domestic legal acts (in the aspects of legal goal-setting, the specifics of legal technology, etc.) the provisions of the Law of Moses were included as an autonomous segment in systematized domestic codes and were subject to direct application by state authorities of Russia. Understanding the true historical roots of the formation of domestic law forms the foundation for its development currently and release the reform of Russian criminal law from artificially imposed dependence on the trends in the development of European public law.

The Uniqueness of the Medieval Persian Art

I examine the symmetry used in the ornamentation of various medieval civilizations and interpret it as a characteristic feature of each cultural group. I first classify the symmetries according to the 17 wallpaper groups of crystallography, then determine their frequency and apply statistical methods to obtain quantitative and comparative information for each of these groups. The calculations show that the civilizations can be divided into two groups according to their habits: the Islamic group of Seljuks and Arabs and the Greco-Roman group, which includes Armenians, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Andalusia. Remarkably, Persia stands out from this division with its own art movement until the 16th century.

The Külliye as Hypotext: a New Reading of Ottoman Imperial Mosques and Tombs

Abstract This article reflects on Istanbul as a palimpsest city, more specifically, about how architectural typologies, practices, visual tropes and narratives migrate through different contexts in time and space. As a city inherited from the Byzantine Empire, negotiating the intersection of past and present as well as topography and politics has been fundamental to shaping Ottoman Istanbul. The article explores the imperial city through one of its ‘original’ Ottoman structures, the religious and social complex known as külliye, in order to frame its agency, both formal and urbanistic, to reveal not only its extremely rich and imaginative iterations from the conquest of Constantinople to the Tanzimat but also the spatiotemporal relationships between them.

On the Similarities and Differences between Tang Law and Roman Law in the Judicial System

The legal system of the Tang Dynasty is the most Chinese legal system, and the judicial system of the Tang Dynasty is an important part of the legal system of the Tang Dynasty. In the background of the Chinese law system, comparing the judicial system of the tang dynasty in the eastern Roman empire, and using the research method of comparative law from the legislative background, legislative technology, the guiding technique of the two countries and the analysis of the characteristics of the judicial system in the history of the rule of law in the world.

The Uniqueness of the Medieval Persian Art

I examine the symmetry used in the ornamentation of various medieval civilizations and interpret it as a characteristic feature of each cultural group. I first classify the symmetries according to the 17 wallpaper groups of crystallography, then determine their frequency and apply statistical methods to obtain quantitative and comparative information for each of these groups. The calculations show that the civilizations can be divided into two groups according to their habits: the Islamic group of Seljuks and Arabs and the Greco-Roman group, which includes Armenians, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Andalusia. Remarkably, Persia stands out from this division with its own art movement until the 16th century.

Restless skies at the turn of the first Millennium AD. Climate fluctuations, astronomic phenomena and socio-political turbulences in 10th and 11th century Byzantium and Japan in comparative perspective

Around the turn of the first Millennium AD, both in Christian polities such as the Byzantine Empire as well as in regions with Buddhist communities such as in Heian Japan, expectations of an end of times emerged. Although based on different religious and independent chronological interpretations, they gained attraction at the same time due to the parallel observation and interpretation of the same astronomical phenomena (such as sightings of Halley´s comet in 989 AD) or of simultaneous climate anomalies, which can partly be connected with the Oort Solar Minimum of the 11th century. This paper explores and compares the interplay between natural phenomena, religious and political unrest, apocalyptic interpretations and individual decision-making for Byzantium and Japan on the basis of historical and natural scientific evidence.

Holy Grail possibly made from clay.

The main goal of the work was to find biochemical protein markers specific for grapes and wine in ancient amphorae shards and fermentation pools. Grape-specific proteins are more reliable markers than tartaric acid and other small organic acids (tartaric acid natural source are not only grape but also apple, mango, and other plants). The Yavne winery (located in the Central District of Israel) is stated to be the largest known wine production complex from the Byzantine period (ca. 1500 years ago). The site has been excavated recently, and a number of wine jar have been recovered. We have applied our ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) (EVA studded with strong cation and anion exchangers) diskettes to the inner surface of a number of jars, thus capturing residual grape proteins therein. Via mass spectrometry analyses, we have been able to identify four grape and three yeast proteins. This has been possible because the EVA films, applied to such surfaces, are able to harvest and concentrate any trace species, rendering them amenable to instrumental analysis. Our analysis makes it possible to propose an explanation for the Holy Grail phenomenon as a dish in which wine or water begins to smell pleasant. We attribute this to the slow release of terpenes, aldehydes, and ketones from the clay walls of pottery. After digital modeling, we identified that "scallop-shaped" niches in winery were used for the condensation of high percentage alcohol by passive evaporation from fermentation tanks.

Critical and Utilitarian Sigla in the Adespota Greek Hexameter Texts on Papyri

Abstract Within the framework of the preparation of the first edition of P.Fouad inv. 220 (unknown provenance, 3rd c. AD), an anonymous Greek hexametric poetry fragment accompanied by a critical siglum, and following my previous work on scribal practices in Greek literary papyri, especially on the graphic signs that accompany these texts, this paper lists all the critical and utilitarian signs attested in the 247 Greek surviving hexametric papyri of the Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine periods. These sigla are either directly associated with editorial work or were added by the scribe or corrector to provide the reader with practical information about the text. In doing so, the paper aims to better understand how the ancients conceived the writing of poetic works, and how they read, cited, and used them.

Reaching Consensus in the Byzantine Empire: A Comprehensive Review of BFT Consensus Algorithms

Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithms are at the core of providing safety and liveness guarantees for distributed systems that must operate in the presence of arbitrary failures. Recently, numerous new BFT algorithms have been proposed, not least due to the traction blockchain technologies have garnered in the search for consensus solutions that offer high throughput, low latency, and robust system designs. In this article, we conduct a systematic survey of selected and distinguished BFT algorithms that have received extensive attention in academia and industry alike. We perform a qualitative comparison among all algorithms we review considering message and time complexities. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive, step-by-step description of each surveyed algorithm by decomposing them into constituent subprotocols with intuitive figures to illustrate the message-passing pattern. We also elaborate on the strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm compared to the other state-of-the-art approaches.

Medieval Caucasian Consumption and Identity: A Study of Splashed Sgraffito Wares

NEW AND DISTINCT CERAMIC TYPES emerged from the cultural centres of the Islamic Caliphate in Western Asia beginning in the eighth century AD. Islamic potters carefully added colour, glaze, and finishes to their vessels, which became luxury items throughout the Caliphate. People within the sphere of influence of the Islamic Caliphate slowly adopted objects, such as unique styles of glazed pottery, which symbolised status and power. The Byzantine Empire and Islamic Caliphate both influenced the material culture of the Southern Caucasus, which ebbed and flowed between them both. In particular, the emerging Caucasian polities in medieval Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan began to produce splashed sgraffito ceramics in the 9th and 10th centuries AD that were very similar to those created by Islamic potters in centres such as Baghdad, Samarra, and Nishapur. Scholars have explained such changes in Caucasian consumption patterns as the result of influence and trade between the Islamic Empire and the Caucasus; however, they have not considered the cultural implications of such a change. My paper discusses how Caucasian elites and eventually even the peasantry used splashed sgraffito to construct their individual and group identities. I examine three sites from the Caucasus where local potters produced and used splashed sgraffito ceramics. I assess Ani in Armenia, Shamkir in Azerbaijan, and Tbilisi in Georgia. My analysis suggests that ceramics played a larger role in the construction of political and individual identity at a time when independent kingdoms were emerging in the Caucasus.

The Portrayal of the Holy Convicts from the 5th Step of the Ladder of John Climacus in the Russian Art of the 16th Century

In the art of Rus’ of the Late Middle Ages there is a certain number of scattered pieces of art that share an iconographic cycle of the Monastic Feats — images of different sorts of self-torture that are described in the 5th logos of the Ladder of John Climacus. This chapter of the Ladder was copied not only as a part of the whole treaty, but on its own as well and inspired a ramified iconographic tradition first in the Byzantine Empire and then, since the 16th century, in Rus’. These monks resort to the mortification of the flesh for their ultimate absolution. In the article, all the examples of the Monastic Feats iconography which survived from the 16th century are taken to examination and analysed. As a result, two new attributions are proposed, one for the illuminated manuscript of the Ladder from the collection of the riznitsa of Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and another for the vita icon of John Climacus from the Rybinsk Museum Reserve. From their analysis within the relative artistic context stems a suggestion of their Novgorod origin. In addition, a different and more early dating is proposed for the Rybinsk icon in relation to its identification with an image mentioned in the inventory of the Antoniev monastery in Novgorod. Some ideas are expressed about the choice of the subject of the Monastic Feats for the galleries of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin that were repainted after the fire of 1547. The conclusion of the article is that the spread and development of the iconography of the Monastic Feats should be ascribed to the art of Novgorod at the era of archiepiscopacy Macarius or soon after. Therefore, it is the Novgorod art that played a decisive role in the creation of the visual representation of the 5th logos of the Ladder, one of the most expressive and impactful pieces of text in the Slavic literacy.