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2013

Byzantine Archaeology in Greece: Big Questions, Next Directions William Caraher, University of North Dakota Delivered at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology Brown University March 16, 2013 The field of Byzantine Archaeology in Greece is both longstanding and slow moving. It is fair to say that many of the issues of interest to the earliest Byzantinists in Greece persist and shape the conversations that scholars of the Byzantine period have today. Our interest in chronology, architecture, land tenure, and interaction between the Byzantine provinces and the core around the capital of Constantinople (and Thessaloniki) remain topics of active debate in much the same terms as they were a century ago. The favorite topics of archaeological investigation for the Byzantinist remain churches, fortifications, and imported ceramics which are studiously placed in typologies based upon plan, architectural style, shape, and decoration. This work has revealed the tremendous richness of Byzantine Greece and created an substantial, if fragmented, corpus of archaeological data available to contemporary scholars and begging for new approaches to provide new contexts. Over the past 40 years, however, most Byzantine archaeologists have grounded their knowledge of the period in formal and stylistic analysis rather than more scientific or conceptually robust interpretative paradigms. In general, they have turned a skeptical eye toward processualism and have studiously ignored post-processualism. On the other hand, since the 1970s, a small cadre of Byzantine archaeologists have called for the field to become more deeply engaged in methodological and theoretical debates in both Mediterranean and world archaeology. John Rossers and Tim Gregorys call to arms in the 1970s championed the potential of regional level and intensive pedestrian survey to expand our knowledge of the Byzantine countryside and to bring archaeology to address questions relevant to larger issues of Byzantine land tenure, rural settlement, and trade. Cecil Strikers and Peter Cuniholms use of dendrochronology to date Byzantine churches represented an effort at scientific dating, Charles Williams stratigraphic excavations at Corinth, and P. Nick Kardulias and Timothy Gregorys use of intensive survey and remote sensing to document the fortress complemented work done in the countryside by the various second wave survey projects to produce an increasingly sophisticated body of archaeological data prepared as a foundation for new perspectives on the Byzantine period in Greece. What is interesting, however, is that, to date, relatively little of this work has come to impact the master narrative of Byzantine history or to find it way into larger discussions Byzantine archaeology which remain dominated by

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standing architecture, complete vessels, fortifications, and the results of a handful of urban or monastic excavations. In recent times, however, there are signs of change. There is growing interest by the various foreign schools in Athens and at Dumbarton Oaks to draw together and reinvigorate scholars interested in the archaeology of the Byzantine period. This has begun to yield some results as junior scholars in the field - both from the U.S. and Europe - have found opportunities to develop their research at the turn of the 21st century with institutions that embody the longterm preservation of specialist knowledge. This has complemented recent work on the Late Roman and Byzantine period in the environs of Corinth, at the Agora in Athens, Messene, Sparta, Nemea, and in various valleys and regions subjected to intensive survey. Another upshot of this institutional support is a growing sense of awareness and common cause among Byzantine archaeologist, and this has led, in at least one instance, to the collection of articles on the recent developments in theory and method in the field. These articles engage topics ranging from gender and ethnicity, to spatial analysis at multiple scales, intensive survey practices, houses and household assemblages, and digital methods. In short, the articles suggest that Byzantine archaeology has come to embrace larger trends in the disciplines of archaeology and history (perhaps owing, in part, to its place at the margins of rather many larger academic conversations). My paper today will not try to summarize the range of current research into Byzantine archaeology; in fact, the volume that I am editing with my colleague Kostis Kourelis does not succeed at that in many more words than I have here, but instead, Ill offer my own idea of where the field should go and refer readers to the volume (when it comes out) for a more expansive view. The study of architecture has long stood at the core of Byzantine archaeology in Greece. The main focus, of course, has been churches ranging from the almost innumerable Early Christian basilica churches throughout the countryside to the elegant centrally planned churches of Byzantine urban areas and monasteries. Liturgiology, chronological concerns, decorative programs, and to a some extent issues of construction practice frame most of the discussions about Byzantine architecture in Greece. Less well-known work has touched upon Medieval housing, fortifications, craft organization, and urbanism more broadly. In recent decades this work, as well as recent work on Early Christian architecture, have seen a shift from studies of buildings are discrete units within complex typologies or as vehicles for decoration to an approach more engaged with how these buildings functioned in society. The study of Byzantine architecture is only a little late to this social turn. The study of Early Christian architecture, for example, has come to consider the role of the church architecture in the rise of Christianity in Greece. The buildings have gone from

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marking out the distribution of Christian communities and the extent of a particular - if poorly understood - Christian liturgy, to being active participants in the conversion of communities in Greece. At present, the lack of a secure chronology for most of these buildings remains vexing and limits the kinds of arguments we can make based on architecture alone. The use of spolia in Late Roman and Byzantine Greece remains the focus of significant research. We can argue, of course, that a particular interest in spolia by the first generation of Mediterranean archaeologist had extraordinarily destructive results as they dismantled Byzantine monuments for inscriptions and sculpture. In recent times, however, the study of spolia has shifted from documenting ancient blocks in later buildings to the study of buildings like the tiny little Metropolis in Athens as part of larger cultural dialogue. Amy Papalexandrous seminal dissertation on the spolia-riddled Panayia at Skripou has transformed the way that we think about ancient spolia in Greece and has positioned Byzantine archaeology at a key juncture in the history of the reception of antiquity. A recent dissertation on the use of spolia in the Late Roman walls at Sparta, Aegina, and Isthmia locates this practice at the intersection of the aesthetics and performance. It is hard not to imagine the study of wall painting, mosaic, and other decorative traditions of the Byzantine period to follow suite. Much remains to be done, however. For example, it is remarkable that no scholar has systematically studied the use of Early Christian or even earlier Byzantine material in Byzantine churches overlooking a key indicator of a historical and architectural relationship between Byzantine Greece and its Early Christian predecessor. Understanding the performative aspects of the Byzantine buildings both as the sites of ritual and as the products of broadly construe ritual practices requires that we become more attuned to the evidence for how these buildings functioned over the course of their existence. Rigorous excavation practices that go beyond the production of floor and phase plans can reveal more about Byzantine buildings as living architecture susceptible to myriad small decisions and eventualities rather than punctuated shifts in style. Bob Ousterhouts important 1999 book on the Master Builders of Byzantium has set the stage for some of this discussion. The rest of the discussion will have to come from the careful reassessment of both excavated buildings and new architectural studies and excavations which manifest as much attention on the process of building and construction as the final product. The prospect of sorting through material excavated decades earlier in search for the imperfect and elusive evidence for construction practices rarely excites the ambitious field archaeologist. The limitations of data collected for purposes far removed from contemporary concerns or as the byproduct of the longstanding (if often overstated) purpose of digging through the Byz has made the prospects of studying the Byzantine levels at excavated sites

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appear rather bleak. At the same time, recent work by Betsy Robinson, for example, on no less problematic building as the Peirene fountain reminds us that monuments excavated long ago can still disclose important insights into their histories. Kostis Kourelis has begun to scratch the surface of Byzantine remains from Corinth by going carefully through past notebooks. Similar work at Olympia holds forth some potential for revealing the basic structure of the fortified Medieval village on the site. Attention to the later phases and burials in the Roman period bath at Isthmia and at the site of Messene will provide important evidence for the later settlements and households at these rural sites. The continued refinement of our chronology of Byzantine pottery thanks to publication of material from Argos, Athens, Sparta, Corinth and elsewhere will unlock Byzantine archaeology trapped in the chronological interstices of earlier work. The same attention to so-called legacy data can extend to survey projects across the Mediterranean. At the moment, the last of the great second wave survey projects are publishing their Byzantine material with the exciting recent work of Joanita Vroom in Boeotia and the soon to be realized publication of Effie Athanassopouloss analysis of the material from the Nemea Valley. It is perhaps an opportune time to return to the data collected from offsite scatters, published less thoroughly in earlier survey publications, and dated by means of less robust chronologies. Of particular significant is the growing access to digital tools ranging from relational databases to relatively user friendly Geographic Information System software that introduces new ways to analyze and present decades old distributional data. As a brief example, I briefly re-examined the survey data from Thisvi Basin in Boeotia collected over the course of Tim Gregorys Ohio Boeotia Expedition in the late 1970s. Preparing a GIS map of the basin constructed largely from information gathered from the projects notebooks allowed us to compare the pattern of Late Roman material around Thisvi with the recently published material from the neighboring polis of Thespies. The parallels between the two distributions reinforced the bimodal natural of Late Roman settlement in the region with nucleated cities and possible rural villas as the most common concentrations of activity. To maximize the impact of new technologies and new approaches, of course, we need to ensure that archaeological data from the Byzantine period become widely accessible to scholars looking to ask new questions and deploy new methods of analysis. While work done to ensure that raw archaeological data is accessible is hardly as romantic or professionally rewarding as excavation, Byzantine archaeology has much to gain by studying overlooked material from both excavations and surveys and bringing it into the developing discussions of settlement, architecture, and chronology.

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The future of Byzantine archaeology in Greece must extend beyond the renewed scrutiny of buildings and the rigorous study (or re-study) of material from know sites and regions and engage an approach that seeks to understand Byzantine space beyond the limits of a single site, monument, or region. Landscape approaches, for example, offer inclusive ways to understand the dynamism of Byzantine culture in a unified interpretative space. Byzantine writers themselves had constructed rich landscapes of meaning in their texts. Local hagiography, in particular, demonstrated an awareness not only of standing monuments, but of abandoned places and ruins. The indigenous archaeology of the Byzantine influenced site formation and embedded their experiences in as saintly excavators rediscovered earlier pagan and Christian sites, rebuilt churches, and reinscribed their landscape with monuments from the past. The lived landscapes produced by Byzantine saints serve as a useful reminder to contemporary archaeologists that Byzantine sites are more than just dots on the map, but part of a lived landscape of settlements, shrines, monuments, paths, and natural landmarks. St. Nikonos rebuilt churches, Ay. Theodoros and Ay. Theoktiste lived in their ruins, Ay. Ioannis the Stranger identified and re-appropriated several abandoned Greek buildings in the Cretan countryside. More recent archaeologists have shared this interest in understanding the character of archaeological and human landscapes. While significant work has come from archaeologists interested in attempting to actualize the experience of prehistoric landscape, the potential in Byzantine archaeology where texts are poised to fortify experiences seems substantial. Even if we acknowledge that a field like Byzantine archaeology which remains ambivalent toward the so-called New Archaeology is unlikely to pivot abruptly to embrace post-processual practices, it is hard to ignore the potential of the robust intersection of texts, regional survey data, monuments, and the growing body of research on Byzantine urbanism. Attempting to produce an integrated perspective on the Byzantine landscape extends beyond the studious plotting of Byzantine settlements, the re-dating of Byzantine monuments, or the mapping of Byzantine trading routes. As the introduction to Myrto Veikos recent work on Byzantine Epirus teased, understanding a Byzantine landscape involves unpacking the relationships between monuments and settlement, Archie Dunns reflections on the location of resources around the Boeotian site of Thisvi (which provides a faint echo of Tim Ingolds so-called taskscapes), Heather Grossmans intriguing observations on the movement of spolia, and some recent work on routes and paths from Medieval and later Cyprus, the direction of Byzantine archaeology features movement in the landscape. As their saintly predecessors, Byzantine archaeologists of the 21st century should look toward producing dynamic landscapes which begin to integrate the fragmentary windows in the Byzantine past into more cohesive wholes. By producing new Byzantine landscapes, we

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can not only begin to address larger questions concerning the the organization of Byzantine time and space, but also create new relationships that open new lines of inquiry.