C H A P T E R 1 . 2 .4

ARCHAEOLOGY

JAMES CROW

AMONGST the various archaeologies of the Mediterranean world, Byzantine archaeology

has not fared especially well. Cleansed from the Parthenon to reveal the glory

of classical Athens, Byzantine remains and monuments rarely take the centre stage

in the major archaeological sites of the ancient world. With the notable exceptions

of the great monuments of Constantinople and Thessalonike, or the medieval town

of Mistra, the physical relics of the Byzantine world have been at the best neglected

and in many cases demolished to reveal earlier structures and stratigraphy. Outside

of Greece the subject is taught in few universities and there are very few general

introductions (Zanini 1998; Paliouras 2004; Dark 2005).

Yet archaeology as a distinctive discipline has made a contribution to the understanding

of the Byzantine world and increasingly there is a much greater awareness

of how the study of buildings, historic landscapes, and material culture, including

ceramics, will produce differing and wider perspectives of the past. The recent

Economic History of Byzantium makes extensive use of archaeological evidence

throughout (Laiou 2002; see recent publications on 'daily life' by Rautman 2006; on

housing and material culture in later medieval Greece by Sigalos 2004 and Vionis

2008, and on ceramics by Vroom 2003).

Historical methodologies

Any discussion of the character and development of Byzantine archaeology needs

to recognize the associated disciplines of Byzantine art and architectural history.

All three are concerned with differing aspects of the material world of Byzantium

and their study ultimately rests on the physical traces of past structures, artefacts,

human landscapes and environments. Although each subject can be informed

by historical texts to illuminate and contextualize past perceptions and motives,

ultimately they are each rooted in the physical survival of differing categories of

remains from the past. A consequence of these symmetries is that the investigation

of Byzantine archaeology has often been conducted by scholars with a range of

backgrounds, and this has given rise to differing and changing definitions of how

the discipline of archaeology is understood. Thus in Britain before the First World

War it is possible to identify three distinct approaches. Firstly, one which draws

from the experience of a museum curator, Ο. M. Dalton of the British Museum,

who published his Byzantine Art and Archaeology in 1911. This was a handbook of

early Christian and Byzantine art and artefacts, covering an impressive range of

material from the visual arts of wall-paintings, mosaics, icons, and manuscripts,

to the 'minor decorative arts', including coins, metalwork, glass and ceramics, and

architectural decoration. Apart from wall-paintings and mosaics that still remained

In situ, most of what he described was drawn from the collections and catalogues

of international museums and included categories of evidence often excluded by

Byzantine art historians today. Secondly, the archaeology of buildings and especially

churches was represented by the researches and travels of scholars such as Gertrude

Bell, whose work with William Ramsay recorded the Binbirkilise ('1001 Churches'),

one of the major stone-built settlements in central Anatolia (Fig. 1). Above all she

was concerned to establish a taxonomy of churches, by recording, documenting,

and classifying ancient buildings but with little concern of why they were built or

how they were used (Ramsay and Bell 1909; Kleinbauer 1991). Thirdly, an approach

exemplified by a number of scholars associated with the British School of Archaeology

at Athens in the decades before the First World War which demonstrated a

broader interest in the material culture of the Byzantine world, often set within the

context of what would now be termed the 'long-term history' of the Hellenic world,

reaching from prehistory to recent times (Kleinbauer 1991: xlvi-xlviii). One work

which exemplifies this is F. W. Hasluck's study of Kyzikos (1910), which includes

not only a study of the monuments, topography, and epigraphy of the classical city,

but also extends to the Byzantine and later Ottoman monuments in its territory.

From this can be seen the beginnings of an approach to landscape archaeology and

history, no longer confined to specific monuments or objects. The examples cited

are drawn from British Byzantinists but similar approaches are replicated by other

European scholars at that time such as Josef Strzygowski and Charles Diehl.