The Insular Worlds of Byzantium, ca. 550-ca. 900 (Beyond Medieval Europe)

Zavagno, Luca

Arc Humanities Press（2025/07発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 246 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781641890489

Full Description

This book explores the "Byzantine" islands of the late antique Mediterranean through different methodologies and a wide array of sources in comparative perspective. It deals with transversal themes centered on the peculiar political and economic structures of insular societies (such as the episcopate and the archontate or, in the case of Sicily, the theme). Reassessing the exaggerated space that the historiography on Byzantine islands has traditionally granted to literary and documentary sources, this book draws upon archaeological evidence that points instead to a less violent and disruptive phase in the islands' history as Late Antiquity passed into the early Middle Ages. The islands are also considered as hubs of connectivity where the Islamic and the Byzantine cultures encountered and heavily influenced the local "insular" political, economic, and social structures across the centuries.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. A Theory of Islands and the Byzantine Insular Worlds

Chapter 2. Studying the Insular Worlds of Byzantium between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Chapter 3. Framing the Historiographical and Political Trajectories of Byzantine Insular Worlds

Chapter 4. "Cities of Islands" and the Insular Countryside

Chapter 5. The Insular Economy in the Transitional Period

Conclusions

Bibliography

Index