Byzantine Greece: Microcosm of Empire?: Papers from the Forty-sixth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

This  volume offers a structured presentation of the progress of research  into the internal history of a part of the Byzantine world – Greece – in  the centuries before the multiple changes induced or accelerated by the  Fourth Crusade. Greece is a large area (several Early andMiddle  Byzantine provinces), with records, archival, literary, archaeological,  architectural, and art-historical, most of which are unequalled in terms  of their density and range. This creates opportunities for useful  synthesis, and for dialogue with those now engaged in the rewriting, or  writing, of the inner history of Byzantium, from Italy to the Caucasus,  who have been stimulated by, or involved in, the editing of archives and  inscriptions (including sigillographic), and in the publication of  monuments, excavations, and surveys (for all of which the ‘Greek space’,  the elladikê khôra, is a particular, and fertile, focus of activity, as  the conference showed).

Much of the  material presented here can usually only be found in specialised  publication, and indeed much in Greek alone. But, properly  contextualised, this material about the ‘Greek space’ deserves to be  brought into the dialogues or debates at the heart of Byzantine Studies,  for instance about the Late Antique ‘boom’, urban life, the ‘Dark Age’,  economic change, the nature of the ‘Byzantine revival’, and of social,  socio-economic, and ethnic groups. The studies here synthesise such  research, enabling the ‘Greek space’ as a case study in the evolution of  a significant region to the west of Constantinople, to take its place  more fully as a point of reference in such dialogues or debates.  Equally, it provides frameworks for archaeologists dealing with Greece  from Late Antiquity onwards – and there are now many – with which to  engage, and it makes available a rich source of comparative material for  those studying the other regions of the Byzantine world, whether  historically or archaeologically, in Southeastern Europe, Italy, or  Turkey.