'The Byzantine Neighbourhood' contributes to a new narrative regarding Byzantine cities through the adoption of a neighbourhood perspective. It offers a multi-disciplinary investigation of the spatial and social practices that produced Byzantine concepts of neighbourhood and afforded dynamic interactions between different actors, elite and non-elite. Authors further consider neighbourhoods as political entities, examining how varieties of collectivity formed in Byzantine neighbourhoods translated into political action. By both acknowledging the unique position of Constantinople, and giving serious attention to the varieties of provincial experience, the contributors consider regional factors (social, economic, and political) that formed the ties of local communities to the state and illuminate the mechanisms of empire. Beyond its Byzantine focus, this volume contributes to broader discussions of premodern urbanism by drawing attention to the spatial dimension of social life and highlighting the involvement of multiple agents in city-making.
Author(s): Fotini Kondyli, Benjamin Anderson (eds.)
Series: Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies, 31
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 286
List of figures vii
List of tables xi
Acknowledgements xiii
List of contributors xv
Introduction: a neighbourhood perspective on Byzantine cities / BENJAMIN ANDERSON AND FOTINI KONDYLI 1
PART I. Defining Byzantine neighbourhoods 23
1. The view from Byzantine texts / ALBRECHT BERGER 25
2. The view from Byzantine archaeology / FOTINI KONDYLI 44
PART II. Byzantine neighbourhoods as social spaces 71
3. Who is the person living next door? Neighbourly relations in early Byzantine Assos / BEATE BÖHLENDORF-ARSLAN 73
4. Urban space and collective action in Late Antique Arsinoë / AMY PAPALEXANDROU, WILLIAM CARAHER, AND R. SCOTT MOORE 97
5. Water and social relationships in early Byzantine neighbourhoods / JORDAN PICKETT 125
PART III. Byzantine neighbourhoods as political agents 153
6. The Oxeia: a neighbourhood biography / BENJAMIN ANDERSON 155
7. Gortyn, Eleutherna, and their neighbourhoods: the politics of transformation (fourth to early ninth centuries) / CHRISTINA TSIGONAKI 175
8. A tale of two cities: Thebes and Chalcis in a world of change (ninth to fifteenth centuries) / NIKOS D. KONTOGIANNIS 214
9. Privacy, friendship, and social regulation in Byzantine neighbourhoods / LEONORA NEVILLE 245
Index 259
