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Stein, Gil J. 1998. “From Passive Periphery to Active Agents: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Interregional Interaction.” American Anthropologist 104 3: 903–916.

Linda Gosner

Comments: This article both critiques several traditional approaches to interregional interaction and culture contact and attempts to propose some new frameworks for studying phenomena like exchange, emulation, colonization, and conquest. Stein begins by discussing the problems with Wallerstein's World Systems Theory/the core-periphery model of the 1970s and also the acculturation approach, which began in the 1930s. Both methods take a Eurocentric point of view and assume an unequal power relationship between the dominant, colonizing culture and the weak, colonized culture. These critiques are widely known nowadays in anthropological scholarship and in some ways it seems unnecessary to spend so much time dismissing them in the article (though in 1998, this kind of discussion was probably more necessary). However, these kinds of approaches are still relatively common in more traditional Classical archaeology literature, and I assume the same issues exist in Medieval archaeology as well – so it will probably be useful to discuss their flaws in the context of the material we are studying in this class.

Stein goes on to propose a shift in the way we study cultural interaction (which is not entirely new, but more an amalgam of several more recent kinds of analyses used that focus on agency, practice, and social identity). He argues, first of all, that archaeologists have overemphasized interregional interaction as a main source of change, rather than looking for internal or local reasons. So, he advocates for looking at local dynamics, and understanding cultures as internally heterogeneous and complex (basically we need to better understand specific, local situations regardless of what the colonizing culture was like). Stein also proposes that archaeologists use a multi-scalar approach (after Lightfoot) that looks at contact situations from both bottom up and top down perspectives since both human agency and the macroscale political economy affect what we see on the ground.

I’m definitely on board with these more general theoretical and methodological shifts, and I think people like van Dommelen, Dietler, and Lightfoot show that they do work well. However, Stein goes on to suggest a “trade diaspora” model, which can classify trade colonies into three types: diaspora marginality, diaspora autonomy, and diaspora dominance. These categories seem problematic in a number of ways – for one, they impose a classification system not unlike the core-periphery model that encourages people to lump colonies together categorically in ways that can cloud what is really going on. Also, diaspora studies are a whole different branch of anthropological literature, and using that word here seems to conflate and confuse these strands of literature rather than clarify them. There must be a better word to use? Stein does describe a very compelling example – the 4th millennium BCE “trade diaspora” site of Hacinebi in southeast Turkey. He successfully argues that the Uruk state was extremely powerful in its own homeland, but that this power was mitigated in the local context of Hacinebi, where traders were far from home and developed a more equal power dynamic with their local counterparts.

Some questions: -How much does knowing the history of anthropological studies of culture contact help us understand social and economic exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean? Is Stein’s new framework useful and applicable to Medieval material? -Is Stein’s use of a “trade diaspora” model more limiting than helpful? How do we deal with the problem of defining terms and describing colonies without having definitions dictate our understanding of what is happening on the ground?

Posted at Feb 04/2013 11:08AM:
reyhan durmaz:

For Dursteler's article I suggest one thinks of contrasting dispositions within scholarship. Some of the keywords are the following: clash between Christianity and Islam (Pirenne) vs. unity and coherence despite the existence of "hundred frontiers" (Braudel) vs. diversity within unity (Horden&Purcell)

"European" trade with some elements of Muslim partakers (Heyd, Wood) vs. Muslim/Ottoman traders as equally effective and intentional commercial actors (Stoianovich, Kafadar); also a shift from trade to traders (Trivelatto).

"image of the 'Turk'/Muslim" in Europe (Rouidillard et. al) vs. several images of Islam, and images of Europe in the Islamic sphere (Lewis).

developing art and architecture in isloation vs. mutual exchanges (Raby, Howard) and moving beyond "influence and borrowing" (Necipoglu)

religion as a definitive dividing line (Hasluck) vs. interconfessional diachronical exchanges and continuities.

impact of the "Turks" on Europe (Iorga, Coles) vs. incorporation, alliances, coalitions (Kafadar, Brummett), shared political interests and vocabulary (Goffman).

the issue of gender, forced migrations, outlaws, soldiers and other relatively overlooked topics.

The question I would like to raise is the issue Tucci warned scholars against: how do scholars make sure that they do not fall into a disillusion of peaceful coexistence and not neglect the region's "long history of antagonism, division, miscomprehension, exploitation, and violence"?

Dallmayr, F. R. 1996. Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter. New York, pp. 1-38.

Clive Vella

This introductory chapter by Dallmayr, entitled ‘Modes of cross-cultural Encounter’, reads like a bi-polar account. It delivers both a useful overview of the several scholarly proposed modes of encounter but also supplies a continuance of de-contextualized historical examples that are bereft of any logical questioning.

Dallmayr’s book starts with Columbus’ voyage to the Indies (which erroneously led to the discovery of the Americas) in 1492. The Western discovery of the American continent was a considerable occurrence for the contemporary Old World. It brought back untold riches, astounding new knowledge but also eventually led to one of the greatest attempts at global colonization by Old World ‘super-powers’ of the time. The author goes further to identify Columbus’ voyage as bringing about the ‘age of discovery’, followed by the ‘age of reformation’ and finally the ‘age of Enlightenment’. However, as rightly pointed out in this chapter, the Western arrival into the American continent brought about domination, exploitation and extermination. The unforgivable occurrences, brought about by the later Cortez and others who followed him, have made the ‘discovery’ of the Americas a not-so celebrated occurrence because it can also be understood as the ultimate example of crushing Western subjugation of ‘primitive’ pagan peoples. The author asks whether this event is THE example of Western modes of encounter and colonialism? However, despite the validity of the question, I would posit that we are diminishing general historical trends so as to find the exception to the rule. It is quite obvious that there are other modes of cultural encounter but can we really reduce the after-effect of the first major meeting between the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New World’?

The answer to my question is a resounding no. In fact, when Dallmayr turns to discuss conquest, it becomes abundantly clear that encounters are entirely dependent on the perceptions of the agents involved. Therefore, while Cortez’s conquests were characterized by unwarranted brutality, the Spanish conquest of the Philippines was a calculated one. First, the Spanish presence in the Philippines sought economic take-over, and then it was followed by widespread attempts at conversion to Christianity. This differential approach between the Spanish-Indian and the Spanish-Philippines relationships can also be described as being a by-product of a variable self-other relation. Therefore, in the latter case, a stepped conquest emerged from the unique self-other relationship that was driven by the Spanish ultimate desire to open a communication into the Far East beyond the Philippines.

The author indicates that the different reasons for conquest could lead to either waves of plunder (such as in the Americas) or a subversive attempt at conversion of the ‘others’. The author uses the transformation of the ancient pagan world into Christianity as an example of conversion, which is an example that I have some qualms about. In particular, one could argue that the earliest dissemination of Christianity was not a process of simple pacification. It included a prolonged confrontation between the old Roman customs and a monotheistic religion that refused to accept the emperor’s divinity. Further, conversion cannot be simply seen as a passive ‘changing of minds’. Rather, Las Casas’ call to abandon conquest in the Middle Ages in favor of conversion sounds like spiritual colonialism.

The section on assimilation and acculturation remains one of the areas of colonialism that I have most problems with, especially since few scholars have adequately indicated how such modes are perpetuated over time. Indeed, Dallmayr also highlights these problems in using the US as an example of a ‘melting pot’, that is supposedly an assimilated nation. One could rather argue that this purported assimilation is not successful as ethnic discrimination and gender gaps remain, while political division leads to calls to secession after most general elections (granted that Texas wanting to secede is not an original occurrence but it only enforces my point).

Perhaps most interesting to archaeologists is the use of cultural borrowing and minimal engagement. Cultural borrowing makes a great deal of sense, especially when we talk about the Middle Ages. Indeed, the inter-relationship between the Christian and Islamic world led to an intellectual renaissance that included multiple benefits to a continued dialogue. However, I would also quiz the use of Marco Polo because Dallmayr speaks about a great deal of Western stereotyping of the East. However, Marco Polo was submitted to a considerable amount of stereotyping by the East as to his Western ‘barbarism’ in his 25-year long voyage. I am simply raising this point because I feel that it is quite easy for us to fall into a trap where we simply talk about the Western stereotyping of the East but not vice-versa. So does Dallmayr slip into that trap? Perhaps, but the use of Marco Polo’s extensive voyage seems only raised to make the author’s point, not vice-versa. Indeed, a perilous use of an example!

It is perfectly understandable that this book seems ready to immerse itself into the Middle Ages in the succeeding chapters. However, it needs to properly balance its complex and unique background by not falling into stereotyping. Indeed, the West-East clash is not necessarily a unique relationship. We have already discussed in our first class how the Mediterranean world was not a uniform and flat map. I could raise numerous examples from this chapter (such as the Catholic-Huguenot conflicts, the Spanish Inquisition) that easily illustrate that conquest is not necessarily a result of peoples with a superiority complex and perceived ‘inferior’ peoples. These modes of encounter could (and did) occur within the Mediterranean world over and over again, sometimes violently, peacefully or subversively.

Therefore, this paper to me raises some considerable questions: Can we speak about modes of encounters as top-down approaches? Is there such a thing as active superior agents overpowering passive inferior agents? What is acculturation really? Are we still falling in the pitfall of talking about the colonizers not the colonized?

Posted at Feb 10/2013 12:34PM:
reyhan durmaz: Decker, M. 2007. Frontier Settlement and Economy in the Byzantine East. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 61: 217-267.

The author examines the settlement and agricultural patterns on the eastern frontiers of Byzantium for the time period roughly between 300 and 1000 CE. He bases his arguments mainly on archaeological evidence, particularly survey analyses, pottery findings, architectural analyses, complemented by demographic data. He concludes that on the former frontier, namely the Tigris-Euphrates zone that constituted the frontier between the Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire until the seventh century, experienced a severe decline in the urban centers following the Muslim conquest of the region. For the latter frontier, the Taurus-Cappadocia, he argues that the decline coming with the Islamic conquest was not as prominent, since the region was topographically separated from the Islamic sphere with the Taurus Mountains, and was more approachable by the Byzantine potentates. The article lengthily provides information about various sites with regard to demographic shifts, pottery analysis, and architectural types, among others. Although this is a vital step towards a solid study, the periodizations used in the article constitute a major flaw of the author’s arguments. In fact, Decker uses periods such as Roman, early-Byzantine, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, etc. without providing clear definitions for any of them. Nevertheless, he should be given credit for having used early archaeological reports, and for occasionally having mentioned flaws of these terminological usages. Some of the terms he himself chooses to use are also problematic, such as, collapse/decline reified with the Muslim conquest, architectural pretension, Arab colonization, Byzantine confidence.

some of the questions to reflect upon could be the following: How can quantitative archaeological data be translated into qualitative terms and interpretations? Is decrease in the production of a certain material commodity enough to define a time period as "decline"? what is the extent of the hinterland of a city that should be considered in order to carry out a solid study of the material culture?

Posted at Feb 10/2013 10:17PM:
Alexis Jackson:

In his chapter, "Colonialism or Conviviencia in Frankish Cyprus?", Schryver describes and critiques the two prevailing models for discussing interaction on Frankish Cyprus and the Crusader states (gray model v. black-and-white model), with attention paid especially to the models’ shortcomings. He follows his observations on the issues and contradictions inherent in the use (and misuse) of those models with suggestions for future study. His greatest criticism is that by continuing to adhere to these two opposing models, scholars have ignored contextual evidence and limited the possibilities of their theories or discoveries.

Schryver implores scholars studying the “borders” in Frankish Cyprus to take into consideration the element of time (changing situations and circumstances over time, especially with regards to the earliest period of Frankish settlement and the later waves of refugees from the Crusader states), to question the number and composition of communities (Greek, Armenian, Byzantine, French, Italians, Crusaders, Orthodox, Catholic, etc.), changes and developments within communities not relating to contact between communities, different views of differing historical actors towards certain moments or monuments, and finally the assumptions scholars make with regards to choosing models and evidence with which to work. Lastly, Schryver puts forth his own model, in which he proposes that communities on the island continued to develop on their own, separately, while simultaneously merging in certain “spheres” (administration, art, industry) over time.

Questions: If Gnemer is an example of someone (possibly representative of many, according to Naum) who very skillfully negotiated the frontier/Third Space, how would we identify someone (possibly many) in the archaeological record (or documentary) who were not skillful, or generally unsuccessful at negotiating that social climate? Are we biased towards looking at and/or building a narrative of success/skill? (Subsidiary question: Is war/"conflict" necessarily indicative of a failure to negotiate the frontier?) Related to the black and white v. gray model talked about by Schryver.

Schryver asked: “are such terms as Crusader and Byzantine or East and West even applicable one the initial contact situation had occurred and a generation or two had passed? What sort of model might we use to represent what was going on? Why do the dynamics of a borderland warrant a change from one model to another?” (p156) What role does time play? If identity is fluid over time, but we can only access it in frozen “moments” in the historical/archaeological record, how are we to reconcile that issue?

What other issues might divide/separate individuals in communities on Cyprus? (ex. class) How do people see themselves, if not in terms of their ethnic origin? (pp157-158) In what ways might those elements intermix? (Hypothetically, might what a poor Frank, a rich religious convert, etc. look like and how might they be shown in the archaeological record?) What would an individual “in flux” look like?

Linda Gosner

Wood, Jamie. 2010. “Defending Byzantine Spain: frontiers and diplomacy.” Early Medieval Europe 18 3: 292–319.

Comments:

This 2010 article by Jamie Wood examines the evidence (literary, archaeological, numismatic, epigraphic) for the nature of the border – or lack thereof – between Visigothic and Byzantine Spain. He refutes the traditional assumption that there was a limes-style border between the two territories, which would have been comprised of a fortified defense system (fortified settlements, walls, transportation routes patrolled by limitanei soldiers, etc). Other scholars such as Gisela Ripoll López have also opposed the limes border theory in favor of a much more conservative one: that the Byzantine forces never penetrated very far into the Iberian Peninsula but concentrated on controlling coastal settlements and major harbors on the Mediterranean. Wood is in favor of an option somewhere in the middle; he contends that Byzantine coastal settlements had more connections with territory and settlements in their hinterland than Ripoll López suggests, but that their territory was protected more through diplomacy than through any kind of physical defense system.

As background…The short-lived Byzantine province of Spania was established by Justinian I in the 550s CE as part of an attempt to reconquer the former provinces of the Roman Empire in the west and to control trade through the Straits of Gibraltar. The Byzantine territory incorporated parts of Roman Baetica and Carthaginiensis, which are today most of the Spanish autonomous district of Andalucía and also included the Balearic Islands. The Visigoths were a small, but powerful ruling elite who controlled the rest of Spain. They originally came from the groups of Gothic peoples who migrate from Eastern Europe to the Pontic regions of the Ukraine and Romania in the 3rd century CE. They adopted Arian Christianity in the late 4th century, and the Visigothic king converted to Catholicism in 587. The Visigoths and Byzantines are thought to have had a largely hostile relationship, but this article examines the ways that this might be blown out of proportion in the literature. The province of Spania was, however, eventually taken by the Visigoths in 625.

Wood is certainly right to criticize the proposal of a limes-style frontier zone. This concept, proposed by Barbero and Vigil, is an attempt to fit Byzantine Spania into a model that is based on the Roman limes system. For starters, the Roman Empire had very few actual fortified borders; places like Hadrian’s wall were definitely the exception. Normally borders were natural boundaries like deserts, rivers, or oceans. The labor investment in producing limes-style defenses would have been exceedingly large and this would probably have been done as a last resort – so beginning with this model and then looking for evidence seems like a bad strategy, especially when the model is based on a completely different historical situation. And, according to Wood, there appears to be no decisive archaeological evidence for the kinds of fortified settlements, roads, and walls that would be necessary for this kind of system. He also notes that that the argument for limes is based on much later literary sources such as Paul the Deacon (8th century, Lombard Italy), Isidore of Seville (7th century).

Ripoll López, like Wood, opposes the limes theory. Instead, she suggests that Spania was centered on coastal cities that were not unified territorially and did not control their hinterland. Her idea takes into account the geography of southern Spain, with its coastal plain bounded in many areas by mountains. Additionally, if the Byzantine focus was on controlling Mediterranean trade and the Straights of Gibraltar, there would have been little reason to push for a border farther inland. The main issue here is that her argument is based on an absence of archaeological evidence for Byzantine control of the hinterland, but Wood points out that many 6th and 7th century pottery chronologies are not well known and it is difficult to date many sites properly (or to associate them decisively with either Byzantine or Visigoth control). I imagine that more excavation and a better understanding of material culture of this time period would reveal a more complex picture of the hinterland.

Wood points to a number of archaeological discoveries that indicate – at least tentatively – more Byzantine presence in the hinterlands of the major coastal cities of Cartagena (the capital) and Málaga than Ripoll López would have us believe. A chapter from a British Museum exhibit catalog shows a number of examples of Visigothic jewelry that show strong Byzantine influences, which corroborates the idea that interactions were often more diplomatic/commercial/peaceful than warlike. Another study of Byzantine coins minted in Spania as compared with Visigothic gold coins suggests that the Byzantines modified the size and gold content of their coins in order to make them acceptable for trade with their Visigothic neighbors. In addition to this material evidence, there is literary evidence for treaties between the Visigoths and Spania (King Reccard wrote a letter to Pope Gregory I in 599 on the matter), and other letters where the administration of Spania negotiated between the Visigoth monarchy and the imperial government.

From the evidence presented, I think Wood is definitely on the right track in attempting to come up with a more moderate model that looks at Visigoth-Byzantine interaction in the hinterland, and not just in the coastal areas and not just from a military perspective. In many ways, though, it seems like he is putting the cart before the horse and attempting to come up with a model before there is enough archaeological and historical information to go on. Even in places like Malaga and Cartagena that have been extensively excavated, the focus is almost always on the Roman or Carthaginian levels. It seems that we need to figure out what materials to look for, verify chronologies, and re-examine possible Byzantine sites that might have been overlooked or misidentified before we will really understand what is going on in this Byzantine frontier.

-How should we use models to understand our archaeological/literary evidence? Can they misguide us? How do we avoid this? -How do we reconcile a desire to ask big questions about social and economic interactions with the limited/fragmented/little-understood archaeological evidence we have to go on?

Ian Randall

Stephenson, P. 2004. Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204. Cambridge, pp. 47-79.

and

Fiedler, Uwe. 2008. Bulgars in the Lower Danube region. A survey of the archaeological evidence and of the state of current research. In The Other Europe in the Middle Ages. Florin Curta (ed.)

Comments:

The situation along Byzantium's northwestern frontier is one which I was not particularly familiar with, beyond vague notions of Krums and Bulgar Slayers cavorting across the centuries, and so the article by Stephenson was helpful in the extreme. It was however of the brand of old school, elite and event oriented history that, has its place certainly, but has never spoken to me particularly as an archaeologist. There was to be sure, little mention of material culture, and nearly no reference to anyone that was below the level of a boyar or protospatharios.

In the course of the article Stephenson traced out the main events and personalities at play in the Bulgarian-Byzantine relationship from the mid 10th through the early 11th centuries, in essence the beginning of the end for the First Bulgarian Empire. The focus here was primarily on reconstructing Byzantine imperial policy towards the Bulgarian kingdom, the view of which has been heavily influenced by aggrandizing accounts of Basil II and his campaigns against them. First however a bit of background.

The Bulgars were a largely nomadic, Slavic peoples that moved down into the area of the Lower Danube in the 7th century following threats from other nomadic groups in their homeland north of the Black Sea. Their movement into Byzantine territory came at a time of crisis for Byzantium, following years of frantic defense against first Sassanid, and then Arab threats in the East. Byzantine efforts to dislodge the new interlopers ended in failure, culminating in the early 9th century defeat of the emperor Nicephoras I by the Bulgarian ruler Krum (I always feel like Krum needs something after it, like “the magnificent.”) It is notable that after killing Nicephoras at the battle of Pliska, Krum had his skull lined with silver and used it as a drinking cup.

After that the Byzantines were decidedly disinclined to deal with the Bulgarians militarily, and a shaky peace continued for some time. Stephenson picks up with the death of the Bulgarian Tsarina Maria Lecapena in 963, a Byzantine princess that had been married off to secure a Bulgarian alliance against nomads further North. That same year Nicephoras II came to the throne and pursued a notably duplicitous policy towards the Bulgarians, that shortly had both empires in turmoil. Shortly thereafter, and with the aid of a Byzantine turncoat, the Rus invaded and heavily defeated the Bulgarians, impaling we are told the 20,000 citizens of Plovdiv after they refused to surrender. Following the murder of Nicephoras II at the hands of his nephew John Tzimisces, who then assumed the throne, the empire pursued a policy of continued military pressure against Bulgaria, culminating in the campaigns of Basil II in the early 11th century that hastened the downfall of that polity and its reincorporation into the empire.

The roughly 50 intervening years of warfare saw rebellions and revolts, populations massacred, and the movement of armies of various groups, Greeks, Rus, Bulgarians, Macedonians, through the frontier areas of the upper Balkans. How are we to interpret the cross-cultural interaction of these groups? On the daily lives of the people who lived there? In terms of cross-cultural interaction, obviously they’re killing each other, but warfare is, and has always been, a largely elite pastime. People are swept along, but after the armies move through people are left to try and piece their lives back together. Some interesting points that attracted my attention in the article were the attempts to re-incorporate Bulgaria back into the Byzantine empire. Imperial policy in this regard seemed to focus on a two-pronged strategy: the (eventual) recognition of autocephaly for the Bulgarian church and the building of numerous churches and monasteries, and the incorporation of local headmen into the Byzantine hierarchy (as well as their removal from local power bases.) These strategies likely lead to a heavy “byzantinization” from the top down, while the recognition of autocephaly granted both a measure of independence while at the same time tying it to the Orthodox patriarchate in Constantinople, from whence such a recognition came. Meanwhile strongpoints and fortresses were rebuilt, staffed, and manned by imperial officials, from strategoi to protospatharioi, in a direct imperial hierarchy that was, as far as I can tell, far different from the largely independent nature of frontier defense as organized along the Taurus. Moreover the lands of Thrace are rich and fertile, and a policy of large buffer-like no-man’s lands that were apparently the norm in the East was unlikely to have been followed here.

Fiedler’s article speaks somewhat to the state of the archaeology of this period in Bulgaria. Plagued by nationalist and soviet agendas and a poor publishing record, the remains that have come out of Bulgaria are somewhat confused and often debated. However it is fairly clear that the Bulgarian elite show a fairly high degree of Byzantine influence from early on. Coins, inscriptions, jewelry, and lead seals are either copies of Byzantine forms, or, in the case of jewelry, largely acquired from Byzantium itself. The architecture of the 9th century palace at Pliska shows heavy Byzantine influence, and in addition to tesserae found in the palace itself, a very Byzantine bath house is located nearby.

Other materials are more problematic. The Bulgarian elite showed a taste for the kind of decorated buckles that have been labeled “Avar,” and the archaeology of the region seems to show that troubling tendency to ascribe ethnicity to burials and areas based on the presence of supposedly “typical” foreign goods, leading to much confusion. Hungarian style stirrups are also in evidence. Perhaps most distressing, personally, is the pottery. Much of it is handmade wares, of a red combed, or grey burnished type, that is immediately designated as “Slavic” from its apparently poor manufacture by comparison with “Byzantine” wheel made forms. However the pottery is poorly understood, leading to most of the dating clustering around the 10th and 11th centuries, mainly because the glazed wares from these periods are well known. All in all however the “Slavic” wares show a suspicious similarity to many well known Byzantine types in form, and I would wager a lot of work still needs to be done here to tease out just who is using these pots, where they are from, and what kind of influence is at play.

The edges of the Bulgarian kingdom are also characterized by a number of large ditches and embankments that form a defensive network along the Danube, contra Byzantine areas. My question is, who was living in these border areas? How would they have been affected by the movement of armies in this period? How can we approach cross-cultural influence in non-elite contexts? How might the situation here differ from that of East?

Haldon, J.F. and Kennedy, H. 2005. The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the 8th and 9th centuries: military organization and society in the borderlands. In M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times. London: Ashgate Variorium, pp.141-178.

Clive Vella

The chapter by Haldon and Kennedy is a recent historical survey of the Arab-Byzantine frontier between the 8^th and 9^th century. In the last decade borderlands, or frontier regions, have become the one of the latest theoretical ‘must-haves’, which I understand but also disapprove of on two points. Pardoning my personal interjection, I feel that the 21^st century interest in borderlands (when done wrong) tends to schematically draw lines across a map that better represent WWI trenches in France rather than past realities. Secondly, interest in borderlands can often leave the inhabitants who survived trying times on the wayside, as passive onlookers of a greater historical trajectory. This chapter is a courageous attempt at understanding the Arab-Byzantine frontier that both succeeds but also fails to tackle its own aims and objectives. A great deal has been written about the general effects of the Arab raiding on the Byzantine world from the 650s to the 9^th century. Therefore, these authors try to focus on: which areas were most radically affected by Muslim raiding? How were they affected in economic & social terms?

Rather than dealing with the Arab side of the frontier first (otherwise why is it the Arab-Byzantine frontier and not vice-versa?), the chapter focuses largely on the Byzantine side of the frontier which is historically richer. The 2^nd half of the 7^th century was the most crucial period of readjustment of the Byzantine imperial armies. The armies had been withdrawn to a line along the Tauras following the loss of Syria and Mesopotamia due to the Arab conquest of the Sassanid state. Buried within chapter, the authors suggest that the strategy for contact with their growing neighbor was one of general avoidance and largely resembling modern guerilla warfare. The army had been bared of its antique Roman clumsiness and turned into a dispersed army that focused around centers along this frontier. BUT the army transformation had also turned it into a defensive mode of conduct, diminishing its left-over troops for offensive operations. This meant that to turn around your defensive troops to offensive operations would have required considerable fore-planning and re-grouping.

Before the 730s Byzanitine military activity appeared to be an intensely localized response to the Arab strategy. From the 660s until 717/8 (2^nd siege of Constantinople) Byzantine forces were stretched to the point of collapse, according to Muslim and Byzantine historians. However, I must admit that within these historical facts there seems to be a general assumption that a decentralized army could be gauged as being at the point of collapse. How do we account for that? Did they lose massive tracts of the frontier region or did they simply recede even more in size?

After 693, Muslim forces concentrated heavily on border regions (Cilicia and Armenia IV). This was a philosophy meant to break Byzantine’s border defense and weaken Constantinople. Then after the 2^nd siege military activity focused on created a border balance and the beginning of a limited Byzantine counter-offensive. Byzantinium’s approach was the formation of a buffer zone (destroying all garrisons they captured) while Arab forces began to concentrate on establishing a defensive border and protecting their hinterland. This meant that Muslim forces began to rarely strike deep into Byzantine territory, unlike the raid of Harun al-Rashid as far as Chrysoupolos in 782. All of this to me illustrates that the intent on emptying the landscape by the Byzantines was becoming successful and perhaps diminishing the potential for acquiring booty by the Arab forces. This is also very reminiscent of the continued Russian retreat when threatened by Napoleonic forces; the key strategy was to regroup in large internal settlements and let mother nature batter the invader’s morale. So, I wonder if we are not really questioning the reasoning behind the establishment of wide no man’s land? Was this to increase the distance to be travelled and diminish the potential of quick attacks by Arab forces? These questions remain largely unanswered.

The Byzantine reaction to Arab incursions are historically suggested to have been established by Heraclius’ withdrawal of groups into Asia Minor. However, Arabs were left pretty much unchallenged as Byzantium turned to decrease settlement size and augment fortification in Miletos, Akroinon, Pergamon, Sardis, etc. Military defense had turned to a warning system were communities were ushered into defensive posts rather than participating it outright combat. Therefore, the militarization of these areas led to the transformation of these areas as ‘frontier’ regions. Byzantine cities survived because of local social tradition and administrative needs. Cities were not self-serving and self-governing but they were merely seats of adiministrative establishments which regulated the surrounding regions, serving to transfer revenue from population to stage. Overall, cities seem to have waned in the 8^th-9^th century due to the decline forbear in the 6^th century but only reviving with the stability of the 10^th century. Cities were not anywhere close to Baghdad or Damascus, or even Constantinople or Trebizond

The second part of this state, considerably smaller in breadth, deals with the Arab side of the frontier in rather limited perspectives. The Abbasid state considered the Byzantine their natural enemies who also held the most fertile land in the region. Abbasid Caliphs utilized these battles as a way of enhancing their status as leaders of the Muslim community. Aside from the military organization challenging the border, regular troops were also augmented by a number of muttawi’ah who came to the frontiers to serve the cause of Islam. These volunteer forces are an especially unique element of the Arab frontier that the authors do not further describe in detail. This of particular importance when dealing with borderlands because it suggests to us a rather unique aspect of these borderlands interaction. Indeed, we should ask whether the marshalling of such forces meant that the borderlands were not political borders as much as ideologically challenged borders? I think that the individual character of leaders and forces played a strong role on the Arab side of the frontier that could have had a considerable effect on the policies carried out. In fact, leaders held strong emotional roles, such as General Al-Hasan Qahtaba, who led by example and was feared on the opposite side of the frontier. Also, the low economical yielding of these regions meant that the large salary burden had to be provided by the government burden sharing. This seems to highlight the rather diverse scope of the Arab side of the frontier, which goes beyond matter of settlement patterns that appears to hold a higher appeal to the authors.

This chapter is a historically-derived account that is largely dominated by the Byzantine side of things. Borderlands are a bothersome thing to deal with, not because they are disinteresting (quite the opposite!) but because we always seem to miss a vital component. If we focus too much on the historical accounts then we gather a picture that is largely made up of two sides and a no-man’s land. However, the social make-up of these settlements is relegated to explaining how these settlements operated but not quite how they were ideologically driven.

I have already laid out a few questions above but I think we should also think of the following matters: how can we talk about borders? Are they porous? Can we really gather the economic and social effects of these frontier issues? Have we properly assessed the centralized vs non-centralized argument of these regions? Therefore, who is calling the shots here? Does the Byzantine Emperor have the same interest as the Abbasid Caliphs? Do we have an ideological clash between an Arab intent on spiritual conquest and the Byzantines?

Posted at Feb 24/2013 11:01AM:
fkondyli: This week we are thinking about Empires, communities, institutions and individuals that come into contact through trade and exchange. Here are some key questions to keep in mind:

What is traded and by who?
Who gets to influence trading routes and commodities?
How do trade networks condition political decisions and vice-versa? How do trade networks develop and how / why the change?
How can we reconstruct them?
In our reading on The Corrupting Sea we saw an emphasis on micro-ecologies, so what is their role in economic and cultural connectivities across the Med?
How do the mechanisms of medieval navigation inform trade and cultural and economic connectivity?
How do diplomatic gifts influence cross-cultural economic activities?
Does shared commerce equal shared cultural practices? What is the relation between warfare and commerce in the Medieval Med?
Is China in the Med?
Emperors, merchants, producers, consumers; who creates the demand for commodities and influences trade connections?
What is the role of merchant diasporas in cross-cultural interaction (both artistic and economic)? What is the role of trading privileges?
How does trade participate in the exchange of artistic trends, ideas and technological innovations?
What is the role of religion in cross-cultural commercial ties?

Dinar of the Fatimid Dynasty (Egypt, AD 970)
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/cm/d/dinar_of_the_fatimid_dynasty.aspx

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Posted at Feb 24/2013 11:51AM:
reyhan durmaz: Jacoby, D. 2004. Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim World, and the Christian West. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58: 197-240

Jacoby presents the complex picture of economics of silk within and between the Byzantine, Muslim and the Western Christian realms from the tenth to the fourteenth century. His account is a response to the existing scholarship on the issue, which hitherto focused on a restricted group of examples, and overlooked the dynamics underlying the economic aspects. The article consists of two sections, the former one analyzing the technical and qualitative aspects of silk manufacture in the medieval world, and the latter focusing on manufacturers, workshops, supply-demand factors of silk economics. Silk was both imported and locally produced in the Roman and Byzantine empires until the tenth century, when the Empire was self-sufficient in production. From the seventh century onwards, Arabs took control of a great extent of silk production in the eastern Mediterranean, and played significant role in the gradual expansion of it, such as into North Africa, Sicily and al-Andalus. After this brief geographical survey, Jacoby gives an account of methods to identify and date silk, and of some well-known examples in order to illustrate the complexity of the material at hand. He explains some of the problems with dating and use/reuse. For instance, a silk cloth in Fustat bears the date A.D.932, yet was not used until 980s; or some of the torn pieces of silk were diffused into lower strata within communities and were reused in production of other material before they were disposed of, which makes it difficult to trace back original use, audience and production. Jacoby emphasizes the fact that there were various quality of silk being produced and thus consumed by different social groups, and therefore one should look into a wide scale of sources, such as marriage contracts, inventories, personal correspondence, judicial texts, etc., along with a great variety of material culture, in order to attain a fuller picture. To demonstrate the different qualities in silk and their wide circulation in society, Jacoby gives the example of koukoularion, a low quality silk fabric that had wide usage from 10th to the 14th century all around and beyond the Mediterranean. The author also discusses the coloring techniques, costs and raw materials, and demonstrates the economic dynamics behind the dying process, which lead to shifts in the overall silk merchandise. In the second section of the article Jacoby discusses the social aspects of silk economics. He demonstrates that imagery found on silk fabrics spread across a wide chronological and geographical span, and argues that different ways of material exchanges resulted in different levels of intercultural influence. Yet significant exchanges, such as royal gifts, probably influenced multiple strata of the society, for private as well as imperial workshops worked on producing them and they acted as transmitters of artistic elements. One of the significant point he makes on this matter is the fact that mobility of workers, masters and workshops acted as a significant dynamic underlying the artistic and technical borrowings. He lengthily discusses intercultural diffusion and imitation of silks, and demonstrates how Byzantine silk was valued as a luxury item in the Muslim world, while Eastern silk was treated likewise in the Byzantine world. In the very last part of the article Jacoby allocates a big part for the discussion on silk economics in the Christian West. He analyzes the initiation of silk production in Europe, which took place much later than Byzantine and the Muslim worlds, and the artistic, terminological and technical exchanges between the Christian West and the latter. Jacoby’s article is a must-read for anyone who attempts at studying the medieval economics of not only silk, but any luxurious material. It provides valuable information about economics, technology, human force behind the guild, audience, diffusion within society, production centers, trade networks and many others. Yet, the article severely suffers from lack of structure. His arguments are circular, occasionally repetitive, thus, difficult to follow. Dividing the text with a few sub-sections, and providing visuals would immensely improve his work. Moreover, Jacoby’s division of cultures as Byzantine, Muslim and the Christian West may not be the best for analyzing a guild and its trade. This division overlooks the continuity in production and trade centers.

Posted at Feb 24/2013 04:42PM:
Alba Serino: -what are the correct instruments to identify an intense commerce in the early Middle Ages?

- did warfare influence commerce?

-was the absence of long distance commerce a sign of scarce commercial activity?

-what type of evidence can we use to reconstruct trading routes?

-what information can we obtain about commerce from the different type of products traded (for example textiles)?

- who made the products exported?

-what was the role of Fatimids in the Mediterranean commerce?

-how did the Fatimids concile their hostilities with commerce?

Posted at Feb 24/2013 07:05PM:
Alexis Jackson:

Goskar, T. 2011. Material Worlds: The Shared Cultures of Southern Italy and its Mediterranean Neighbours in the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries. Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 23/3: 189-204.

Goskar uses textiles and clothes in the 10th-13th centuries as a framework for comparing cultural practices across the Mediterranean. Although working with an element of material culture (clothing), she notes the shortage of surviving textiles, especially in Italy, and so works mostly with documentary evidence. She draws heavily from the Genizah documents to try and connect marriage practices between Egypt and southern Italy. Goskar’s argument is that clothing can be used to argue that identities (and self-identifications) can be seen as “ethnically or socially bound (one-way), but also as active exchange (mutual and reciprocal)”, and that the connections between different regions themselves are defined by difference in self-identification. (Goskar 203)

First, Goskar argues that styles of dress were key to self-identification. For this, she uses the case study of Kastoria in northern Greece. She argues that in this area, self-identification was particularly important, because it had a ethnically diverse population (Greek, Armenian, and Georgian, with foreign traders common), as well as a changing administrative situation (ruled by Bulgaria until the early 11th century, then occupied by Normans, and later captured by the Byzantines). Here, Goskar notes that “Western” styles of dress were likely imported to Kastoria by the Norman occupiers and possibly mediated through the southern Italian Apulians who are a secondary focus of the article. One of the problems here is that Goskar wants to use these ethnically heterogenous areas as evidence of self-identification (even “self-stereotyping”), without dealing with any of the accompanying complexities of “borderlands”. She talks about the language of the official documents (as representative of the local administration) and the different religious rites (Orthodox v. Latin), without necessarily targeting her evidence towards the merchant/middle-class for whom she claims textiles are most important for identification. Furthermore, Goskar seems unwilling to deal with the character of the non-resident or travelling merchant (dismissed as a “visitor” who rarely appears in the record for Goskar’s Kastoria case study), although they would seem to be an important player in her overall theory.

Additionally, Goskar looks at the terms used to describe specific items of clothing in different areas across the Mediterranean. One example that she looks at is the relationship between the garment called the jubba in Syria, the zoupa in Greek communities, and the juppa in Apulia. She posits that the similarity of the terms and garments is indicative of cultural interchange across those regions, which would have led to the transportation of the garment (and the use of that garment by certain people) as well as the term across the Mediterranean. Another example that highlights self-identification is the rumi, which was evidently a term used in Arab communities or documents to refer to a specific fabric or garment associated with the Byzantine or Christian world.

Finally, Goskar tries to establish a connection between different regions through marriage practices, Goskar looks at marriage contracts. In these, she sees an emphasis on high-value textiles and the differentiation of a socio-economic sub-category, the merchant/bourgeoisie, based on the contractual treatment of material goods. Here, she argues that textiles must play an important social and legal role because they feature so largely in marriage contracts and dowries (which are themselves legalistic representations of common social practices that brought people and material objects together) and facilitated “trade” in people and material goods.

Questions: • Goskar is taking the merchant/bourgeois as a given self-identifying socio-economic group (she quotes Stillman); however, she refers to them alternately as middle class (when referring to their social practices) or as elite (when referring to their material/textile goods)- “well-to-do” is another term she uses. Since Goskar criticizes earlier writers for identifying groups under modern categories instead of attending to their own self-identifications, how should these different categories be reconciled? • If textiles and furniture are assigned certain ownership for long periods of time under a contract (say, designated by a marriage contract to be inherited by the children of the marriage/kept in the family), to what degree can these items give us an accurate image of a particular historical moment? Does the modern action of assigning individuals (such as the “daughter of a Jewish Egyptian physician” or “Rogata of Terlizzi in Apulia”, as mentioned by Goskar) to specific socio-economic groups limit their viability as historical evidence?

Lev, Y. 2012. A Mediterranean encounter: the Fatimids and Europe, tenth to twelve centuries. In R. Gertwagen and E. Jeffreys (eds.) Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of John Pryor, Farnham, pp. 131-156.

Clive Vella

This chapter by Lev connects to some of our earlier discussions on frontiers and encounters, particularly in light of the Fatimids between the 10^th – 12^th centuries. This chapter seeks to suggest that the role of the Fatimids within the wider world stage of the time cannot be simply interpreted on the premise of piety, rather it included a keen interest in world affairs. The Fatimid expansion into the Mediterranean littoral was also met by a pursuit for information regarding foreign countries and people, which in part explains for the extravagant expense of 22,000 dinars by imam-caliph Al-Mu’izz for the creation of a map. While the Fatimids’ role as a maritime imperial power has been investigated in the past, the author suggests that the effects of Braudelian or perspectives offered by ‘The Corrupting Sea’ remain to be investigated for their relevance. This chapter focuses on two inter-related elements that we will be discussing during this week; war and trade.

The Fatimids imposed themselves on the collapsing Aglabid empire in Tunisia, but their ambitions were significantly broader in scope and intent. Unlike their predecessors, the Fatimids were a Shi’i-Isma’ili group that disputed the legitimacy of the Abbasids, which became a core pursuit of the Fatimids after their take-over of Tunisia. The Aghlabids were largely a contained Tunisian power that bridged over militarily in scattered forays with the Byzantines in the southern Central Mediterranean. Yet, these forays did not turn into any permanent occupation and even the Fatimids continued their conflicts with Byzantium over time. John Pryor’s work, which is being honored in this volume, was useful because it illustrated the limited effects and seasonality of naval conflicts at this time. Indeed both parties involved, hesitated and were disinterested in committing their infrastructure to all-out battles. Attempting to gauge the effects of Fatimid raids is quite honestly a difficult task to achieve, maybe because it reminds me of the discussions we have had about the effects of raids on the eastern frontiers between the Byzantines and the Abbasids. It seems that what we know for sure is that while Al-Mu’izz boldly claimed that the holy war could be delayed for instances of truce, which was a right reserved within his powers.

The historical development of the Fatimids seems to change with the subduing of Egypt and the eventual movement into the Palestinian littoral. In particular, the fate of the Fatimids, according to Lev, was sealed with the failed take-over of Aleppo which was derailed by the Byzantines who sought to remove the Fatimid growth within the Near Eastern hinterland. What is really interesting is the manner in which two parties that could often participate in hostility could also agree on recognizing each others religious status (ie: Byzantine take-over as patrons of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the sermons in the mosque of Muslim prisoners being pronounced in the name of Fatimid rulers in Constantinople).

This movement into the Palestinian littoral was eventually met by the Fatimids’ loss of the Zirid vassal state in Tunisia around 1051, turning it into an Eastern Mediterranean state. The Fatamid inability to hold Damascus did not mean that it was unable or weakened enough to lose its grip on the coastal littoral. Eventually, the initial agreement between the Fatimids and the First Crusade turned, as the former lost their hold over the littoral region making them a naval presence but certainly not a naval power.

The second portion of this chapter turns its attention to the Fatimids and their role in Mediterranean commerce. The author looks at the Fatimids to raise the question whether their 10^th century expansion and trade relations had a passive or active role in commerce. Their earlier role in Tunisia was largely based on olive-producing estates that were cultivated by slave labor and scattered raids in Southern Italy. The numismatic evidence suggests that the Fatimids became able to accumulate a vast gold resource that they used to conquer Egypt. Such was this ability to mint that we see the imam-calip Al-‘Aziz bestowing his brother with 167,000 dinars at a relatively early part of the year, suggesting that even more coinage was produced throughout that same unspecified year.

Also, despite the on-and-off conflicts between the Christian and Muslim world, the Fatimids maintained a positive role in commerce, as suggested by the growth of Amalfi and the arrival of an increasing number of Christian merchants in Egypt. The effects of the Fatimid interaction with the Southern Italian world can be evidenced through the take-up of quarter dinars becoming the standard coinage of the region. Further, looting and rioting in the North African region was met with swift reaction by the Fatimids. This is interpreted by Lev as revealing that they strove to convince Christian merchants that they would be protected, despite their religious differences.

A final nodal point of this chapter lies in the way that the Fatimids rule in Egypt acted as an intermediate point between the Mediterranean and India. Sites, such as Siraf in the Persian Gulf prospered from trade with far-away China and the Red Sea-Persian Gulf became an active trading system. The commerce from the Fatimid side seems to have included textiles produced in Mediterranean towns of Damietta and Tinnis, which specialized on the selective production of these goods meant for far-away markets. Eventually, the Fatimid court and its extravagances created a considerable demand for Indian ebony, products and luxury goods. The protected presence of Amalfitans and other Christian merchants in Egypt could have only dramatically increased the volume of trade and demand for Chinese and Indian products, enhancing the role of the Fatimids within this world-system.

The Fatimids turned themselves into a maritime force to be reckoned with, perhaps not in a military sense. Yet, their acute commercial acumen led them to concentrate on protecting their littoral interests, perhaps at the detriment of not growing within the Near Eastern hinterland. Trade became an activity conducted parallel to warfare and the Fatimids located themselves between parties interested in spending their coinage. Should we distinguish between Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean parties? Are we still suffering from a Mediterraneo-centric perspective? Finally, can we speak of non-economically driven interests at this time? Were political ideals abandoned for economical gains or were they merely suspended?

Armstrong, P. 2009. Trade in the east Mediterranean in the 8th century. In M. Mundell Mango (ed.) Byzantine Trade, 4th -12th centuries.Farnham, pp. 157-178

Ian Randall

I have to admit, Pamela Armstrong’s article came as a bit of a shock to me. Her topic was exactly the one I had chosen for a conference paper I presented at the University of Cyprus back in November, the chronology of 8th century Byzantine ceramics and the implications for trade. While I, rather naively, had attempted to disentangle the evidence for continued Late Roman Amphora production, Armstrong, far more skillfully and with a greater breadth and depth of evidence, focuses in this paper on Cypriot Red Slip Ware. Did I also mention more successfully?

We should begin with what the historian Tim Gregory referred to back in the ‘80’s as the ‘Byzantine Problem.’ Simply put until very recently there was thought to be little to no Byzantine ceramic evidence from the late 7th through much of the 9th centuries. Only with the appearance of Arab inspired glazed wares could archaeologists comfortably re-approach ceramic chronologies for the Eastern Mediterranean. It was thought that, in the wake of the disruptive emergence of the Arabs into the region, trade, administration, habitation, etc. had largely dropped off. A widespread decline took place that was only reversed centuries later. As the years have passed this story has been slowly revised, with some pretty severe uncertainty over this narrative creeping in as evidence to the contrary mounts. Pamela’s article goes a long way towards putting paid to a tale that, I have to say, didn’t seem right from the moment I heard it.

Cypriot Red Slip Ware is a ceramic consisting of primarily bowls and dishes, with some jugs and basins, that is classified as a fine tableware in the tradition of good ol’ Roman terra sigillata, bu admittedly reduced in quality. The matte red slip is often unevenly applied and the wavy decoration along the rim, particularly in form 9, is irregular at best. Still this tableware is quite common around the Eastern Med. Originally thought to come from kilns near Paphos on Cyprus, hence the name, we are now fairly confident that the primary production center was near Pisidia in Asia Minor. Appearing in the mid 4th century and going through a number of different forms, the ceramic was thought to terminate with form 9 just before the beginning of the 8th century; this is how it is listed in the famous Late Roman Pottery handbook by Hayes from the 1970’s. We shall return to this handbook as one of the main points of Pamela’s article is that this work has bedeviled the scholarship and lead to the significant ‘under-dating’ of contexts.

The rest of the article is spent largely compiling the evidence to refute this terminal date of 700, of which there is plenty. Starting in the 1950’s with the Archaeological Survey of Cyprus, multiple sites that extended into the mid 8th century showed extensive CRS assemblages. The excavations at Panagia in the North, and Kornos cave have also yielded CRS along with mid 8th century coins. Dimple bottomed jugs from 8th century Palestine were also found at Kornos. In addition the first complete example of a Late Roman Amphora 1 was also found there, the chronology of which I’ve already noted as being quite complex. Thought to also terminate around 700, the ubiquity of this ceramic around the Eastern Med., as well as its now clearly numerous production centers, has lead to considerable uncertainty over the 8th century end date for this trade ware, with a 9th century example even being reported from Emporio on Chios. CRS and LRA1 have recently also been found with 8th and 9th century Islamic style lamps on Cyprus and in Turkey, as well as that Islamic glazed ware mentioned earlier.

Oddly even with all this evidence the 8th century termination date for CRS and LRA1 continues in the literature. I can certainly attest to this. Archaeologists have largely ignored evidence to the contrary, relying instead on the good ol’ Late Roman Pottery handbook. This has resulted in a picture of empty landscapes and arrested trade that remains all the more appealing for the comfort of the narrative. The big bad Arabs come in and everything is disrupted. In Cyprus I got the distinct impression that analogies were drawn with the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island, and although I have no proof of this, I would suspect this has been a factor in the continuity of this view in some sectors of the Cypriot archaeological community.

In her article Pamela goes on to examine the kilns at Dhiorios on Cyprus and the last of her set of 4 diagnostic 8th century ceramics: the dhiorios cooking pot. A truly massive number of kilns have been excavated at the site and, although largely unpublished, they bespeak a serious industry for the production of these rather difficult to produce cooking pots. While these ceramics have been found from Palestine to the Adriatic, where their 8th century date is little disputed, on Cyprus there has been little connection with the idea of continued production past 700. Significantly the last kiln at the site is of an Islamic re-use type, only found in the 8th century! Whether there were other centers of production for this type in Palestine is unclear, but that Dhiorios continued to produce into the 8th century is definitely not.

Unfortunately a great number of sites around the region have relied on the 700 termination date where CRS and LRA1 in particular are concerned. A prime example is the site of Kalavassos/Kopetra. Excavated by Marcus Rautmann, the majority of the pottery was CRS, yet the village was dated to the late 7th century and thought to have been abandoned with the Arab raids of that period. As the hallmark rural site excavated on Cyprus for the Late Antique/Early Middle Ages this has significant implications. Emporio on Chios is another site that could be seriously revised. With the new chronology the site’s 100+ year abandonment in the wake of the Arab raids becomes a short hiatus, if not immediate re-occupation. The list goes on and on.

All in all a picture emerges of continued trade across the Eastern Mediterranean throughout the 8th century. CRS is found in large quantities in Asia Minor, the Levantine Coast, and as far afield as Egypt. Rather than being a major disruptor, the arrival of the Arabs can be seen as giving a boost to regional trade! While there is an 8th century hiatus in the numismatic data, in conjunction with the distribution pattern of CRS wares and Dhiorios cooking pots, one can see a pattern of regional trade that continues on largely independent of Constantinople and the center. While I think such an argument may be pushing it a bit, it is certainly an intriguing prospect that needs to be examined further.

This article becomes even more interesting when read in conjunction with Arthur’s. While noting the odd absence of material in the East, he goes on to describe another zone of trade in the 8th and 9th centuries, that of the Aegean and the Central Med. He begins by comparing the site of Emporio with that of Comacchio at the head of the Adriatic. Remaining Byzantine bastions in Italy and on the Adriatic served primarily as centers of political control, attempting to retain a tenuous hold over territories that were slipping out of the Empire’s grasp, yet also incidentally functioning as foci of Imperial and regional trade. Arthur points out that the church was one of the major players in this game, producing and exchanging goods and driving commerce throughout the Italian peninsula, a point that will come as no surprise to either Lexi or Alba. All in all Byzantine globular amphorae figure largely here, being a ubiquitous item in assemblages throughout this western zone and extending into the east as well, with numerous production centers across the eastern and central Med.

Arthur spends a great deal of the article exploring some of the major centers of trade that were operating in the Central Mediterranean between Lombard Italy, centered on Benevento, Rome, the Arabs in the south, and Byzantium in the 8th and 9th centuries. Naples, Otranto, Butrint, and Corinth all show similar material culture sets, particularly in the ceramic evidence, with types of cooking pots, globular amphorae, and glazed wares all displaying a marked commonality. This trade appears to have picked up considerably during the 9th century, pointing to a steady growth of enmeshed connections over the preceding century. This western sphere of trade extends even to Aegina and beyond, tapping into the north-south axis of Constantinopolitan trade with Chersonesos and the Black Sea that McCormick mentioned. The complementarity of this description with that painted by Armstrong’s revisions allows us to put together a picture of the 8th and 9th centuries that far and away puts paid to the notion of general decline in early medieval Mediterranean trade.

My questions revolve around what this meant for day to day life. If trade did continue with both new players and old, how was life restructured? How did people accommodate new connections and adapt existing ones to new political and cultural realities? How did Arab trade, Lombard trade, change life in Byzantine ports? In the countryside? How can we access this materially? What would a significant shift in attitudes and life-ways look like? How about the kilns at Dhiorios? Technological change? ‘Islamic’ glaze?

Dorin, R.W. 2012. “Adriatic Trade Networks in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.” In Trade and Markets in Byzantium, edited by, Cécile Morrisson, 235–279. Washington, D.C.: Harvard University Press.

Linda Gosner

Comments:

This article, “Adriatic Trade Networks in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries” emphasizes the importance of trade on the regional scale. Dorin writes that trade at this scale was often ignored in favor or studying long-distance maritime trade or local trade on a very small scale, but that the more recent work of Richard Hodges, Michael McCormick, and Christ Wickham has done much to correct this trend. He then takes the example of the Adriatic Sea in the 12th and 13th centuries, noting that it is the best-documented (and by that he means with written sources) example of the growth of regional trade during this period.

Dorin, essentially drawing from Horden and Purcell, begins by examining how the microecology of the Adriatic Sea contributed to complementary exchange patterns both between the east and west coasts and along the coasts north to south. However, he goes on to heavily criticize various elements of the Corrupting Sea, including the lack of focus on urban centers and the lack of attention to diachronic evolution. He writes that from the perspective of economic history “their method is not only inappropriate but dangerously misleading” (240). Dorin is certainly not the first to criticize Horden and Purcell’s lack of focus on urbanized cities, which in many ways is a fair critique. However, his criticism here of the book’s non-chronological format seems unnecessary. They did this to bring out connections and patterns that otherwise are difficult to highlight in more conventional history writing, and Dorin is trying to write an entirely different form of history (which is not better or worse, necessarily, but has different aims).

Dorin believes that – at least for the period in question – it is extremely important to focus Venice, Ancona, Ragusa, and other large coastal centers for their ability monopolize, legislate, and otherwise control the patterns of trade in the Adriatic. This is exactly what he does for much of the article. Looking at treaties and commercial contracts that come primarily from Venice and these other urban centers, he traces the regional trade patterns of commodities such as salt, timber, slaves, wheat, olive oil, and wine, among other things. The pattern that emerges is that Venice becomes increasingly powerful over the course of the 13th century. It could control when and where commodities were unloaded and loaded, and became a population magnet both for voluntary migration and the import of slaves. In turn, the population expansion of Venice and other urban centers meant that larger quantities of food had to be brought in from regions in the Adriatic that were able to produce a surplus. For example, the Italian coast provided an abundance of agricultural products that could be traded. Dalmatia had few commercial sources in its immediate surroundings, but traders there served as middlemen and brought in leather, hides, fur pelts, horses, and slaves from the Balkan hinterland.

Despite his focus on trade recorded in official documents, Dorin does mention other factors that would have affected the movement of goods. The first is piracy, which would have been an ever-present danger in the Adriatic during this period. Secondly, he emphasizes the pragmatic nature of much commercial activity: contracts show that merchants from Venice and other places participated regularly and variously in both regional trade within the Adriatic and long-distance trade in more far reaching areas such as the Levant, the western Italian coast, and Sardinia. Merchants engaged primarily in long-distance trade would have had to stop for food and water at ports that were not their primary destination, and could easily have participated in smaller-scale trade activity during such stops.

While Dorin is certainly right to hypothesize about the affects of these other factors influencing the regional trade patterns, I wonder why he doesn’t look beyond the written record to understand them better? The article seems to be an excellent synthesis of the information contained in contracts and other written documents, and it does especially well at highlighting the trade patterns of food, slaves, and other products that don’t actually preserve in the archaeological record. The paper would be greatly enhanced by the inclusion of more archaeological data that shows the movement of goods that do preserve. As we see from the articles focusing on the ceramic data by Arthur and Armstrong, the patterns of ceramic distribution and the chronology that ceramic provides does not always conform to what we see in the literary sources, so looking at this material evidence can provide a much more nuanced picture of what was actually happening. Dorin concludes by saying we need to learn more about fluvial and terrestrial connections between the cities and their hinterlands, and expand the focus of this kind of study beyond the coastal cities. Both this expanded focus on the hinterlands of cities and more material evidence to supplement the documentary evidence would greatly enhance this article.

Questions: -Should we think of local, regional, and long distance trade as separate units of analysis or all parts of the same system? -Is Dorin’s critique of Horden and Purcell re: their lack of emphasis on cities justified in this period when Venice was so central economically and politically? Should there be a middle ground here? -How do we integrate written sources such as trade contracts with material/archaeological data, especially when the two provide evidence for different commodities?

Alba Serino: Peter Lock:“Castles and Seigneurial Influence in Latin Greece”.

Peter Lock in his articles stresses the function of Frankish castles in some particular areas of Greece in the 13th and 14th centuries, that is in the Morea and Central Greece, including the island of Euboea. He wonders what role did castles play in the Frankish conquest of Greece and when and how they were constructed. He uses the Chronicle of the Morea, written in the fourteenth century, as a source.

Most of the scholars, concerned with the Latin states set up in the Aegean after the Fourth Crusade, have been attracted by the castles of medieval Greece, yet their chronology and functions remain obscure. The lack of documents, together with the re-use and refurbishment of some of the most important sites, have been the main problem in the study of these castles. An attempt was made by Kevin Andrews and Antoine Bon, who analyzed the masonry styles of the castles of the Morea region, trying to achieve an archaeological dating, where documentary material was completely lacking.

Peter Lock however underlines that the chronicles of Morea do not result of great help with their descriptions: all castles built or occupied by the Franks result as “beautiful” rather than “strong”. Only when they were located near a frontier then they were associated to the image of a key (but not a lock or a bar). In addition, references to the strategic role of castles are limited in the sources and are not mentioned until the 1250s. Lock notices that we often learn of castle sites in the Morea when they fell to the Greeks in the campaigns of 1263-64, 1302 and 1320-25; from this it would appear that most of them were built between the 1220s and 1260s, but for what reason is absolutely not clear. He stresses that the documentary sources tell us nothing of the time and cost of construction or of the labour force used.

The chronicles of Morea mention seven Byzantine pre-existing fortifications; all of these were re-commissioned at some point, but it is unclear when in most of the cases. The centres of Nikli and Veligosti result problematic; they seem to be open towns in 1203 and are always referred to as places of congregation rather than as fortifications. Moreover, no trace of these castles survives today. The Chronicle finally, mentions also the building of four new castles, probably by Frankish lords.

Lock does not understand what is meant by a castle controlling a region or an important line of communication and the mechanisms of this control. He observes that, even if built on purpose to resist attacks, these castles were often handed over to the Greeks as a result of negotiation in the late 13th and early 14th century.

Finally, after a short structural description of the castels (built in inaccessible sites, curtain walls forming one or two enclosures with an unclear function), he finishes opening a small parenthesis on towers, as the expression of power and status of the sergeant-level society. Towers dominated the landscape in central Greece. On the contrary, castles predominated in Morea, the most stable of the Frankish states, suggesting that display rather than defence may have been the motive of castle builders. So in the end, Lock finally advances an hypothesis on the function of these castles: in considering them as an expression of lordship, wealth display and the storage of wealth were the major functions of these buildings in the Frankish states of Greece.

Questions: is it really impossible to obtain other data from archaeological and topographical evidence of these castles? Did the castles form a network of control in central Greece? What are the differences between the Greek castles and the English, French and Italian ones? Is a comparison with the Italian phenomenon of the “incastellamento” in the 8th century possible? Can any earlier documentary sources be used in this study to understand the nature and functions of Frankish castles in Greece?

Posted at Mar 03/2013 06:16PM:
Alba Serino: Peter Lock:“Castles and Seigneurial Influence in Latin Greece”.

An attempt was made by Kevin Andrews and Antoine Bon, who analyzed the masonry styles of the castles of the Morea region, trying to achieve an archaeological dating, where documentary material was completely lacking.

Lock notices that we often learn of castle sites in the Morea when they fell to the Greeks in the campaigns of 1263-64, 1302 and 1320-25; from this it would appear that most of them were built between the 1220s and 1260s, but for what reason is absolutely not clear.

He stresses that the documentary sources tell us nothing of the time and cost of construction or of the labour force used.

The chronicles of Morea mention seven Byzantine pre-existing fortifications; all of these were re-commissioned at some point, but it is unclear when in most of the cases.

The centres of Nikli and Veligosti result problematic; they seem to be open towns in 1203 and are always referred to as places of congregation rather than as fortifications. Moreover, no trace of these castles survives today.

The Chronicle finally, mentions also the building of four new castles, probably by Frankish lords.

Towers dominated the landscape in central Greece. On the contrary, castles predominated in Morea, the most stable of the Frankish states, suggesting that display rather than defence may have been the motive of castle builders.

So in the end, Lock finally advances an hypothesis on the function of these castles: in considering them as an expression of lordship, wealth display and the storage of wealth were the major functions of these buildings in the Frankish states of Greece.

Posted at Mar 03/2013 10:57PM:
Alexis Jackson: Lock, Peter. "The Frankish Towers of Central Greece." The Annual of the British School at Athens 81 (1986): 101-23.

Peter Lock’s article “The Frankish Towers of Central Greece” is the product of a field survey he conducted on the towers beginning in the 1983. As such, it is primarily focused on the various features and commonalities of the towers. However, another of Lock’s main concerns is identifying the towers medieval owners and builders, as well as combating notions from earlier authors (late 19th and earlier 20th century) regarding the towers’ purpose.

Lock pays special attention to the towers’ siting, scale, and architecture features in order to0 identify them as a comparable unitary group. He departs from Professor Bon’s work (which Lock notes has previously dominated the field) by disagreeing with the notion that the structures served as watch towers. Instead, Lock contends that almost none of the towers are intervisable, and the few that are (or could be), have views that are obscured by heat haze from 9am until nightfall. Furthermore, most are not located near important roads or communication routes, or with any apparent attention paid to medieval cities in central Greece.

Additionally, Lock argues that the towers could not have been very successful defensive structures because their architecture features indicate that they had permanent wooden stair structures onto the first floor, with ground floors that were not accessible to the exterior. Thus, animals could not have easily been kept and protected on the ground floor in times of trouble (since sheep on a rope ladder would have been a difficult, if not impossible, strategy). Additionally, because their siting far from roads and common routes, potential enemies could easily have avoided the towers, making the towers less-than-ideal military/defensive structures. Lock proposes that the towers were primarily used for small-scale storage, administration, and habitation by middling vassals of the de la Roche lordship originally from Burgundy and the Rhineland. According to his assertions, these men lacked the wealth and status of the vassals in the Peloponnese, and thus built more modest towers instead of castles. The towers appear to be sited strangely (in comparison to the Venetian towers, whose siting strategy is more obvious) because they are located in the center of the vassal small fiefs, so as to aid in the administration of the fief and to facilitate further feudal subdivision.

Lock consistently uses the Venetian towers of Euboea as a counterpoint to the towers he surveyed on mainland Greece (despite admitted early in the article that his planned survey of the Venetian towers has not yet been undertaken). Frequently, he uses the Venetian towers as an example of what the mainland towers were not. The mainland towers were not sited with a defensive strategy, near ports and towers for the collection of dues, they were not crenellated (as far as Lock can tell), and they were not controlled by a centralized authority. Furthermore, the mainland towers are smaller, less well-equipped (fewer, smaller windows and other features), and had different entries permanent wooden staircases to the first floor). However, despite using the physical evidence of the Venetian towers as an oppositional touchstone, Lock has no qualms using the textual evidence from the Venetian on Euboea as a point of comparison.

The most problematic part of Lock’s article is his attribution of the towers to the Franks. According to the text, his primary reasoning for this attribution is that all other groups are less likely candidates, and that there is nothing in the documentary or survey evidence that particularly excludes the Franks from being the owners. With regards to the masonry, he notes that “it is almost impossible to date the towers from masonry styles alone except to say that they are not Classical, Hellenistic, or early Roman…” and that the technique used on the towers “was practiced by the Late Romans, the Byzantines, the Franks, and the Turks.” (Lock 106) The pottery evidence also fails to disprove any theories suggesting Byzantine and Turkish owners/builders for the towers. Although local informants and previous academic sources suggest that the towers may be Turkish, Lock simply dismisses the question. Instead, he suggests because an earlier scholar, Colonel Leake, gave little detail, and the towers under discussion by Leake seem to have disappeared, but he was perhaps just overly confident in his identifications. Meanwhile, the possibility of Albanian occupation is dismissed because Lock is unable to make proper comparisons from the photographs he has available of Albanian towers.

In his article, he treats various sources separately (including Greek chronicle v. other local or foreign textual sources, Byzantine v. Greek texts, 13th and 14th century accounts v. late medieval accounts v. early modern accounts v. modern accounts from local informants/interviews), which gives the effect of having very little evidence overall to make an argument in any direction. Unfortunately, as critical as he is of earlier scholars for their mishandling of evidence, he himself seems to be overly eager to dismiss sources of all types that do not support his conclusions. Where Lock is careful to signpost his speculation in his article on Greek medieval castles, there is a notable lack of that care in this article.

The article is followed with a short inventory of the towers in central Greece, including the towers surveyed by Lock, towers he was unable to reach, and apocryphal and/or lost towers. When possible, he has included details about the size and specific location of each tower. A careful reading of the included inventory reveals that the group of mainland towers is not as unified as Lock suggestions. There are numerous various between them (as could be expected), including a particularly well-equipped and large tower that Lock proposes may have been built by a very wealthy and well-connected Florentine, Nicolas Acciaiuoli, or the two urban towers of Athens and Daulis.

Questions: In cases with ambiguous (or ambivalent) historical/documentary and physical sources, to what degree is speculation appropriate? Does that degree change when there is modern local information?

In this case, how much comparative work is enough? Lock mentions towers in Albania and the Levant, but explicitly states that he won’t be making those comparisons. Should he have taken the Albanian and Levantine examples into consideration? Should he have looked for western European comparisons. (Possibly from Burgundy and Rhineland, since he suggests that as an origin for the vassals?)

Why towers? Lock offers that these low-status vassals built towers because they could not afford to build castles, but what other alternatives were possible/available? Why didn’t they choose other options and what can that tell us about the towers’ builders?

Curta, F. 2010. Still Waiting for the Barbarians? The Making of the Slavs in ‘Dark-Age’ Greece. In F. Curta (ed.), Neglected Barbarians. Turnhout, pp. 402-478.

Reyhan Durmaz and Ian Randall

This article by Florin Curta discussed, in some detail, the continuing ‘Slavic problem’ for the archaeology and history of Greece during the “Dark Ages,” an ill-defined period that extends from the end of the 7th century to whenever some scholars feel comfortable talking about things confidently again (sometimes as late as the beginning of the 10th century). The article began by giving a brief account of the two major traditions with regard to the scholarship on the history of Slavs in Greece. The Fallmerayer-an tradition, later picked up by Vasiliev, argues that the Slavs settled in Greece in the Middle Ages, whereas followers of Paparrigopoulos argue that Slavs were neither numerous nor culturally superior to impose a break within the continuation of the Greek ethnos. At the same time Curta provides the political background of the post-19th century era, which helps the reader contextualize the scholarly dispositions and their reverberations. He then shifts to pointing out the new methodologies, such as archaeology, employed to uncover the “Dark Ages” of Greece through the debate between Setton and Charanis. It is seen that archaeological evidence brought forth new perspectives into the debates about the history of Slavs in Greece, yet it was still interpreted in ways in which one could support their historical claims. Curta rightly criticizes two methodological mistakes: that majority of the weaponry found at burials in Greece were labeled as “barbarian” if they were similar to the ones found at other sites in the Balkans, and that the terms like “Slavs” or “Avars” were used and perceived as if these groups were homogenous, well-defined, identifiable communities, neglecting the ambiguities among the terms used in medieval sources. In the light of archaeological, numismatic and written material, Curta attempts to revisit the definitions, chronologies and other aspects of the phenomenon of Slavs and Avars in Greece.

In the first section that Curta allocates for discussing the archaeological material, he demonstrates that a number of previous interpretations of this material, particularly those claiming a “Slav/Avar” invasion, were mistaken. For instance, the pottery found in Argos and suggested to have pointed out a temporary Slavic camp, was more probably an indication of a continuous usage in a wider area and chronological span. Belt buckles and other similar artifacts, compared to other datable artifacts from Hungary, Italy, Romania or northern Balkans, pointed to a dating from late-sixth century up to the second half of the seventh century, although various artifacts or sites indicate a more specific dating. Looking over his treatment of the archaeological material a couple things struck us. While he dismisses the pottery information a bit out of hand, remarking that not much good work has been done on coarse handmade wares and that they have largely been dated solely on textual sources, it would perhaps deserve more of a look. Patterns in coarse wares CAN be discerned, but for the moment that is neither here nor there.

In terms of the rest, he goes through an extensive list of the so-called 'avar' buckles, some jewelry, beads, and some urns found in Greece with parallels along the Danube, in the Caucuses, and into the Crimea that can be dated to the late 6th through, in some cases, the 9th century. Implicit is the assumption that these CAN be associated with an 'Avar' ethnos to some extent, weighing in on the previously discussed argument which, given the more fluid and problematic view of ethnicity in the ancient world held today could be thought of as being largely defunct. It is worth noting that some of the examples he cites turn up as far away as Italy! All in all it likely says far more about fashion and trade networks than any spread of the 'Slavs' per se, which raises the bigger question of how to identify 'ethnicity' in the material record. Should we even be doing so?

Numismatic and sigillographic information came next. Coins largely dry up after 580, with only three known hoards in Greece between 630 and 900. Metcalf ascribes this to the potential ‘Slavic invasions,’ although Curta rightly points out that the nature of these hoards likely speaks to army payments, an argument for perhaps a more controlled situation. Seals of kommerkiarioi cluster around the 8th century, and numerous seals of droungarioi and strategoi bespeak a continued military investment. Most interestingly a number of seals of archons from the early 9th century contain ‘Slavic’ names, with one even indicating that one Peter was archon of a tribe that is thought from textual sources to be ‘Slavic.’ Interesting indeed. Overall Curta points to the existence of these seals on the north and eastern borders of the Empire and speaks of potential client rulers for Constantinople. The textual information is at the same time both more confusing and more detailed. Isidore of Seville writing in the early 600’s notes that Greece had been taken by ‘Slavs,’ although he may be referring to Illyricum. The Miracles of St. Demetrios, written in the late 7th century, makes extensive reference to devastation across the western portions of the Empire by ‘Slavs,’ yet this might be the often used hagiographic trope of times of woe and destruction. George of Psidia also makes mention of ‘Slavs’ raiding in the Empire, but notes that they have their families in tow, an indication they may not have come far. The Chronicle of Monemvasia speaks also of Slavinia, but here we encounter a problem that is actually quite far ranging: just what do ancient authors mean when they say ‘Slavs?’ Curta argues that the use of the term Sklavinia was generally an administrative one, denoting a loose group of ‘barbarian’ polities on the border of the Empire. Ethnicity in the texts seems, he argues, to be more about political potential and relations of power than what we would think of as ‘culture.’ A great point that he follows with a fantastic discussion of the grave of the ‘wandering soldier’ at Corinth, who has a confusing array of items that come from all over Greece and Eastern Europe. This he argues shows more about long distance connections and ‘barbarian’ alliances than any ethnicity.

Oddly, following this, the tenor of the article is a somewhat conservative one. He speaks of ‘Slavic’ groups largely living within the Empire and governed by client rulers. In speaking of cremation burials near Corinth he also, amazingly, speaks of strong evidence for ‘Avars,’ not bothering to give the same treatment to that ethnic category as he just did for the ‘Slavs!’ As good an overview of the evidence for ‘Slavs’ in the Empire as it is, the article teeters a bit in terms of its treatment of ancient ethnicity, tending to want it both clearly associated with material culture forms, yet at the same time fluid and ascribed. How then are we to think about ethnicity? Can we talk of ‘Avar’ buckles? Where do text and archaeology meet in discussing ‘peoples?’ Should ethnicity even be a category we are concerned with?

Chevedden, P.E. 2000. The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet: A Study in Cultural Diffusion. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54: 71-116.

Clive Vella

I must admit that I read my way through this paper several times, mainly out of concern that I might be missing the ray of light in the author’s argument. The title of this paper suggests that the chapter will deal with the invention of the counterweight trebuchet, and perhaps, its cultural diffusion. However, what floats to the surface in this piece is that cultural diffusion is being examined through 12^th century accounts of sieges and their disparate use of terminology.

The reason why the counterweight trebuchet was an important technological advance lies in its mechanical ability to exploit gravitational energy and lunge large projectiles against fortifications walls. By the 12^th century these siege weapons had made themselves worthy of their reputation in wars across Eurasia and North Africa. The author even suggests that ‘… it unleashed a revolution in siegecraft and provided the impulse for dramatic changes in military architecture …’ (p.71). This quote is important to keep in mind while reading this paper. However, this paper seems also quite concerned with previous work done by other scholars who Chevedden frequently refers as using ‘fallacious’ interpretations.

Nevertheless, the counterweight trebuchet was the product of a technological tradition that was rooted in China and then advancing into the worlds of Island and Byzantium. To no surprise, the use and re-use of this technology became a collective achievement of four civilizations. But, I do wonder if we can actually talk about war between several of these four civilizations and then assume that they were freely passing information about this sort of siege tools. So, can we talk about war and then sterilize the transmission of technology on a neutral spectrum? I am not sure that is a good assumption to make.

Chevedden rather focuses on the origins and the early development of the counterweight trebuchet, the main concern here lying in the fact that this technology could not have suddenly occurred around 1200 and became widely diffused thereafter. The author argues against this dating, based on the fact that shortly after 1200 a visible transition in fortification design could not have instantly followed the first uses of the counterweight trebuchet. Now, this is an argument based on common sense, but perhaps, not backed up by the right of evidence. It is good of the author to argue that fortifications would not have been adapted to the counterweight trebuchet immediately after its earliest uses in warfare. On the other hand, one has to find an evidence of sorts to back up such an argument.

In reality, the trebuchet had a prolonged history. By the end of the 6^th century, the trebuchet was at its inception then developing into three forms of artillery: traction trebuchet, hybrid trebuchet and the counterweight trebuchet. The traction trebuchet appeared sometime in the 4^th century BC in China, eventually becoming superseded by the hybrid trebuchet in the 8^th century AD. The latter seems to have grown out o the Islamic conquest movements around the time, as suggested by warfare in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The counterweight trebuchet grew out of this advancement, becoming the first fully mechanized pivoting-beam artillery weapon and decreasing crew size needed while extending the reach of these machines.These artillery machines left a mark on those being besieged, as seen in Avaro-Slav use of 50 trebuchets when they laid siege to Thessaloniki in 597. However, the author is primarily concerned in asking where was such siege warfare being acquired by the attackers, without asking the more interesting question; who was operating and bringing these machines? We do get a glimpse in this paper that most Eastern powers were making use of locals (ex: the First Crusade using Middle Easterners’ knowledge and expertise) or recruiting capable individuals (ex see Figure 2 where the operator is dressed in distinctly different attire- perhaps Persian?).

The use of the counterweight trebuchet might have surged at a historical moment when military powers converged into the eastern Mediterranean around the latter half of the 11^th century. As the saying goes ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and the arrival of West European crusaders into the eastern Mediterranean might have tipped the balance beyond the point of balance. Sadly, the author does not seem concerned with tying this invention to the necessities of the time. Rather, the majority of this 50 page paper is reserved to describing siege accounts and who might have used the counterweight trebuchet first. One such account is Emperor Alexios’ siege of Nicaea, that supposedly included the use of a helepoleis which the author suggests was one of the earliest uses of a counterweight trebuchet. This interpretation is not founded on anything else, aside from Anna’s eye-witness account, but Chevedden goes to great lengths on how other scholars have ‘fallaciously’ downplayed this source. Therefore, this becomes an argument based on dissecting and presenting terms used by Byzantine and Arab sources (a good half of this paper!).

Ultimately, having read this paper several times, I must admit that it seems that Chevedden is overly concerned at getting us all to hypnotically agree that Byzantium had a great hand in the invention of the counterweight trebuchet. However, I feel unsatisfied by the corpus of information offered. I enjoy literature on warfare, but, I also understand that siege accounts were not objective unbiased move-to-move descriptions of tactics and weaponry. Fear, violence and panic at the time decrease our ability to look at these accounts ‘objectively’. After all, how can we know that Anna was on the bastions looking at these machines that Emperor Alexios had so cleverly imagined? Or if any of her eye-witnesses were so keen on observing artillery weapons? There are only so many ways to skin a cat and this means that terminology or accounts cannot be used to understand diffusion or origin. Sometimes, the fascination with finding the first of anything (humans, pottery, cities, etc) becomes a game of smoke and mirrors. In the meantime, I am still very curious as to the diverse peoples involved in trebuchets.

Who were the operators of these weapons? Why did the First Crusade show up with no siege warfare? Was it a lack of plan or were they trusting on local knowledge? Finally, is it really important to distinguish between the counterweight trebuchet emerging in the 1100 or 1200 AD?

Michaduel, Benjamin. 2000. “The Developmentof Islamic Military Architecture During the Ayyubid and Mamluk Reconquests of Frankish Syria.” In Muslim military architecture in greater Syria, edited by, Hugh Kennedy, 106–121. Leiden: Brill.

Linda Gosner

Summary: This is a fairly straightforward chapter on the development and fluorescence of Islamic military architecture from the late 12th century through the 13th century, under the Ayyubids and Mamluks. Looking primarily at Syria and Egypt, Michaduel looks at changes in military architecture in what he has grouped into 3 distinct periods: the last ¼ of the 12th century, the first half of the 13th century, and the second half of the 13th century. He examines the main features of fortifications including provision for flanking fire, shooting devices, defensive systems for gates, and circulation.

The Ayyubid reconquest of Frankish Syria changed the development of Islamic architecture, for one, because unified Muslim armies were able to be mobilized for the first time against the Latin States (previously the Fatimids and Seljuqs had operated separately). The Ayyubids didn’t have a military plan of destroying castles and fortresses, but of reoccupying territories of conquest and restoring/upgrading former Crusader strongholds. In their refortified castles, a quadrangular plan dominated (Cairo being the main exception). There were several architectural developments including the spread of the use of the recessed loopholes, and the spread of the bent entrance, and the improvement of circulation galleries. Defensive systems became better developed and more homogeneous across Ayyubid territory.

In the first half of the 13th century actual military conflict was rare, but fortification activity continued on a grander scale and continued to develop on the trends set at the end of the 12th century. Fortresses and towers had increased dimensions, recessed loopholes continued to be used and box machicolations were added, and the bent entrance became widespread. Finally, there were often multiple levels of defense. Michaduel contends that this elaboration of military architecture came out of a struggle for control over Ayyubid territory between the two princes (al-Zahir Ghazi, prince of Aleppo and northern Syria, al-Adil, prince of Egypt and Damascus).

Michaduel places the final development of Islamic military architecture in the last 1/3 of the 13th century under the Mamluks. The Mamluk campaigns against the Mongols and the Franks led to the capture of the last crusader castles, fortification building programs, and restoration and improvement of defense in some conquered areas. Defensive structures, especially towers, became monumental (which the author calls more ostentation than evolution of the art of siege warfare). Loopholes and bent entrances continued to be used, as was the tradition under the Ayyubids, but now they had decorated and engraved lintels. There was an increase concern for the improvement of circulation. Following this period, there was both a quantitative and qualitative decline in military architecture – mostly because it was no longer needed. Display and decoration of monumental architecture played a larger role than defensive capabilities.

Comments/Questions: This chapter is mainly descriptive, and traces very logically and sequentially the development of Islamic military architecture. As a historian, he uses a very top-down model, attributing changes in architectural forms to political events. In general, he groups developments in Syria and Egypt together and talks about them as similar and contemporaneous – I wonder if taking a more regional approach would highlight any potentially meaningful differences, or if this model is a good reflection of the overall situation? I wonder also who was responsible for the actual design and construction of these fortifications. Are they similar because there were travelling architects and a workforce who would have worked on multiple ones? How was the information spread? From an archaeological perspective, it would also be interesting to know how uniform the material culture was across these fortresses or whether the occupants of each would have access to a very different set of goods and imports. Finally, are these changes in military architectural forms mirrored in any other kinds of architecture (domestic, religious, etc.)?

Nicklies C.,2004. Builders, Patrons, and Identity: The Domed Basilicas of Sicily and Calabria. Gesta 43: 99-114

Clive Vella

The paper by Nicklies is an interesting look at domed basilicas in Eastern Sicily and Calabria, or rather 7 domed basilicas from this area during the Norman comital period. In particular, this contribution is positioned from the premise that the importance of place and significance during the early Norman regions remains largely un resolved. Better yet, scholars have not properly utilized the contemporary intermingling of culturally diverse forms, elements and construction techniques that can be seen imbued in domed basilicas. However, I think the author rightly points out that one of the main barriers in studying the Normans in the Mediterranean is primarily blockaded by a matter of perception. The Normans have been often considered to be a sideshow of curiosities, or even worse, as provincial upstarts (a view also epitomized in contemporary literature by "older" cultures). This is, I think, a product of subjective imposition placed on the Mediterranean as the core while everything beyond its shores becomes peripheral in several senses.

Yet, the Normans arrival and conquests in Central Mediterranean included a creation of an architecture and culture that was new, distinctive but also comprehensible to the residents of their realm. Therefore, the comprehensibility required the integration of earlier Arab elements. During the bulk of this paper, Nicklies focuses primarily on the Valdemone area of Eastern Sicily and Calabria during the rule of Roger I, his widow Adelaide and Roger II, while largely omitting the later monarchical period in Palermo.

One immediately ask; why Valdemone and Calabria? The author justifies the former by saying that this region had retained a stronger Greek population that intermingled peacefully with the Arab rulers. This implicitly omits that wider conflicts that Siclilian natives in other parts of Sicily had underwent its the earlier Arab invasions, suggesting that different groups within the island had variably underwent cultural symbiosis over time. This paper ultimately tries to react to previous claims that domed basilicas, and other atrivtures, entered Sicily throu Southrn Italy. Rather, Nickels lays the argument that these architectural forms and structures emerged in the Valdemone region then become exported through Calabria. The author justifies these arguments by the looking at the following basilicas (which I will discuss and visualize better in my presentation): S Maria at Mili, SS Pietro e Paolo at Itala, S Alfini at San Fratello, S Giovanni Vecchio at Bivogno, S Maria de Tridetti at Santa Severina and S Maria di Terreti near Regio Calabria.

The reason why these artichectural and religious structures can provide important reflections is that they all received foundation charters and significant donations from the Norman ruling dynasty. Indeed, these charters were not simply meant for the foundation of ecclesiastical institutions but also to act as integral nodes of the Norman feudal system. This system, I suspect, had to be centrally manipulated in a region where Christians were outnumbered by Muslims at two to one. Also, in Calabria the Norman rulers were NOT seen as liberators but rather as conquerors. This was eventually supplanted over the 11th century by the apparent fact that Byzantium would not return to the southern shores of Italy, and by the Norman considerable donations to the Orthodox churches and monasteries of Calabria. Now, this is a point where I feel the paper provides a point of great interest with no clear follow-up. If we are looking at the movement of domed basilica architecture, that the author claims was coming from Sicily, then when did the Orthodox fabric diminish? Clearly, this would have been a point worth illustrating because we cannot at face value the dispersal of domed basilica when Orthodox Cristian religion survived moreso in Calabria then Sicily.

Nevertheless, the domed basilica began a seemingly vibrant and diverse artistic tradition that was characterized by the hierarchical division between sanctuary and natives inside and outside. The foreparts included singe or three aisles divisions leading into the sanctuary's bena and pastophoria. These two main divisions were physically and visually divisible by the rarely surviving barrier, such as an epistyle. This is perhaps a product of these structures' longevity that discourage the archaeological investigation of some of these churches (ie you cannot really go excavate within most of these basilicas to this day). However, fragments of such a barrier from S Maria di Terreti are cited by author as being "quite Islamic in character", which obviously should have merited further clarification as to what is Islamic and non-Islamic.

Still, a broad preoccupation and detriment to the author's main thesis remains the considerable lack of written material on building teams. In the later monarchical period an inscription commemorating the renovations at the SS Pietro e Paolo name a Girard the Frank as the master builder. In contrast, the Troina Cathedral in Malaterra built in 1081, was built by a randomly recruited crew. This recruitment was interpreted due to the general population vacuum of this area that would have required the physical transfer of skilled laborers to this region. This division of labor between skilled and non-skilled is where Nicklies tries at the earnest to suggest that crafts people already located in these regions prior to the Norman conquests must have meant that the domed basilicas were built as part of a koine that included the Byzantine and Arab roots.

In this light, the apparent acceptance of attributes derived from Arab influences by Christian monks exemplify the Norman ability to disseminate propaganda through already established sybmols. These domed basilica became a visual form of the unification of cultures, which de Hauteville later described as populus trilinguis during the monarchical period. However, the author suggests that the inception of the domed basilica suggests that this process of cultural symbiosis had already begun during the comication period.

There is a lot packed in this paper but I would end with an inscription on Roger II's sword that states that "the Apulian, the Calabrian, the Sicilian and the African all serve me". This paper seeks to describe the establishment of a new world order from the view of the establishment and diffusion of domed basilica. I am willing to accept that these basilica grew out of a regional origin but I feel that the argument needed to be properly contextualized in at least one sense. Primarily, if we accept that earlier Arab influence played a role in shaping these structures, then can we use the grand mosques of Sousse and Cairo as proof? These are the sorts of parallelels offered by the author, yet, I cannot believe that skilled laborers were well-versed in practices of contemporary grand mosques without a single mention of local construction styles and types. Rather, it seems that to understand such an architectural invention requires us to contrast domed basilica with surrounding monumental and unomonumental buildings in Eastern Sicily and Calabria.

Therefore, can we speak of domed basilica without the surrounding urban and rural matrix? Was the role of non-skilled labor so lowly, or could there have been a sense of religious fervor or community building following the Norman conquest? Can we really speak of Eastern vs Western Sicily without falling to micro-regionalization?

Posted at Mar 10/2013 07:52PM:
reyhan durmaz: Mathews, T. F., Christine, A. and Mathews, D. 1997. Islamic-Style Mansions in Byzantine Cappadocia and the Development of the Inverted T-Plan. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 56/3: 294-315

The authors with this article reassess Lyn Rodley’s three categories of Cappadocian rock-cut monuments: refectory monasteries, courtyard monasteries and the “Acik Saray” group. They argue that some of the monuments that were previously identified as monasteries were probably mansions, and in order to attain a better grasp of the architectural traditions in the region, the monuments should be analyzed within a wider geographical and political context. They carry out their analysis through comparing a group of monuments (the ones that lacked a refectory and thus identified as non-monastic) with the Islamic lay house plan, the inverted T-plan.

The inverted T-plan refers to the floor plan in which multiple rooms with various functions cluster around the three sides of a longitudinal court, one side of which is generally allocated for the main entrances into the monument. The authors show the similarities between the Cappadocian monuments, such as the Acik saray, Hallac, Bezir Hane, etc., and some of the Islamic mansions, like Qasr-I Shirin (7th c.), Dar al-‘Imara (7th c.), Ukhaidir (8th. C.). The similarities are observed not only in the employment of the floor plan, but also in architectural sculpture and interior design. Their grand argument is that as a result of various forms of cultural exchanges between the Islamic and the Byzantine worlds, there were shared architectural, iconographic and life stylistic languages around the Mediterranean. Thus, architectural phenomena, like the ones in Cappadocia, should be contextualized within a wider landscape of cultural interaction.

Yet, while they demonstrate this their analysis appears to be restricted to Islamic influences on Byzantine spheres; they do not mention the Byzantine cultural elements adopted by the Islamic world. Neither do they reflect on the possible Byzantine influence on the early Islamic architecture. They present the analysis as if Islamic architecture was an independent phenomenon which at some point in time was appreciated and adopted by some Byzantine circles. Moreover, the recunstructions they include in their article, the ones of Hallac at Cappadocia, comes across as an overemphasis of the Islamic/ "Oriental" character of the life in Cappadocian mansions.

Posted at Mar 10/2013 10:33PM:
Alexis Jackson:

Gerstel, S. 2001. Art and Identity in the Medieval Morea. In A. Laiou and R. P. Mottahedeh, The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Washington D.C., pp. 263-286.

Although the title of Gerstel’s article, “Art and Identity in the Medieval Morea” seems implausibly broad, the article itself is actually a tightly-argued and well-organized piece on the effect of Frankish presence on artistic production. More specifically, Gerstel examines changes in the depictions of saints in monumental frescoes in the Morea immediately before, during, and immediately following the period of Frankish occupation from the 13th to early 15th centuries. The real muscle of her argument is that traditional depictions of military saints in the region, such as Saint George and Saint Demetrios, changes from the frontal, standing pose that would have been easily recognizable to a native Greek/Orthodox/Byzantine audience to a side-on, equestrian, weapon-wielding pose that had its roots in the traditions of the Franks/Crusaders. Churches on the Morea prior to the Fourth Crusade would usually feature the saint in a more “Byzantine” pose, while churches after that period more frequently featured saints on horseback. Gerstel suggests two explanations for this change: one, as a native strengthening of important protective religious figures in response to external dangers (the Crusaders), and two, as an element of “cultural emulation and symbiosis” between native Greeks and Franks.

In addition to analyzing church frescoes, Gerstel address the questions of audience, mixed-group recognizability, and creator by looking at several “public” examples. First, she discusses two Crusader-sponsored programs of decoration, one in the reception hall of the archbishop’s hospitum in Patras, and the other in a gatehouse at Akronauplion. For the Patras example, Gerstel brings together the popular written tradition of the Trojan War story in both Western European and Byzantine lands to argue that the images were identifiable even for mixed audiences. The gatehouse example pulls together different visual motifs of interest to Gerstel, especially the equestrian saints and coats of arms. For her argument, the gatehouse images are an especially well-chosen example because it belongs a limited period closely corresponding to the Frankish occupation (c.129001463), because there is evidence to show that the images were sponsored by Frankish lords (the coats of arms), and because it was visible to both Greek and Frankish residents of the city. Although a good degree of Gerstel’s article focuses on monumental church frescoes, her use of these two secular examples for comparison definitely enriches her argument. As Clive’s critique of Nicklies’ article points out, using church structures for an argument about cross-cultural (and especially cross-religion/inter-faith) interactions in inherently problematic because of the difficulty in finding evidence about the viewers or audience. Gerstel deftly counters those issues by using not only images in churches, but also public images, like on the Akronauplion gatehouse, which would have been unquestionably viewed by a mixed audience.

Furthermore, Gerstel support her visual argument not only with frescos, but also with coins and seals that show the importance of the equestrian motif for the Frankish Crusaders. Additionally, she works with chronicles, administrative documents, and pottery finds to talk about Frankish cultural and administrative influence. Although “it may only be an art history article”, to reference some criticisms from our course, it is an excellent article that makes use of a variety of “interdisciplinary” types of evidence. Instead of supposing a ready-made borderlands region (another common critique of articles we have read), Gerstel suggests that the evidence she is examining in Morea “may reflect the new border status of this region.” As such, it only makes sense to insist that the change in saints’ depictions has multiple meanings (depending on different viewers). According to Gerstel, for some viewers, the mounted saints served in a way to ready the holy cavalry in order to protect the local inhabitants of the Morea from Crusader incursions. For others, especially the Frankish beneficiaries of the Crusades, the images served as a nod to Western chivalric traditions, a reminder of the saints’ tacit approval of their military incursions into the eastern Mediterranean, and a way of expressing their dominance over the locals.

Questions: How might the Frankish influence (explored by Gerstel through church imagery) also have had an effect on religious practice? Is she suggesting that ways of worshipping military saints were altered for the Orthodox “natives” of the Morea, or merely how the military saints were depicted?

Gerstel writes about the Franks and what she terms the “native” inhabitants of the Morea region; however, we know from other readings that there were other populations in the Morea during this period. Why and how have they been written out of this argument? In what way could they be considered?

______________________________________________________________________________________________
Alba Serino:

Nelson, R. 2003. Appropriation in R. Nelson and R. Shiff (eds.), Critical Terms of Art History. Chicago, 2nd ed., pp. 160-173.

Ashley, K. and Plesch, V. 2002. The Cultural Processes of "Appropriation". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32/1: 1-15.

Robert Nelson explores in his work the concept of appropriation in art and art history (comparing it to Barthe's concept of “myth”). Underlining its difference with the concept of “influence”, he explains how appropriation is a distorsion and not a negation of a culture; he also stresses that an appropriation works silently “breaching the body's defenses as a foreign organism and insinuating within”. He then underlines the dynamism of the process, since in every appropriation there are those who act and those who are acted upon.

In the second part of his article, Nelson considers the ways in which artistic appropriation can take place. He connects the concept of appropriation to the expropriating strategies of capitalism (Foster) and to the “appropriation art” crtitics of contemporary visual arts (Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine), as the advent of photography and photomontage brought a revolution in the concept of appropriation in art. He also mentions the landsccape appropriation in the paintings of 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Finally, Nelson insists on the importance of the study of the appropriation process in a culture, by using the example of the statue of the four horses in the cathedral of Saint Marco in Venice. The statue presents in fact a long and interesting “appropriation history”.

Kathleen Ashley and Veronique Plesch aim to demonstrate with their essay the “importance of placing premodern and modern considerations of cultural appropriation in dialogue with one another”. They start from citing Nelson's definition of the difference between “appropriation” and “influence”, proposing to reconsider the concept of “originality” itself. After this they introduce the concept of “influence” (different from Nelson's) in literary history by citing Renza Knight. They also talk about the concept of reuse in art history, referring to Oleg Grabar's studies on Islamic art, also already cited by Nelson.

The two authors then consider the negative association with power that appropriation acquired within cultural studies, as in Edward Said's “Orientalism”. This model, in which the motivation for appropriation is to “gain power over another”, introduced a crisis in disciplines as anthropology and art. In these disciplines in fact, “other” cultures and their artifacts were main objects of study, but they were considered as neutral or laudatory. This model of appropriation is connected to the colonial theoretical approach (Benita Parry, Gayatri Spivak). Postcolonial theory (Homi Bhabha, Mary Louise Pratt) considered on the contrary the aspects of exchange and creative response taking place during the process of appropriation.

The two authors believe that in all the essays analyzed, the most important aspect emerging is the close connection between the concepts of appropriation and identity (of a nation, country, gender, family or cult).

They finally underline the diachronic and also spatial dimension of the appropriation process: in their unfolding through time and space, it proves to be an indispensable element of culture.

Comments and questions:

Robert Nelson, Kathleen Ashley and Veronique Plesch all explore in their works the concept of appropriation in art and art history. While Nelson concentrates more on the ways in which the process of appropriation can take place, Ashley and Plesch underline the importance of appropriation in the definition of cultural identity. In addition, all authors underline the importance of studying the appropriation process both in the chronological and spatial dimension and that all the shifts of this process must be analyzed in order to understand art in a society.

After reading these articles, it was automatic to ask myself how important should the study of appropriation be considered, while doing research on an ancient society. In what ways did cultural appropriation take place? Was it a long or short process? Did its lenght influence its effect?

But most of all, did all societies appropriate aspects of other cultures? If yes, is it correct to continue distinguishing between cultural “identity” and “hybridity”?

Ian Randall:

Klein, H. 2010. Refashioning Byzantium in Venice, ca. 1200-1400. In R. Nelson and H. Maguire (eds.) San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice. Washington D.C., pp. 193-226.

Anytime I see the name Rob Nelson on the cover of something I’m pretty well pleased. I had the good fortune of taking a course with him many years ago on Late Byzantine Church Art that was absolutely stunning. As editor of the volume that contained this piece by Klein on the Refashioning of Byzantium in Venice, I figured it had to be good, and, generally speaking, I wasn’t disappointed. Perhaps more could have been done with it, but I’ll get to that at the end.

Klein opens with a description of the visit of the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Paleologos and his retinue to Venice in 1438, as left to us in the memoirs of Sylvester Syropoulos, a member of the delegation. This visit was for the Council of Ferrara and the last ditch efforts to save Constantinople from the Ottomans by appealing for Western help, even going so far as to concede to the reunion of the churches on less than favorable terms for Byzantium to get it. The description lingers a bit on the Pala D’Oro, the magnificent altar decoration piece. . . thingy (it has apparently been used in various ways through the centuries) that, if you’ve seen it, is unbelievably striking for its metallic namesake, but also for the sheer volume of expensive pearls, stones, geegaws and what-not stuck to the front of it. The description lingers for Syropoulos recognizes the majority of it to be composed from pieces lifted from the monastery of Christ Pantokrator in Constantinople during the 4th Crusade, and his memoirs of the trip I gather are particularly powerful mostly for what they only allude to: the feelings of sadness and nostalgia that haunt the delegation.

The remainder of the article moves through some of the major pieces of Byzantine spolia that adorned Venice in the aftermath of 1204. At that time Venice was hailed as the “Lord of one quarter and a quarter of one quarter of the Roman Empire,” a result of the negotiations that followed the sack of the Mother of Cities, and Klein makes the point that in much of the spolia reuse this message is quite explicit. Venice saw itself as, in many ways, a successor to Byzantium, while at the same time its progeny as well. Venice hailed the suzerainty of Byzantium for far longer than much of the West, and its beginnings, as can be seen in the Cathedral of San Marco, are saturated with Byzantium. Only when trade and the vicissitudes of time had lifted Venice beyond its Byzantine beginnings, did she throw off the Roman mantle to take her place as a leader of Mediterranean affairs. This history, and Venice’s present, is reflected in the use of Byzantine spolia, Klein argues. The tetrarchs in the corner of the treasury, the quadriga horses above the San Marco portal, the “carmagnola” (I know Carmagnola as a name and a place, but apparently Klein is referring to some unspecified monument in Venice with which I am unfamiliar), all reflect a direct referencing of a Byzantine past, and a Venetian present.

This is the major thrust of the article, although the specifics are extensive and rehearsed in true art historical detail. Klein discusses the Pala D’Oro, how it is composed of Byzantine enamels likely dating to the 9th and 10th centuries and depicting a portion of a Byzantine ‘festival’ cycle. New liturgical books were commissioned around the same time (the mid 14th century), and their covers are also adorned with exquisite Byzantine enamels, as well as Venetian copies. Other renovations include extensive Byzantine style mosaics, serpentine columns and porphyry pulpits (you can guess where the pieces came from), and other bits and pieces to San Marco in such quantity that one wonders if any of the building isn’t made of Byzantine spolia. The majority of this work appears to have been at the behest of Doge Andrea Dandolo, descendent of the blind octogenarian Doge Enrico, who, bounding over the walls, sword in hand in his dotage, was responsible for the sack of Constantinople in the first place. That these renovations and Byzantino-centrism occurred nearly a hundred years after the sack is interesting, and a point I would Klein had explored further.

The majority of the article delves into a specific project of Andrea’s, the acquisition, or “translation” of relics from Constantinople to Venice. The floating city is supposed to be awash in relics taken from New Rome, and there is hardly a church there that does not boast of one, and St. Mark’s of several, including the Holy Blood of Christ, various bits of the True Cross, a skull fragment of John the Baptist, and, wait for it, the arm of St. George. Much of our information about these relics comes from just one source, the Chronicle of Andrea Dandolo, and many of them appear to have been “rediscovered” in the city during his reign. Clearly something is going on, and Klein makes the point that Andrea was attempting, through his renovations and relic gathering, to make clear not only the connection mentioned earlier between Byzantium and Venice, but also that divine providence, in moving these relics to Venice, was acting through the state and, in no uncertain terms, himself.

This was fascinating and I’m sure Klein is correct in his interpretation. However I would liked to have seen much more on the context of the Byzantine spolia used outside of St. Mark’s. How was it viewed? What were the multivariate meanings that people assigned to them? Not only that, but how are we to interpret the stories of all these translations from the Chronicle of Andrea? Having had the good fortune to TA a class last semester in which we discussed at some length translation literature, I know that very little of what they profess to report can be taken at face value. Klein notes this, but proceeds solely to itemize the chronicles stories and just leave it at that. Perhaps such an examination would require an entire book. All in all I ended up noting down a source he used that looked particularly interesting for the questions that occurred to me, a piece by M. Perry on the myths and local reactions to Byzantine spolia in Venice that was written in 1977.

What we see in this article is a state sanctioned, quite specific artistic appropriation of Byzantine material. What other uses may it have had? What can relic literature tell us about the contexts of relic veneration? (cough cough Lexi and Alba cough) What does the placement of Byzantine enamels next to Venetian copies of the same tell us about how these objects were viewed? Does this represent hybridity? Where do we draw the line between appropriation and copying?

Cutler, A. 2002. “Visual Communities in Byzantium and Medieval Islam.” In Visions of Community in the Pre-Modern World, edited by, Nicholas Howe, 37–73. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.

Linda Gosner

In this 2002 article, Cutler critiques the traditional scholarly approaches to looking at Byzantine and Islamic art. She begins by emphasizing the unfortunate scholarly divide between the two worlds. Byzantine art has apparently been seen as primarily religious and scholars have focused on the “purely spiritual content of Byzantine art,” which is divorced from the more “secular interests of Islamic art” (42). She is referring here to Orientalizing misconceptions of Arab art, with exotic dancers, musicians, and drinking scenes. This division has led scholars to unnecessarily classify the art into either category, rather than looking at visual connections or overlapping elements.

Her second issue with traditional art historical writing is that scholars have tended to focus on the art itself, or the visual product, rather than the processes that created it or the perceptions of the people who viewed. Scholars, she writes, “have the tendency to neutralize the image by excessive erudition” (41) and have examined only infrequently the human processes and perceptions surrounding the objects in their context. She places a new emphasis on the multiple and changing meaning of images in different contexts (essentially object life histories), and the importance of us not writing our own perceptions and, in particular, academically- or religiously-influenced opinions about either Byzantine or Islamic art. She points out the importance of looking at experience and process: "The mutual reinforcement of art and experience remained a powerful agent in the compact between spectators and the work of the image-makers they encountered or employed. This bond is more central to an understanding of the meaning that artistic production had for its original audience than the exegisis that characterizes most art-historical commentary" (40).

Cutler – very wisely and skillfully, I think – tries to establish the role of visual culture in community formation. I’m particularly interested in ways to look at “communities” archaeologically, and this argument was a very strong and interesting part of this paper. Using examples like the Cyrillic C painted on doors that identifies Serbs, she talks about the ways that symbols such as this denote exclusive communities. Signs like this operate through “abbreviation and allusion” (the "C" refers to the alliteration "Samo Sloga Srbina spasava" - "only unity will save the Serbs"). But instead of being comprehensible only to members of the community, these signs are often understood to signify an exclusive community to outsiders (even if they don’t possess the knowledge to be able to understand the full meaning of such a sign). In addition, we need to look at the art of communities not just in religious contexts, but domestic and public contexts as well. I was reminded very much of the way that Coptic communities incorporate subtle crosses into their mudbrick buildings and on metal doors at Deir-sitt Damiana where we work in Egypt (and also in other Coptic communities). But also how Copts tattoo their wrists with a small cross, so that they are easily identifiable as part of the Coptic community even outside of villages.

Cutler also attempts to look at the issue of hybridity as a way of encouraging more cross over between Islamic and Byzantine art. She claims that post-colonialist historiography about hybridity assumes that it weakens authority and undoes community, apparently because symbols of community are changed. She argues here that we should see hybridity, instead, as something that can revise and invigorate tradition. I tend to agree, though I’m not sure her critique is fair of post-colonial studies. She gives the example of the St. George icon in Athens, which is clear an icon, but one which has external decoration that looks like Kufic lettering. There is no reason to believe that it was the work of Arab masons, but rather a hybrid artistic creation taking advantage of various common visual motifs from different traditions.

Questions: -How do we want to define hybridity in this class? Do hybrid objects revise and invigorate tradition, as Cutler suggests, or do they change tradition? -Even though Cutler says we should look at non-religious contexts, most of the objects she mentions are from religious contexts. What examples can we think of from other contexts? What kinds of differences do these highlight? -How do we get away from traditional scholarly interpretations when so many of the art objects that we have are out of context, or published in these more traditional ways? -Are community studies useful?

Posted at Mar 17/2013 03:24PM:
reyhan durmaz: Cutler, A. 2001. Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Economies. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55: 247–78.

Cutler starts his analysis of gift exchange in the medieval world by demonstrating that exchanged luxury items were both companied by great amounts of species, and they were convertible into monetary amounts themselves. Whether or not they were actually converted to gold and silver, every item had a monastery value that was mentioned or negotiated. For instance the mandylion was worthy of 12.000 gold pieces and 200 prisoners of war for the Greeks, which was agreed upon by the Arabs.

The negotiability of the value of the gifts takes the reader of the article to the section in which Cutler shows that gifts were not only sent but also demanded from the other party, as some Turkish tribes did from the Byzantines, and demanding high-value gifts showed greed and misbehavior. Then he continues explaining some other social aspects of gift exchange, such as how it was used to buy peace, or to gain a right of asking for further favors. The convertibility, negotiability, and reciprocity of gifts then take the reader to the discussion of careful evaluation and analysis of gifts. Cutler’s example from the Abbasid court, that the gifts were sorted out, analyzed in tersm of their monetary value and recorded, is a good example that demonstrates that the entire gift exchange business was a complex power display that was given much attention and importance.

In the following section Cutler argues in opposition to the traditional distinction between economic and non-economic exchange. He rightly argues that although on the surface gift exchange might seem to be non-economic in character, the complex economic matrix behind it makes it worthy of a more detailed analysis. Production, packaging, transportation, and other steps in the production chain make gifts an economic commodity (as we’ve seen in detail in Jacoby’s article on Silk Economics).

He also points out that luxury items are in direct dialogue with demand and supply of markets. For instance, once an item is perceived to be luxurious, its raw material was banned from exports. In the very last section of his article Cutler discusses the applicability of various economic models to medieval gift exchanges. He argues that capitalist competitive instincts prevailed in the pre-capitalist societies, and the facts of circulation of goods determined their value and demand. Yet, he says, exchanges had different meaning for various strata of society – ideological on the imperial lever, whereas survival on the popular level. He argues that ideologies become commodities and commodities become ideologies, an idea that I like. Nevertheless, I disagree with his separation of the society into two groups, namely the rulers and the rest. Society comprises of many more strata, which makes the definitions and infusions of ideologies as well as commodities very complex. This is one of the questions I suggest to bring forth: How can we trace the impacts of imperial level gift exchanges on the lower strata of society? More generally, how does luxurious consumption take place within and between various social strata?

Posted at Mar 17/2013 10:41PM:
Alexis Jackson:

Tronzo, W. 1997. Byzantine Court Culture from the Point of View of Norman Sicily: The Case of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. In H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204. Washington D.C., pp. 101-114.

William Tronzo’s article, “Byzantine Court Culture from the Point of View of Norman Sicily” uses an analysis of the Palermo Cappella Palatina from the period of Roger II in order to look at borrowed representations (and the communication) of kingship in 12th century Sicily. The chapel is part of a palace complex sited on top of a hill in Palermo, a choice that Tronzo indicates was meant to communicate the dominance of Roger II to visitors and travelers alike. The chapel was built in the early 1140s as part of the project of constructing a new capital city, at the height of Roger’s power. As such, Tronzo argues that a variety of styles (particularly those associated with Byzantine imperial power and God-granted kingship) were utilized in the chapel in order to lend “a patina of prestige” to the new regime. (Tronzo 102) Tronzo builds on an older scholarly argument that the church was based directly on Middle Byzantine examples, both in plan and mosaic decoration. He agrees in part with the work of Ernst Kitzinger’s 1949 article, pointing out the chapel’s similarity with the domed, centrally-planned cathedral of the Transfiguration in Pskov (in northwestern Russia), as well as parallels between both buildings’ Christological scenes (eleven similar scenes).

Inside the church, Tronzo is particularly concerned with the visual relationship between Christ and the king. Of the utmost importance is the location of the now lost (but archaeologically well-attested) balcony. This balcony would have provided seating for the king when we has in attendance, and was nestled into the mosaic narrative of Christ’s life. In one way, the positioning of Christological scenes opposite the balcony allowed for better viewing by the king. Additionally, the balcony was presumably positioned between mosaics of the Crucifixion and the Anastasis. “Presumably” because they are now missing, like the balcony; however, as Tronzo points out, any self-respecting designer using Middle-Byzantine models wouldn’t dare to exclude those scenes, so they must have ensconced the king’s balcony. This positioning, the author notes, would have used the architecture of the building together with the mosaics to visually locate Roger II within the narrative of Christ’s life. Thus, visitors to the church down below would have been encouraged to read Roger’s position (on the balcony; of power over them) as one natural and designated by God (who presides over all of this decoration from his position in the central dome). The reading is further suggested by a narthex mosaic (in St. Mary’s of the Admiral…another church in Palermo decorated in the 1140s), which shows Christ crowning Roger II.

Tronzo also suggests that the designers depart from and go farther than Middle Byzantine tradition of visually reinforcing divine kingship by depicting Roger II’s face nearly identical to the face of Christ in the St. Mary narthex mosaic. Although Byzantine authors supplemented the same idea through writing, Roger (or Roger’s propagandists/church designers) apparently felt that he ought to use the same rhetoric visually instead of textually, since “such an image could be understood by anyone- Arab Norman, Greek, or Latin.” (Tronzo 109) Considering Gerstel’s suggestions about multiple visual understandings of the same iconography by different groups in the Greek Morea, the argument that Tronzo makes is rather problematic. How can we expect Arab, Norman, Greek, or Latin viewers not to read different meanings into the images, especially as they were likely to view Roger II’s kingship with differing viewpoints?

Tronzo makes a variety of suggestions about the designers of the church, their precedence, and their motivations. For instance, he indicates that the designers of both the Cappella Palatina and the Pskov cathedral may have been working from a model (possibly a book), possibly coming from some central place (the implication here is that the “some central point” is Byzantine in origin). (Tronzo 104) Tronzo also suggests in another part of the article that the maquernas ceiling decoration in the Cappella Palatina’s nave was “the product of Islamic craftsmen”, further, which calls into question Tronzo’s conception of exactly who is in charge of the church’s design. He suggests in turn Roger II himself, nebulous “designers” who seem also to run Roger’s propaganda in general, as well as these Islamic architect/painters.

Tronzo’s final point is that Roger II’s designers manipulated both Byzantine and Islamic architectural styles for different purposes. Byzantine styles, he says, were harnessed in church architecture for their meaning in defining liturgical space, and the divinity of the king’s role (likely a point of pride for Roger II, who had only recently had his legitimacy affirmed by Pope Innocent II, his erstwhile nemesis). Meanwhile, Islamic styles (which make only a brief appearance in the article), are harnessed in Roger II’s villas and palaces (as well as the nave of the Cappella Palatina, which must therefore “resemble the noble reception hall of a Fatamid palace more than anything else”?) to emphasize the role of the king as earthly ruler. This final section, contrasting earthly/Islamic v. divine/Byzantine is the most problematic part of Tronzo’s argument, likely because it is accompanied by the least evidence. It would be interesting to know if other contemporary rulers were attempting to manipulate styles to define different aspects of their rule in this way.

Questions: Is it necessary to demonstrate a connection between two places, or locationally-specific ideas (can ideas be said to be locationally-specific?) in order to compare them? For instance, does it matter if any 12th century person (or series of people) ever travelled between Pskov and Palermo to connect idea ideas of kingship? How was a 12th century person who never left the island supposed to interpret meaning in this space (connecting to last week’s concept of “recognizability”, how do we access which historical people feel into which categories of cultural recognition)?

What role should literacy play in this? How much of “cultural literacy” (maybe the same as “recognizability”?) is the ability to read text/the texts of a particular court?

Walker, A. 2012. The Emperor and the World. Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E. Cambridge.

Alba Serino and Linda Gosner

In chapter two of her book, Alicia Walker studies the expression of power of the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056) in art. She advances the hypothesis that the Macedonian concept of conquest and its attitude toward foreign people might have served as an impulse for the adoption of non-Byzantine motifs within the imperial program. To justify this conclusion, she offers to the reader the case study of the Troyes Casquet. This purple dyed ivory box, representing both Byzantine and foreign iconography, is -- according to Walker -- an artifact strategically employing emblems of cultural difference as a means of expressing universal dominion. So, as she says, "Diverse artistic traditions are drawn together to articulate a coherent expression of Byzantine universal rule."

After a brief excursus on the changes of imperial iconography from the iconoclast Macedonian to the iconophile Amorian dynasty, the author underlines the continuity of ideology between these two dynasties. Afterwards she analyzes the stylistic and iconographic sources of the Troyes Casquet and suggests its function as a diplomatic gift. After an accurate iconographic analysis of this artifact and after proving that the Casquet can be dated back to the period of the Macedonian dynasty, Walker arrives at the conclusion that Byzantine art of this dynasty employed non-Byzantine motifs only for the purpose of communicating with foreign audiences. Moreover, she underlines how objects addressed to a foreign audience, as for example diplomatic gifts, could use an iconographic model usually unaccepted by the Byzantine iconoclast art.

In chapter three of her book, “Crafting a Byzantine- Islamic Community of Kings,”Walker switches gears to look not at cultural difference, but at common elements of Byzantine and Muslim culture that were emphasized in certain kinds of gift giving. The notes that parallels in ceremonial practices (comparable processions, appearances, and protocols) meant that similar objects and motifs could be employed and have cross-cultural meaning in both courts. Such objects built upon shared systems of meaning and, in some cases, common identity. Here Walker examines both material and textual evidence.

Looking at an 11^th century Arabic text, The Book of Gifts and Rarities (attributed to a Fatimid courtier), Walker notes that many of the gifts recorded contained shared cultural references such as imagery indicative of abundance and power, rare, animals, flowers, or vegetal design. Objects then, could employ shared symbolic imagery, or imagery that was simply visually pleasing. Focusing on the symbolic, rather than the visually pleasing aspects of certain material gifts, Walker pinpoints several objects described to analyze in-depth: a saddle of Alexander the Great and a vest decorated with a seal of the Old Testament King Solomon. Both objects contained images or associations with powerful rulers of the past who were known in both Byzantine and Islamic culture.

The saddle of Alexander the Great was a gift from the Byzantine emperor to the Fatimid caliph. Whether its attribution to Alexander was real or imagined, the object gained value based on its connection with the important king. Alexander was a meaningful figure in both cultures: in Islam he was considered one of four great rulers in antiquity. Through this particular object, the Byzantine emperor could have asserted his status as the inheritor of Alexander’s legacy, but also he would have expressed that the Fatimid caliph was worthy of possessing such an object. The seal of Solomon was gifted in the opposite direction – the Seljuq ruler (Tughrul Beg) sent it as a resent to the Byzantine emperor. Solomon was idealized as a wise king in both the Islamic and Byzantine cultural traditions. In the gift of this object, both rulers would have recognized the symbolic importance of Solomon, and their imagined connection with him. Gifting such objects that underscored shared rather than conflicting interests would have assisted in cooperation between the rulers on both sides.

Walker’s argument is compelling here, though it is hard to know the precise meaning that rulers like Alexander and Solomon would have had in these different contexts, even if both were associated with power and successful kingship of a mythologized past. She brings out the important point that gift exchange had meaning far beyond the exchange of goods with monetary or artistic value. Certain objects would have had particularly potent meaning because of their symbolic value, and as relics or amulets, would have had deeper associations (especially, as Walker points out, when the imagery or memories associated with them had “parity of meaning” in both Byzantine and Islamic culture).

Questions:

Is it possible that the Macedonian dynasty really used foreign art only as a political instrument? Are there any other artifacts proving this political ideology claimed by Alicia Walker? What can an artifact actually tell us about court interaction and how?

How can we trace meanings across culture, and really determine if there was “parity of meaning” as Walker tries to argue? Is it possible that objects could have had the same meaning on both sides of the cultural divide?

Are the objects that Walker points out in Chapter 3 singularized objects or indicative of a wider trend in gifting between courts? Is it ever just about pretty objects, or should we always look for deeper meaning here?

How do we deal with the lack of material evidence for such singularized objects (many of the examples are objects described in texts)?

Eastmond, A. 2004. Art and Identity in thirteenth century Byzantium: Hagia Sophia and the Empire of Trebizond. Aldershot

Clive Vella and Ian Randall

The two chapters that we have read by Eastmond are coming from a book about the church of Hagia Sophia in Trebizond. The preceding chapters of this book seem to have largely dealt with the exterior of this structure, which are decidedly non-Byzantine in character. However, these two chapters focus rather on the interior of the church, which the author claims returns us to a recognizably Byzantine world. Why are these paintings important? Well, they represent a potential insight into the religious and political ideology of Manuel I and The Empire of Trebizond in the contested decades before 1282. (At which time of course The Empire of Trebizond recognized the suzerainty of Nicaea and the Palaiologoi after the reconquest of Constantinople.)

The first chapter seeks to look at the possible political implications of the religious program of paintings, which it successfully addresses to a certain extent. The interior of Hagia Sophia suffers from a considerable amount of damage that happened over time and was somewhat fixed by restorations done over 30 years ago. The main organization of these interior spaces appear relatively straightforward, where groupings of narratives and cycles are apparent around the church. Indeed, the naos included the monumental bust of Christ Pantokrator surrounded by a host of angels. On the side of this monumental focus the western half of the naos includes the Passion narrative and the post-resurrection scenes appearin the eastern part and the bema.

The Hagia Sophia church does not contain a single narrative programme, but rather a series of programmes, which divide and also unify the various spaces. However, the manner in which these narratives are experienced would followed the route taken by the worshippers coming into Hagia Sophia. However, you might be asking yourself: well, how do the themes of these narratives form together? A way in offered by the author in looking at the three major painted inscriptions: one encircling Christ Pantokrator, one in the lower orders of the east and the last one located around the top conch of the apse.

These inscriptions, while fragmentary, still instill a sense of the combinative elements that the contemporary historical conditions were causing in the Empire of Trebizond. For example, ‘Holiness will distinguish your house, O Lord, forever and ever (Psalm 92.5)’ seems to express the fact this Christian realm was surrounded by Muslim states. Further, the Christ Pantokrator inscription strengthens the uniqueness of the historical conditions through the analogical comparison of Trebizond with the exiled people of Israel. These inscriptions were also meant for the visual recognition by incoming worshippers, therefore, textual references were visually apparent becoming smaller as space ran out. Not only was Hagia Sophia a great new church, but it was even meant to supplant its older parallel (as seen in the 3rd inscription). These textual representations were meant to combine theological, liturgical and even political expressions with a church. This church embodies the pain of exile, the return to a great glory combined within rhetoric. Manuel becomes represented in these narratives as Christ’s vice-regent on earth, a veritable mirror of authority and appearance.

Perhaps less convincing, or rather more problematic, is the rebuilding of Constantinople in Trebizond. This is suggested by the author through the comparison of artistry at Hagia Sophia with the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Such comparisons that can be made include the location of images and also the composition of the scenes being unusual. The author uses these sorts of comparison as a means of tracing the movement and knowledge of artists around this part of the world. Honestly, we have already discussed and debated the issue of itinerant craftsmen and transmission of knowledge. However, how can we explain the rebuilding of Constantinople all the way in Trebizond? I (Clive) am a little bit torn with this interpretation because it seems comprehensible that Manuel sought to recreate the old center of power into a new place. On the other hand, one could raise some doubts about the linearity of going from Constantinople to Trebizond. Rather, Manuel compared himself and his identity as being on par with Constantine’s making an image of dynastic succession and legitimacy.

The overall point of this program is to assert Trebizond, and Michael’s, position as laying explicit claim to the title of New Rome/Jerusalem. In the atmosphere of competition over this moniker, and therewith the future of Byzantium, between Epiros and Nicaea, Manuel had a specific, political, axe to grind in drawing connections between himself and Christ in a very Imperial way. This becomes clearer in the donor portrait of Manuel I which lies on the south porch. I (Ian) share some of Clive’s skepticism about the interpretation of the apostolic program on the interior of the church, but see the connection with the Holy Apostles as being far more tenable when the portrait of Manuel I is considered. (Overall the article required a lot of prior knowledge on the regional situation between 1204 and 1261)

This portrait, now lost, shows Manuel I in full regalia with a standard Byzantine Imperial inscription: I am the faithful Emperor and autocart of the Romans. Simple enough. The description and sketch that survives however shows an almost completely unrecognizable set of regalia. Only his boots and scepter are Byzantine and, interestingly given the competition between Nicaea, Trebizond, and Epiros, the loros and the rest of the Byzantine set of imperial regalia adopted by the other two courts is totally absent. What is going on here? His coins follow a standard Byzantine formula, even the interior of the church we just discussed, while unusual in program, makes explicit Constantinopolitan references. Fascinatingly the answer can be found in the surrounding regions and courts that, when discussing Byzantium, are all too easy to forget about but on the ground are quite real and immediate.

Following a quick rundown of some of the local players and their forms of regalia, somewhat Byzantine but largely not, Eastmond goes on to describe the pearl ‘pearl crown’ eagle covered robes, the anointing horn, and portrait of St. Eugenios, as working within more of a local paradigm. The Byzantine references are there, but the remainder of his regalia draws more local connections while at the same time reinforcing his claim to the contested throne of Byzantium. The eagles are easy enough to read, but Eastmond goes into extensive detail in describing the ‘anointing horn.’ Fairly unique, he thinks that this is drawing Davidic references. Incredibly this works for him at a variety of levels, not only making a claim to divine sanction, vis a vis David and Samuel, in his anointing as Emperor of Trebizond, thus circumventing the problem of being crowned by only a metropolitan in the church hierarchy, but also draws connections with the Bagrationids of Georgia. This latter dynasty claimed descent from David himself, and the magnakomnenoi had married in, thus solidifying their regional power base in the face of considerable threats. These threats are reference by the portrait of St. Eugenios, patron saint of Trebizond and savior of the city as recently as 1223.

So we can see how Manuel’s outfit works to not only make a claim to the Byzantine Emperor-ship, but plays on local motifs and connections to reference the base of his power in and around Trebizond, and at the same time seeks to legitimate all of the above through references to divine sanction in the form of himself as David. Not a bad outfit. All of this lends circumstantial weight to the religious program within the church and particularly those bits of the program that make reference to David. In thinking about competing courts these motifs and imagery bring up a number of questions. How is power experienced? In sending a message what are the forms with which it is necessary to engage? Are these local or extra-local? Is vagueness to be desired over a more pointed message, and how is this meant to be read? What is the role of representation, particularly in ecclesiastical spaces, in making political claims? When a religion is not shared, what are the venues for expressing power and power relationships? Who are these images meant to be seen by and why does it matter to them? Perhaps most importantly, where can we get robes like that?

Posted at Mar 20/2013 11:27AM:
fkondyli: I was thinking more of our discussion on gifts, their messages, audiences and reception and one interesting book recently out is The Gift in Antiquity, by M. Satlow (ed.). have a look!

Week 10: Crusades!

Vorderstrasse, T. 2005. “Middle Byzantine/Frankish Transition (A.D. 1100-1200).” In Al-Mina: A Port of Antioch from Late Antiquity to the end of the Ottomans, 103–132. Leiden: Netherlands Instituut Voor het Nabije Oosten.

Linda Gosner

This chapter by T. Vorderstrasse examines the changes in material culture that happened as a result of the conquest of the Antiochene region by the Franks. It is part of a larger book that examines al-Mina, a port city of Antioch, from late antiquity until the end of the Ottoman period. Looking at three classes of material from excavations at al-Mina, including coinage, ceramic, and glass, the author makes the argument that the political divisions are only reflected in government issued coins, whereas the other classes of material culture show more trade and interaction between the Franks and Muslims than anticipated.

Vorderstrasse begins by giving a background on the political history of the region, and including a discussion on the “Frankification” or “acculturation” that took part as a result of the Frankish conquest of the region at the end of the 11^th century. The Byzantines seized the area from the Byzantines in 1084, and then the Franks took over 14 years later. In 1097, the Frankish Principality of Antioch was created, with Antioch as the capital city and an important trading center. This lasted through the end of the 12^th century, when the Franks lost nearly half their territory to the Ayyubid dynasty. There is limited architectural archaeological evidence from the Middle Byzantine/Frankish period, but Vorderstrasse discusses some evidence for settlement and the remains of several monasteries and churches (and then goes on to look at material culture).

He seems to suggest that, although Franks born in the East were in some ways culturally distinct from those of Western origin, “acculturation” happened primarily in one direction. He talks about the French language spoken by the Franks, which was somehow a “barrier to acculturation,” since the surrounding populations would have spoken Arabic. I found this examination of the link between language and identity somewhat problematic, especially when he is trying to get at acculturation in material terms for the bulk of the paper. I can’t think of any situation where language has provided any insurmountable barrier to cultural interchange of various kinds. Further, I’m not sure how useful the term “Frankification” is (the author himself admits that it is problematic because the designation does not “include the man ethnicities represented amongst the Crusaders” (103)). Frankification brings with it the same problems we find with “Romanization,” or “Hellenization,” or any number of “- izations” really. This section of the paper is under-theorized and not very helpful in terms of the actual material analysis, and the use of Frankification and acculturation as terms for describing a much more complex process is problematic. Vorderstrasse does make some practical points, however. Because the Franks occupied primarily the coastal regions, and the Muslims held the hinterlands, interdependency was basically a necessity despite their often-hostile relationship. European traders exchanged iron, amber, slaves, wood and wool for spice, sugar, was indigo, coral, food flavorings, dyestuffs, perfumes, gold, ivory, glazed pottery, glass, drugs, ceramics, carpets, and textiles.

Vorderstrasse chooses to examine the material evidence from al-Mina, both because it seems to be the place with the most abundant archaeological evidence and because of the city’s importance as a port for Antioch. He suggests that the changes in the coinage during this period are linked closely with the political changes, since the government was responsible for issuing them. The earliest coins produced after Frankish conquest were imitations of Middle Byzantine types, but no imitation Islamic coins have been found (suggesting minimal economic integration?). After about 20 years, they began producing “hybrid” types that combined Middle Byzantine and Latin types. Finally, after 40 years of producing the hybrid type, they began binging both silver and (more rarely) bronze coins that resembled European coins in thinness. A greater number of this type of coins have been found, suggesting increasing economic activity (but minimal importation of European or Islamic coins).

The ceramic record indicates that the settlement reached its peak in the 13^th century, the period to which most of the ceramic dates. However, Vorderstrasse does express concern that only glazed ceramic was collected, which could significantly skew the record of overall ceramic by period. Interestingly, there was no distinctive Frankish or Crusader pottery in Syria-Palestine until at least 100 years after conquest. At that time, styles developed all over the Mediterranean that reflected a distinctively western European and Islamic “hybrid” style. At al-Mina, and elsewhere in the Principality of Antioch, Port St. Symeon ware was produced and is the most common pottery type found. The decorative patterns on this type of pottery reflect both Islamic and Christian artistic influences. Additionally, some imitation Port St. Symeon ware (13^th century Cypriot ware) may have been imported from Cyprus and several sherds of Italian pottery were also discovered. Some Byzantine pottery was also imported – as prestige objects Vorderstrasse suggests -- from at least the mid-12^th century. More important, perhaps was the presence of glazed Islamic pottery from “regions held by Muslims” including Egypt. This suggests reciprocal trade, despite the political situation. Apart from this pottery, the coarse wares suggest basic continuity in form for cooking pots (which Vorderstrasse suggests means that dining habits did not change for the local population, and the Franks adopted local ways of dining). Turning briefly to glass, which apparently does not preserve well in the environment of al-Mina, Vorderstrasse suggests that “Islamicized” styles like cylindrical beakers with Arabic inscriptions are the most common here. He points out rightly that the Arabic inscriptions don’t mean that these vessels were used by Arabic speakers and that these need not be associated with any kind of Islamic identity.

This article was good in that it attempted to tie together a lot of material evidence for a period that apparently lacks much of this. I think the differences observed in the development of coins as opposed to glass and pottery are potentially very telling of the political and economic situation in the Principality of Antioch. Theoretically and archaeologically, however, the ideas presented here are occasionally problematic. As I mentioned above, the use of the terms Frankification and acculturation are not helpful in the overall argument. Vorderstrasse often references problematic collection and recording methods for the materials (especially ceramic and glass) that he is trying to study, which makes some of the conclusions more tenuous. Additionally, he is taking the group of materials from al-Mina as a whole without considering any additional context information (domestic? Public? Chance finds?). Attempting to look at elite material culture without actually explaining where it came from archaeologically is unhelpful, especially when he attempts to make some interpretive statements about cooking and dining practices. How can we tell that dining remained the same just because there is a continuity of form? If there really was so much interchange of material goods, perhaps the foods available and the ideas about how to cook them also changed. So, the overall project presented here is interesting and helpful in some ways, but the details of the analysis are somewhat problematic. Even so, the suggestion of a high degree of contact and trade between Franks and the people in the hinterland is important for understanding the economics of the period.

Questions:

-How do we deal with problems of interpreting material evidence when we are using sketchily excavated materials or materials without provenance?

-What is the link between language and identity? Is language a barrier to cultural interchange?

-What is the link between material and identity? Between material form and function?

-How do we define elite? Does elite mean the same thing in the various cultural contexts described in this article?

Posted at Mar 31/2013 09:24PM:
reyhan durmaz: Susan Balderstone, "In the Syrian Taste": Crusader Churches in the Latin East as an architectural expression of Orthodoxy" Mirabilia 10 (Jan-jun 2010): 106-129.

Susan Balderstone explores the theological expressions through architecture, and suggests that the Crusaders, by adopting the three-apse east end plan, imposed the message of Orthodoxy in Palestine while restoring the ruined churches in the region in the 11th-13th centuries. She argues that triple-apse church plan was frequently used in Palestine and Cyprus after the 4th, particularly in the 6th century as an expression of Orthodoxy. It continued to be used in church architecture until the 12th century, as seen in churches in Constantinople and Europe. The author argues that this plan was introduced to Europe as a result of the influence of Greek “Eastern Orthodox” monasticism on the West from the 8th century onwards.

Balderstone, following Bandmann and Krautheimer, suggests that certain architectural forms might be used across wide chronological spans due to specific meanings attached to them; and argues that patrons chose the three-apse plan as a means to express their side in the theological debates of the 4th-6th centuries. “Thus in the 4th c the Arians were associated with the centralized, domed form while the Nicene orthodox were associated with the triple-apsed form.” She argues that later doctrinal debates and controversies, such as the Origenist and Christological controversies, found reflections on architectural forms. According to her argument, dome became the symbol of Monophysitism, whereas tripartite sanctuary was of the Chalcedonian side.

After a short section in which Balderstone dwells on number symbolism and argues that numerological interpretations found direct reverberations on early ecclesiastical architectural planning, she switches to a brief survey of architectural developments in the Crusader states and Europe. She states that although three-apse plan was an Orthodox form, Crusaders did not hesitate to use this form, for they aimed at unification of Christianity in the Near East, rather than emphasizing the doctrinal differences. I the meanwhile, different architectural forms developed in Europe, although a return to the three-apse plan was seen in the 14th century due to revival of fundamental approaches to theology.

Balderstone’s article makes one question the extent of meaning and symbolism in architecture. She covers almost an entire millennium in her analysis. Even though certain architectural forms might emerge with a symbolic agenda, is it possible to trace the same meaning throughout centuries in architectural forms? Moreover, her analysis of doctrinal debates focus on the Trinitarian debates, and does not do justice to other ones. For instance, Christological debates were about the nature, and later on energy, of Christ. The nuances in interpretation resulted in dramatic changes in the Church. Is it possible to see every doctrinal debate reflected in architecture? Her analysis raises questions in that it neglects the wide diversity in architectural forms. She includes a few main types of church plans, namely the three-apsed sanctuary, central plan, cruciform. Yet, especially in the Near East there is far more variety in church plans. She also does not discuss other factors that play a role in determining church plans, such as natural resources (building materials), local patronage (personal preferences), space economics, etc.

Posted at Apr 01/2013 12:22AM:
Alexis Jackson and Clive Vella:

Boas, A. 1999. Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East. London, pp. 58-87. Boas, A. 2010. Domestic Settings: Sources on Domestic Architecture and Day-To-Day Activities in the Crusader States. Leiden, chapter 12, “Urban Neighborhoods and Streets”

The earlier chapter by Boas, taken from Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East, deals with the Frankish rural landscape in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Early work believed that the Franks did not settle outside their town and fortresses while agricultural remained exclusively in the hands of the non-Frankish population. However, Boas’ overarching interpretation lies in the fact that we cannot see the Franks as playing a minor role, largely contained to administration, in their political acquisitions in the Near East. This chapter departs from a typically literary based platform and then moves towards an overview of archaeological remains in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Frankish conquest obviously included the take-over (or perhaps replacement is more appropriate?) of the previous Muslim organization based on the Iqta’, which were a hierarchical system of fiefs that were divided between crown properties, churches, military orders and small landowners. Unlike the Western Frankish set-up, landlords in the East received income from their tenants (monetary or produce). Aside from the multi-ethnic population in the East, villages were supposedly segregated between eastern Christians, Muslims or Franks with an estimated 1,200 villages in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. These villages had to pay an annual tax on land, the Arabic kharaj or Latinized carragium. The literary records of Ibn Jubair suggest that Muslim peasant surrendered half of their crops to the Franks at harvest time and paid a tax per head. These taxation right also permitted the retrieval of tithes by Churches and military orders, but of course the bigger question remains: what kinds of evidence can archaeology supply us with to correlate these literary records?

An interesting element that stems from Boas’ literary overview is the issue of monopoly and the supposed obligation for all peasants to use their lord’s processing infrastructure. But yet, as rapidly suggested by the author, hand-mills are not an uncommon artifacts (ex @ Al-Qubeiba & Al-Kurum) and some peasants are known to have been fined for using these mills in their homes. Of course, what the author is trying to indicate in a somewhat protracted manner, the centralization (or rather the monopoly) of rural production and procession is not a cohesively accepted top-down order. However, this account does not seem so much inclined on assessing the mechanism of socio-political take over, but rather, focuses on comparing the previous literary accounts with the archaeological remains.

The structure of settlement occupation in this landscape was largely made up of villes (or casale) that were larger and centralized in comparison to isolated farms (known as curtiles). Typical of archaeological reality these villes differed considerably in size and their morphological set-up, but the role of headman was always an important role that served as an intermediary between the Frankish overlords and village peasants. A considerable hurdle at the time of this publication seems that very few 12th century village had been properly investigated and published to date (ex Khirbat Ka’akul) which could be taken as meaning that the range of comparanda available is slim and not necessarily cross-comparative.

Yet, Boas spends a considerable part of this chapter describing Frankish village, while seemingly abandoning some of the concerns raised by the literature. These villages were not independent of nearby town, rather, these were situated in proximity to larger centers for security (yet, one could also suggest that this security concern was also paralleled by an economic logic). These villages, surrounding Jerusalem, Akko and Tyre, were either Frankish settlement in local villages or new planned villages. Boas rightly asks: why plan and build new villages? Perhaps, a sufficiently useful answer can be that these new towns were geared to provide subsidence that Muslim worshippers would consider to be haram (ie pig and wine). This foray into the rural landscape is not properly questioned by Boas, perhaps because this movement into rural lands was cut short by the losses of 1187. Perhaps for all the reasons mentioned above, the questioning of archaeological remains is short-lived since much of the available information hails from written sources (such as the agreements between landowners and settlers @ Beit Gorvin and Casal Imbert).

The archaeological remains of Frankish planned villages have little in common with the traditional Near Eastern village, raising our last class discussion of hybridity, appropriation, etc. In fact, despite some of the advantages of linear settlement plans, their defensibility suffers. Was this, as the author suggests, an optimistic manifestation of Frankish attempt at securing the hinterland? This chapter deals with four villages nearby Jerusalem: Al-Qubeiba, Al-Kurum, Al-Bira and Al-Haramiya. These planned villages were oriented towards Frankish concerns and demands, as suggested by the central construction of a manor house in such settlements. The compulsory inclusion of a church was variably located, as were the typically small and narrow houses. Aside from the settlement morphology, the occupation of the countryside was a centrally manipulative expression of Frankish administration, so while the villages were not prosperous their landlords could accumulate large profits.

This chapter ends rather suddenly after a long overview of agricultural practices that the Franks administered, and probably required. Yet, it raises some interesting points that perhaps are answered later in this book by Boas. From a purely archaeological standpoint, the remains described by Boas are interesting for numerous reasons. However, we cannot necessarily use literary accounts and then say ‘well the archaeology provides us with little insight’. Our class has rightly sought to debate encounters as a social engagement between the self and the other and these literary accounts provide us with a tantalizing possibility. Was the Frankish re-use of the Arab taxation set-up a take-over or replacement? Were the foundations of Frankish villages simply a security and subsistence concern? Or can we speak of the manner in which power and administration sought to occupy the rural landscape? Indeed, can we sociologically distinguish between the expressions of cultural hegemony in urban vs rural contexts?

The later chapter by Boas, “Urban Neighborhoods and Streets,” is taken from a 2010 volume titled, Domestic Settings: Sources on Domestic Architecture and Day-to-Day Activities in the Crusader States. This chapter deals with various features and organization of cities in the Crusader States. First, Boas informs the reader about primary organizing features of cities in the Crusader states: the ethnic origin of citizens, an association with a particular organization, the profession of residents, and the social status or financial position of residents (although he admits that there’s no existing evidence for this last category). He follows these guidelines by working his way through the “quarters” of two cities: Jerusalem and Acre). Oddly, although Boas fleetingly mentions that some institutions are outside the city walls, nowhere does he really discuss the role city walls and fortifications played in the organization of urban areas. On the same note, Boas notes that domestic architecture in the Crusader States would have followed a trend set my military architecture, but never clarifies precisely what that trend is.

Following his description of how Crusader cities are arranged into different neighborhoods and sub-groups, Boas looks into another feature that effects urban organization, streets. He notes that streets were often named for who lived on them (Street of the Furrier/Vicus Pellipariorum), what happened on them (Malquisinat, “Street of the Bad Cooking”), or where they led (Vicus ad Templum Domini). According to Boas, streets in Frankish Crusader cities and towns often follow existing (Roman or Byzantine) alignments, but are occasionally altered for the safety and convenience of citizens. For instance, straight Roman streets were shrunken, twisted, and covered in order to make streets more easily defensible and shield residents from inclement weather. Covered streets complete with vaulting existed in many urban areas and in great variation. Similarly, subterranean tunnels (a type of covered street?) were constructed in several Frankish cities, including the prime example of the “Templar’s Tunnel” in Acre.

What does not come across in this chapter is the sense of time moving across the Crusades. Boas does not address changes wrought on the organization of the city over the course of the period of Frankish settlement (although, to be fair, pre- and post- Frankish occupation comes up occasionally elsewhere in the book). Additionally, as in the earlier chapter, Boas’ examples remain plagued by a shortage of published data, so that his examples appear to be frustratingly generalized.

The entire chapter is marked by a lack of discussion; sites and evidence are mentioned, but not analyzed in any significant way. Information is provided to the reader in a matter-of-fact manner that begs the question, “what else is really going on here,” which is only encouraged by the brevity of the chapter. The majority of the book is taken over by the first three chapters (of fifteen total), so that the later chapters appear to suffer for lack of attention. To look for a clear argument, one must turn to the final “conclusions” chapter of the book, which itself is only a few pages. As a result, the chapters are not brought together successfully into a coherent and persuasive argument. One of the relevant (especially with regards to our ongoing discussions) statements made in the book’s concluding chapter is this: “…the presence of both Eastern and Western elements of design and technology in Frankish domestic architecture was the outcome of a slow process of synthesis that probably began soon after the arrival of the Franks and continued throughout the period of their presence in the East’ had they survived longer in the region it would probably have led to the development of a unique and distinctly Frankish type of house, just had already occurred in the realm of Frankish military architecture.” (Boas 2010, p.247) This statement seems to be at odds with not only Chapter 12, but the contents of the book more generally. First, Boas cannot talk about “synthesis” and “development” if he is not looking at changes occurring in and around the cities over time (both of those processes require chronological movement). Second, when Boas examines city organization, he focuses on separating elements (the first paragraphs of the chapter describe how, among other things, neighborhoods in Crusader cities were divided by the ethnicity of their occupants). He does not spend any of the twelfth chapter looking at interaction between groups, although the case might have been made using the existing examples of streets and covered markets. If the Franks are not interacting in any demonstrable manner with the “local” inhabitants of the city, what is there to drive the processes described by Boas in his conclusion?

Finally, there is the ongoing issue of clarity in terminology- Boas is focused on “Frankish” domestic architecture and urbanization, but exactly who are his Franks? AT times he mentions his Franks as bringing over features from the West, or from adventures elsewhere around the Mediterranean. Still, his mentions of any sort of “local” are so minimal that perhaps they are somehow folded into Boas’ definition of “Franks”.

Questions: • To what degree do Frankish Crusaders try to recreate Western European styles in the Latin East. • How much “recreation” is possible in an already built city? Changing a street is a major project. (also, Boas indicates that in many instances in cities, Frankish settlers would have simply occupied abandoned houses”; p.69) How should we compare (and identify) pre-existing towns/villages with something “newly built” by Frankish settlers? • What do the building/settlement choices made by Frankish settlers/Crusaders say about their “new social role”, or rather, the social role they were trying to construct (literally, figuratively)? • Relationship of new building with city walls • How do Frankish settlers interact with non-Frankish inhabitants vis a vis urban space and architecture, especially in cities? • “The innate character of a society- aggressive, commercially skillful, highly organized, and artistically developed- will shape the surroundings it creates.” (Boas 2010, p.241) How do we square this bold statement with ideas of hybridity? (Also, how would we really go about identifying the innate character of a society in order to know how it is shaping things, since of course our historical recourse is to look at the things “a society” of some sort has already shaped?)

Hunt, L.A. 1991. Art and Colonialism: The Mosaics of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (1169) and the Problem of "Crusader" Art. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45: 69-85.

Ian Randall

This article by Lucy-Anne Hunt concentrated on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and its mosaic program of 1169. This program was a joint project between the Emperor of Byzantium, Manuel I, who funded it, and King Amalric of Jerusalem, who gave the go-ahead and official support for the project. In the article Hunt sought to analyze the program in its theological and political contexts, as well as its implications for an understanding of “Crusader Art,” a term popularized by Jaroslav Folda, as a colonial product. Throughout she brings up several salient points to remember when examining this sort of material, but in the end still has some minor difficulty breaking out of the art historical penchant for examining ‘ethnic’ or ‘national’ styles.

The mosaic program of the Church of the Nativity focuses, naturally enough, on the Incarnation. The human and divine nature of Christ is emphasized, as well as the fulfillment of the Old Testament through Christ, with his ‘royal’ Davidic genealogy stressed, from Abraham up through the Virgin. The mosaic program of the church, located in nave, transepts, and choir, was installed at a key moment in the history of the Crusader States, and Hunt laudably situates it in relation to the political and theological debates of its day. She does this in an attempt to pull apart what she sees as a fundamental flaw in the way that “Crusader Art” is viewed as a colonial product, as fundamentally bi-polar and simplistic.

The mosaic program has been noted in the past for its trilingual inscriptions and style, neither wholly Frankish nor Byzantine. “Crusader Art” has traditionally been viewed as either a French transplant, or an east/west mélange, depending on the understanding of the Crusader States as ‘colonies’ being employed. This has ranged, as Hunt notes, from indeed seeing them as transplants only, with the European zeitgeist triumphant, or as Western adaptations to the needs of the political moment, still largely urban and segregated from the local populace. These days, with the work of Boas and others, they are understood more and more as a ‘third space,’ with something new and unique emerging from interaction at all levels, both urban and rural, and Hunt’s work should be considered in that context. Her main goal for the article is to make the ‘local’ known, and to reinsert this estimation into the “Crusader Art” equation.

To do this Hunt begins by noting the ridiculousness of using such monolithic terms as ‘Latins’ and ‘Byzantines.’ As we’ve discussed in this class, such terms are largely unhelpful and homogenize conditions on the ground, obfuscating local power politics and local concerns that likely had a large impact on events, decisions, and ultimately culture. She also notes in passing that we cannot characterize pre-capitalist colonial models as simply “feudalism transplanted,” an important point when looking at this period in general. Her main goal then is to refocus the debate around the indigenous inhabitants, who they are and what they are doing in relation to other groups vis a vis art, although she has a penchant throughout the article, while focusing on ‘local groups,’ to maintain the use of labels such as ‘Latins,’ and ‘Byzantines’ without teasing them apart or attempting to go beyond definitions of the local themselves that rely on very standard religious and ‘ethnic’ terms used for the period. Still, a positive step.

A great deal of the article relies on the inscriptions accompanying the mosaic program to identify ‘the local.’ By this Hunt means Syrian Melkites and Jacobites, Orthodox and Monophysite communities respectively. I think. The inscriptions within the church name three mosaicists in the nave, choir, and transepts individually: An Ephraim, a Basil, and a Zan. . . . somebody (the inscription is lost and was fragmentary when recorded.) While debate has raged over just who these people are, with many considering them transplanted Constantinopolitans sent by Manuel, Hunt focuses on a Syriac inscription under Basil to identify him securely as a local. Just how secure that affiliation is I question, but it’s a major part of Hunt’s argument so we’ll run with it. In considering this inscription she notes that such a language would have been ambiguous, targeting not just local worshippers, but also both Orthodox AND Monophysite, an interesting point. Further argument for the local can be found in the mosaics of ecumenical and provincial councils located in the nave; many of these display discrepancies and changes from the official Byzantine version that indicates a local, Syriac text was being employed. Local saints are also included in the nave decorations, again pointing to significant Syrian involvement.

As Hunt points out, this makes sense really. Manuel I had a lot of reasons to patronize this church, and she goes over them in detail. At the time, in the 1160’s, Manuel and Amalric were moving towards a Franco-Byzantine alliance against Egypt. Manuel was also working towards theological rapproachment across the region, approaching Armenians, Latins, and local Syrian denominations. He saw himself, she argues, as a new Constantine, and sought to be adjudged the arbiter of matters of Orthodox faith. He even went so far, at the synod of 1166, to back a Western sanctioned interpretation of John 14:28, rather close to abridging hardline positions over the filioque. Indeed it is notable that the filioque is omitted from inscriptions within a church that would have been presided over by a Latin clergy, likely a compromise on the part of Amalric! Further arguing for the local ascription to the mosaicists Hunt points out the similarity in style between the Umayyad mosaics on the Great Mosque, Fatamid examples on the Dome of the Rock, and those of the Church of the Nativity. Here she argues we see the continuity of a local tradition of mosaics, employed by Manuel and Amalric to put forward an ecumenical theological vision, meant to trump Islamic monuments of the past, and involving local artist/ecclesiastics who would have been most ideally placed to negotiate issues, such as the filioque, on behalf of Manuel I.

A lot is clearly going on with this series of mosaics. My questions revolve around notions of ‘ethnicity,’ religious affiliation, and colonialism in general. How do we access local categories? How can we tell what they meant to the people involved? Are legal definitions, which she cites at one point, good enough? How do we access situational identity?

Alba Serino: Georgopoulou, M. 1999, Orientalism and Crusader Art: Constructing a New Canon. Medieval Encounters 5: 289-321. Redford, S. 2004. On Saqis and Ceramics: Systems of representation in the Northeast Mediterranean. In D. H. Weiss and L. Mahoney (eds.), France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades. Baltimore, pp. 282-312.

Maria Georgopoulou in her article questions the boundaries created by the Orientalist ideology in the study of crusader and Muslim art. She underlines the importance of going further the essentialist distinction between East and West, in order to view the crusader arts as the product of a rich and complex multicultural society. The author supports her ideas by analyzing the imagery of two Ayyubid glass beakers in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. These gilt enameled Islamic glass pieces, attributed to the thirteenth century Aleppo, present a puzzling iconography, identifiable as Christian. Their style of decoration is yet Islamic (they also present Arabic inscriptions), even if they share some elements with the Byzantine decorative art. It is also important to consider that several pieces belonging to their kind have an afterlife as church treasuries in Europe, in connection to their Islamic origin. Georgopoulou believes that the two beakers analyzed were made in the market of a Muslim city for Christian patrons. She arrives to this conclusion by considering that a whole group of Islamic bronzes displaying Christian themes with Arabic inscriptions existed in the same period and that probably the same type of imagery could have existed in glass production. In addition, she explains that in multiethnic and religious markets as the ones in Aleppo, Damascus or Cairo (where ethnic and religious divisions were not rigid at all), it would have been probable for the Christian inhabitants (who spoke Arabic since well before the crusades) to request customized luxury items. Moreover, the Arabic inscriptions could have constituted for the Westerners an authentication of the exotic origin of these luxury goods. The Syrian/Levantine origin of these beakers was in fact what made them precious relics from the Holy Land, even if they were not manufactured by Christians but produced in Muslim territories. There was actually a European imitation of them, but they were considered of lower quality (items of every day life found in excavations, opposed to the original beakers conserved in churches). Georgopoulou recognizes a duality in the perception of the artifacts studied: on one hand, the Oriental Christians appreciated their practicability as objects produced in the Ayyubid markets, on the other hand, the Western Christians brought these objects home as exotic pieces.

Scott Redford analyses the imagery of sgraffito ceramic from the Principality of Antioch and the Kingdom of Armenian Cilicia. He concentrates on the polychrome glazed pottery named Port Saint Simeon ware (after the thirteenth century port of Antioch) found in the medieval port of Kinet. This port, located on the borderzone of the Principality of Antioch and the kingdom of Armenian Cilicia, was in its medieval phase a lively port and transshipping center (excavations have yielded ceramics from all around the Mediterranean litoral) and also a manufacturing center, with it's own production of textiles, iron implements and ceramic. The Port Saint Simeon ware (from now on PSS) was a major object of maritime and inland trade. It was not exchanged as a luxury good and was appreciated both in the Christian and Islamic cultures. Redford notices that all the sgraffito ceramic with figural decoration seems connected to rituals (wedding, baptism, gifting). The author analyzes the non religious tradition of this ceramic ware, as for example the symbols of fertility and happiness on the depictions of Cilician wedding bowls or the beasts on the Dumbarton Oaks Amphora. In his analysis he notices an overlapping of systems of representation from different cultures, as for example in the depiction of the rosette and the knot, which were emblems used in several contexts (royal Seljuk, royal Armenian, Mongol, Ayyubid, Mamluk, crusader). He actually questions if it is correct to talk about a difference between the material culture of Antioch, the Crusader capital and Sis (the Armenian Cilicia capital), since the PSS was found in both crusader and Armenian contexts and because, according to him, the material culture of the thirteenth century Latin and Levantine Christian culture is indistinguishable at an archaeological level (he uses the expression "silence on ethnicity"). Redford's conclusion seems a little bit too obvious to me: above the demographic and geographic allegiance, there was also a cultural interaction between the Latin and Levantine Christians, a kind of dynamic interaction where Antioch and Armenian Cilicia did not act as passive transmitters.

Comments and questions: Both authors underline the importance of approaching the study of crusader art in a multicultural and dynamic point of view. While Redford describes some examples of iconography and arrives to what I think is a little too simplistic conclusion, Georgopoulou analyzes more deeply the reasons of the complexity in crusader material culture. She also gives us interesting information on the crafting of these "hybrid goods", suggesting that foreign art was not used only by the elites for political purposes (as affirmed by Alicia Walker the reading for last week) and that hybrid art could develop also for social reasons. The two authors deal with some arguments we have already discussed together, therefore I would like to repeat some old questions (sorry!): does warfare (in this case the crusades) influence commerce and in which ways? Does it make sense this time to talk about "art appropriation", "cultural identity" and "hybridity"?

Posted at Apr 07/2013 04:10PM:
Alexis Jackson and Alba Serino:

Georgopoulou, M. 2001. Venice's Mediterranean Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism. Cambridge, Chapters 8 & 9.

Chapters Eight and Nine of Maria Geogopoulou’s book, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism, examine two main ideas. The first of which is that Venice imported traditionally Byzantine techniques for the symbolic administration and display of imperial power from its colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the second of which is that the Venetian administration used its colonies as a location for policy experimentation. Both ideas figure prominently into both chapters, but Chapter Eight deals specifically with the case study of the Venetian colony of Candia (Crete). Chapter Nine opens up the study to include other colonies as examples and shifts the focus more towards comparing practices in the Venetian metropole to those in its colonies (cult of the Saint patron, rituals on the icons if the Virgin, Jewish segregation).

Chapter Eight, “Ritualizing Colonial Practices,” deals with how Venetian colonial authorities intentionally blurred the lines between religious and civic customs in order to secure colonial rule. An important element in her argument is the importance of the cult of a local saint, St. Titus, in the religious and social functioning of life in Candia. In Chapter Nine, she continues this argument by paralleling the legend and cult of St. Titus in the colony with the legend and cult of St. Mark in Venice. Additionally, processions and marches figure heavily in her argument about blurring religious and civic roles in the colonies. For instance, civic ceremonies, including the greeting of a new colonial authority from Venice into the colony, usually began at a civic monument or location of urban importance (such as the port) and processed to local churches. In doing so, the colonial administration “borrows” the legitimacy of religious tradition. On the other side of things, religious festivals and processions often included the participation of administrators and Venetian administrators, as well as occasionally incorporating the local Greek population (through the forced inclusion of Orthodox clergy in the march or the addition of an Orthodox church on the processional itinerary). This incorporation serves to symbolically convey the dominion of “imperial Venice” over the Greek locals.

Georgopoulou also focuses on the cooption of Byzantine religious symbols (namely icons of the Virgin Mary) into Venetian ecclesiastical practices. She notes that although icons did not play an important role in the religious practices of Venice in the 12th century (i.e. prior to their colonial expansion), certain “extremely powerful” (i.e. those with protective or political influence over cities) icons were quickly incorporated. Her greatest example of this is the Mesopanditissa, which resided in the Candian cathedral of St. Titus and was paraded between Greek and Latin churches in the city every Tuesday. Furthermore, she notes that a Venetian document dwells on the Mesopanditissa’s qualities of protection and mediation, which were a “Venetian invention that appropriate its charisma for the purposes of promoting the colonial cause.” (Georgopoulou 218) Georgopoulou’s discussion of the Mesopanditissa icon, especially in its next stage, in Venice rather than on Crete, continues into the ninth chapter.

Although Georgopoulou shows an effort at signposting the limitations of her historical information (such as the shortcomings of certain kinds of documents that she has to work with or gaps in the record which challenge her chronology), she still makes disconcertingly opaque leaps in her argument. Perhaps it would have been helpful for her, to integrate the lack of information with a comparison of late medieval/early Renaissance Venice with the other Italian maritime republics (Genova, Pisa, Amalfi). For instance, she suggests that the absence of Greek allusions to the Tuesday processions in Candia indicates that “these events formed such an integral part of the public, devotional life that they were almost invisible to city dwellers.” (Georgopoulou 219) Her conclusions are clearly one of several valid interpretations, but the absoluteness of her conclusion seems unjustified given only the evidence (or negative evidence) she has presented. Another example of incoherence comes from her arguing on Byzantine ceremony influence on Venice, when she uses documentary sources dating to the seventeenth century (Georgopoulou 243).

The author should have used comparisons also while dealing with the segregation of Jewish in Venice and the translation of relics to the city. The elements she provides to prove the exclusive influence of Byzantium in these practices do not in fact seem enough convincing: how were Jews segregated in other cities and was their way different from Crete? How was the translation of relics in different cities justified (the "rescue" from Muslim hands was in fact very common and not exclusive of Cretan relics)?

Georgopoulou's frequent use of expressions as "presumably”, "in all probability" short-circuits the ability to see the interpretive logical threads in her argument, which causes us to question her conclusions. Additionally, Georgopoulou is not always clear on exactly who is acting on what and in which capacity, especially when referring to “the Venetians” or “the Greeks”. She often writes of “the Venetians”, when her evidence/texts seem to indicate that she more specifically means “Venetian colonial administration in a specific locale,” or “Venetian government officials in Venice”. However, since she also discusses popular feasts and festivals, as well as the popular reception of civic and religious symbolic display, then her meaning becomes muddled for the reader. It is fair to say that the author considers her argument on colonial influence as a point of start and invites others scholars to proceed in the same direction. This could maybe constitute a solution to her problems with the lack of literary evidence to support her ideas. Although, her view that active borrowings from different cultures are the exclusive reason of the flourishing of a metropolis seems a little restrictive.

Questions: •In an administrative context, what are the differences between colonialism and imperialism? Where exactly does Venice fit (when might be a better question), and does perception matter (example: Venice’s perception of itself, the colonies’ perception of their colonizers, Byzantium’s perception of Venice)?

•What terminology is appropriate for referring to a colonial power vs. a “local” or “colonized” group? (Who are “the Venetians” in this context?) How might we complicate the issue of colonial identity (ex. Jewish professionals from Candia living in Venice)?

•Should we always see a "plan", a political purpose, behind the cultural appropriation of a metropolis?

Kalopissi-Verti, S. 2007. Relations between East and West in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes after 1204: Archaeological and Artistic Evidence. In P. Edbury and S. Kalopissi-Verti (eds.), Archaeology and the Crusades. Athens, pp., 1-33

Clive Vella

The scope of this chapter is a relatively ‘easy’ one, the author tries to focus on the archaeological evidence for the Latin lords and the Greek population during the Lordship of Athens and Thebes. The themes imbued in this chapter are outlined by the author as being ‘… differentiation or fusion, confrontation or acculturation …’, which is a rather ambitious line-up by standards of any publication. However, whether the chapter successfully achieves these objectives is another thing. Rather, this chapter’s aims and objectives are reminiscent of several of our conversations on cross-cultural encounter. In the case of this chapter, the author wonders how when the East and West ‘met’ in 1204 did they co-exist? In essence, how is this archaeologically recognizable during the rule of the de la Roche family? This chapter surveys cursively a broad range of data such as fortification & dwellings, religious life, burial customs, coinage & economy.

The Latin rulers occupied the Acropolis at Athens and the Kadmeia at Thebes and further strengthened the fortification systems. These systems seem to share certain features with crusader castles of the Middle East, such as in concentric rings of fortified walls, the massive donjon and successive repeated bastions to protect the gate. Another example is the Nicholas II de St Omer’s construction of a massive ‘Tower of St Omer’ which the Chronicle of the Morea claims that it was meant to house a king and it depicted the conquest of the Holy Land during the First Crusade. Such examples of Crusader iconography is also paralleled by ‘Frankish’ paintings (ex the gate of the castle of Akronauplia). Also, the numerous tower (which we have already previously discussed) are supposedly the residence of the minor Frankish feudal nobility. So, if Frankish nobility occupied these places then where did the local population live? The Boetian survey project provided ample evidence of dense rural occupation but there is a clear discrepancy between the impressive monuments of the lords in contrast to the smaller unimpressive local villages.

This discrepancy is even more pronounced when compared to following section on religious life. The Parthenon, dedicated to Panagia Atheniotissa, was turned into a Latin cathedral with construction occurring during the 13^th century. For example, the restorations on the Acropolis have led to the phasing re-configuration and the understanding of painted fragments as being ‘specimens of Frankish art’. Other examples of this Latin re-configuration can be seen at the katholikon of the Daphni Monastery and the church of Hagia Photeine in Thebes. However, the author is especially drawn to the construction of a church in Boeotian Kardista by knight Anthony le Flamenc, that was built following a Byzantine architectural type using local craftsmen and building techniques. This church, eventually housing the lord’s tomb, was dedicated to St George while it was also inhabited by Greek monks. Interestingly, the mention of abbeys and monasteries, as recorded by Pope Innocent III, cannot be simply interpreted as religious institutions that were also transformed into Latin institutions. Nevertheless, this question remains ultimately unanswered because we still have evidence of Greek Orthodox painted churches dated to the 13^th century and in other cases the high stylistic quality of frescoes conform to the great artistic centers of Byzantium.

The burial customs also reflect a similar pattern between Frankish lords and local populations. Such an example is the sarcophagus at the Monastery of Daphni (potentially for Guy II) that included a relief of a Latin cross on steps under a round arch that is supported by two columns that is reminiscent of Byzantine themes, but the two fleur-de-lis are rather a French motif. This hybrid example of relief art is related to other sepulchral monuments that around the mid-13^th century a workshop in Athens could have been producing this mixed artistic style. This same mix of style can be seen in a number of hoards deposited in the 13^th and early 14^th centuries that besides Frankish coppers sometimes include an array of mixed coinage. However, the description of coinage and economy ends after a rather summarily description of ceased and transformed production systems (such as the decline of Byzantine murex purple textiles).

Not unlike our discussion last week regarding Frankish occupation in the Near East, it appears that we have many similarities with this chapter. In fact, this chapter raises some of the same issues and problems which I think are largely a by-product of the subject matter. In a certain sense, we probably all agree that with a new administration comes a new world order, which is best manifested through the construction of monumental structure. However, this chapter raises a slightly different interpretation where the Frankish lords willingly took up Byzantine artistic styles while the local Greek population ‘stayed the course’. I feel that this interpretation makes sense since it seems that the replacement of an administrational system does not mean that a local population has to radically change its ways. However, what did the Frankish administration give to the locals? Alas, this is a question that remains unanswered in this chapter.

Therefore, this chapter raises the following questions: Can we accept this story of a division between the Franks and local populations? Was the religious difference at the same time so wide that it required a Frankish lord to ‘transform’ a religious institution according to Latin catechism? Or can we argue that the arrival of the Franks in an already well-established region only require an adjustment at the higher level?

Posted at Apr 08/2013 09:17AM:
reyhan durmaz: Nixon, L. 2006. Making a Landscape Sacred. Outlying Churches and Icon Stands in Sphakia, Southwestern Crete. Oxford, pp. 65-73, 92-116

The designated text by Nixon comprises a short sub-chapter, and the conclusion of his monograph. In the first part, entitled Perambulation and Pasturage: Setting Boundaries and Defending Orthodoxy in Venetian Crete, he analyzes the dialogue between continuous traditional formation of the landscape and the impacts of the imposed Venetian rule, through architectural phases of the churches in the vicinity. He argues that the architecture and decoration of the churches imply Venetian influence, while their locations indicate a concern for the continuation of Hellenic Orthodoxy.

Nixon’s chronological focus is the time period between the 12th to 15th centuries. He argues for continuity, though with altered scale and patterns, by using textual along with material evidence, and shows the continuity in settlements and monuments. Next, he demonstrates the Venetian impact on ecclesiastical architecture. He argues that the use of Gothic arch, application of bacini (earthenware plates set on the exterior of the walls) and the like were imposed by the Catholic Venetians. Although, he rightly notes, different parts of society responded to Venetian influence differently.

He points out a significant practice in order to analyze the continuity and Venetian influence better, which is the use of ancient basilicas and spolia in “Venetian era” church building. Nixon argues that both the location of the rebuilt churches, and the fact that spolia was used in church building, indicated an attempt to emphasize the continuity with the palaeo-Christian heritage under the Venetian rule. He also argues that the inhabitants of Sphakia established a desired chronology with their choices of rebuilding the old basilicas and using spolia; that is, they attempted to emphasize the “authenticity” and continuity with the oldest form of Christianity present on the sialnd, not interrupted by the Arab occupations.

In the conclusion Nixon’s one of the main arguments is that continuity in sacred spaces in a given landscape does not necessarily a continuity of the sacrality of the place, but a common spatial grammar across cultures. In the Cretan case, the churches in the landscape were visual claims to a Hellenic Christian past, markers of the local (national?) identity and presence.

He continues his analysis by defining four location types (of a sacred space in a landscape) – resources, visibility, liminal areas, earlier significant structures, and four explanations for the choice of these places – human boundaries, supernatural contact, specific events, and vows. His fieldwork undertaken with modern construction projects shows that there were no clear connections or patterns between location of sacred spaces and the reasons behind the choice of their locations. But his further inquiries, he claims, showed that the locations of sacred spaces helped locals establish a landscape in which their historical memory was embodied, as well as daily life experience was framed. The “explanations” he identified were implied in the choice of locations, and in addition, the landscape initiated the necessity of certain acts – thus creating a taskscape. Therefore, the demolition of a structure meant the erasure of that part of the lived landscape.

Nixon’s conclusions are important for they show the dialogue between human experience and the landscapes, in concepts such as grammar of landscape, topothesies and other toponymic practices, chronologies of desire, etc. His locations-explanations model is helpful in fully analyzing sacred landscapes, although it needs some improvement. For instance, this model is weak in changing explanations over time, through generations; another weakness of it is that it neglects seasonal changes in visibility of monuments. Moreover, Nixon occasionally points out but not thoroughly reflect upon meanings of sacred landscapes for the creator, immediate community/audience, temporary and permanent outsiders, and next generations.

Van Dommelen, P. 1997. Colonial Constructs: Colonialism and Archaeology in the Mediterranean. World Archaeology 28: 305-323.

Ian Randall

In this rather seminal article by our own dear PVD, he lays out the postcolonial project for Mediterranean archaeology rather nicely, its origins, theoretical issues and direction, and then provides an example based on Carthaginian colonization in the Western Mediterranean. All in all the perspectives he is raising will not be new to us; we have in essence been applying postcolonial ideas to the Medieval Mediterranean since day 1 in this course. Still, the strength of the article is the way in which he summarizes the theoretical trend, and if you haven’t read it already, you should. Even though for other areas of archaeology the article is starting to get slightly long in the tooth, and with concepts like ‘creolization’ the scholarship has moved on somewhat, for Medieval archaeology in particular the issues being raised are particularly germane, if only because they largely haven’t sunken in yet.

Peter begins by explaining the origins of the problem to which postcolonial archaeologies were meant to be an answer. There is, as I’m sure you’re all aware, a colonialist tradition in Mediterranean archaeology. Ancient colonial situations have been explicitly or implicitly linked with modern examples thereof, and classical archaeology as a whole owes its origins to exactly this sort of project. The class of individuals in Western Europe that brought the discipline about, were exactly the same as those embarking on the colonial missions of their time, the ones directing policy and stretching the hand of European domination across the globe. The study of ancient colonialism was linked with this enterprise, with much interpretation focused on not only glorifying the colonialisms of the past, but also drawing direct connections, even to the point of copying, between modern and ancient examples. The French made a particular point of doing this, with the Crusades and Roman North Africa being two examples, seeing themselves as direct successors to previous colonial enterprises, leading in the latter case at least, to a thousand years of Islamic history being marginalized in the scholarship. Indeed even as the age of direct European colonialism has changed, the ideas inherent in this approach have lingered.

Overall this boils down to a simplistic, dualistic, and evolutionary approach to colonization. In this view cultures are seen as distinct, bounded, internally homogenous entities. The indigenous group has traditionally been viewed as culturally inferior, a passive, receptive sponge for the culture of the dominant group. Colonization is often conflated in this view with ‘civilizing,’ with all the overtones and value judgments that term includes that I needn’t explore. To quote Gosden (2004), both the land and people of a colonized area are seen as terra nullius, in essence a blank slate upon which the colonizers can write their will and their culture. The long held view of Romanization is a perfect example of this, as is John Boardman’s book The Greeks Overseas, which is, sadly, in its 4th edition. This book emphasizes the Greek ‘genius’ as an explanatory device for the resulting colonial societies, and describes the Italic peoples as enthusiastically receiving all the Greeks had to offer. That this is a simplistic, and even childish view replete with self-aggrandizement on the part of a scholar who sees the Greeks as the originators of an inherently superior Western culture is clear with hindsight, but sadly also a view still held in some circles. This extreme case aside, a lot of scholarship still focuses on a dualistic model of colonialism; one that sees two distinct groups that interact. This downplays ethnic, religious, and other divisions that exist in both colonizing and colonized groups, providing little more than a simplistic fairy tale that often takes colonizing discourse at face value.

Beginning with the work of Edward Said however this view has started to break apart. Since 1980 there has been a growing recognition that things may not be that simple. Calling into question the essentializing discourse surrounding colonialism, many scholars, including our own PVD, called for more of an attention to the ambiguous nature of colonial situations. In this postcolonial theoretical perspective colonialism is seen to be both historically and geographically contingent, with emphasis placed on the local and the ways in which colonial categories are blurred by ethnic, class, gender, and other divisions around which people organize themselves. Identity is really the issue here, how in different situations and in different ways people change who they are, not only for their audiences but for themselves.

Colonial situations throw this process into stark detail. Power dynamics, as Foucault has reminded us again and again, are extremely important. By examining power dynamics in these situations alongside identity, we can bring into focus frameworks of exploitation and marginalization, and how these are be inculcated into daily discursive practice, that is the day to day process of just how colonial societies are made and remade through action. This gives us a way to look at practical nature of social identity construction, and all that is at stake therein, particularly when in colonial situations 'subjectivities are fractured.' I would argue that this is not much different from non-colonial situations, only that more divergent cultural elements and power dynamics throw light as it were more clearly onto actors moving in a dark room.

In the archaeology of colonial situations this has led to an emphasis on local situations and the interplay between cultural elements as they are reworked through practice, with an eye ever to what is at stake in doing so. Hybridity has become a popular term, defined by Homi Bhaba as “the effect of an ambivalence produced within the rules of recognition of dominant discourse as they articulate the signs of cultural difference,” with all that that implies for material culture and its role in mediating social relationships. (Bhaba 1985)

In some branches of archaeology this view has been in vogue for a number of years now, and there seems to be a shift back towards trying to do big history, as we've seen with Hordon and Purcell, Abulafia, and now Broodbank, not with complete success. Still in Medieval Archaeology they are sadly just waking up to this particular theoretical viewpoint; all the more reason to keep it in mind.

Moving on to Peter’s example, he examines an area of Sardinia with which he is very familiar, the Gulf of Oristano, and the process of Carthaginian colonization in the area as it developed from the 6th century BC. He begins by commenting on how archaeological interpretation has been heavily influenced by philhellenic scholarship. Distinct parallels have been drawn with Magna Graecia, despite a lack of evidence that there was any similarity in the colonial relationship. Recent research indeed has challenged this, with Punic colonies in Spain showing distinctly more political and economic independence than their Greek and Roman counterparts elsewhere, and only slowly growing dependence on a Carthaginian center in the wake of the Punic wars. Evidence from Ibiza and Sardinia also points to a far less urban model of colonization than that of the Greeks.

On Sardinia the archaeological evidence has traditionally been interpreted as displaying a heavy handed Punicization. From the 4th century BC Punic material culture expands out into rural areas, largely replacing more indigenous objects. Peter challenges this interpretation however, and the apparent uniformity of the archaeological record, by noting the complete absence of discussions of the indigenous and any cultural responses in this narrative. He begins by noting significant differences in settlement pattern that have been largely overlooked. While urban foundations hug the coast, those inland have a far more military character. Farms inland also tend to cluster around ancient nuraghe, whereas those on the coast largely do not. Already a distinction between urban and rural is beginning to emerge from a previously uniform picture.

Material culture from several sanctuaries and rural cultic sites also complicate the previous picture of cultural homogeneity. In particular he draws attention to the use of local lamps in cult over Punic models, and of figurines that display a number of independent features, freely elaborating on Punic and Hellenistic models. These figurines actively combine various elements, Italic limb emphasis, a generally Punic form, and a distinctly local technique, producing a hybridized object that, along with the settlement pattern and the lamps, speaks of a selective employment and alteration of Punic and other cultural features. That this is most apparent in cultic objects also speaks to the potential identity issues at play,

The evidence that Peter lays out points to a far more complicated, and ambiguous, colonial situation than had previously been thought to exist, and one which he is still articulating wit the fragmentary evidence at his disposal. With considerably more evidence and texts in the Medieval period we should expect better.

With all the issues articulated above, how then might this perspective have changed the analysis of the people we read last week? Hunt for example or Vorderstrasse? With the vibrant mix of cultures and peoples involved in the Medieval Mediterranean, what were likely to be areas of identity tension? What was at stake? How might this have been articulated with material culture? How could a single object be selectively employed in different situations to articulate different identities? Why? Think of Alba’s glass beakers last week; what are some of the possible readings of that imagery? How might the object have been differentially consumed and how might this have affected its production? How does a colonial situation change the relationship between objects and people?

Stallsmith, Allaire B. 2007. “One Colony, Two Mother Cities: Cretan Agriculture under Venetian and Ottoman Rule.” In Between Venice and Istanbul: Colonial Landscapes in Early Modern Greece, edited by, S. Davies and J.L. Davis, 151–172. New Jersey.

Linda Gosner

This chapter, part of a larger edited volume called Between Venice and Istanbul: Colonial Landscapes in Early Modern Greece, examines the impact of Venetian and Ottoman rule on the economy and agriculture of Crete. The basic argument is that, although the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire had very different economic and political agendas (especially with respect to this island), their basic strategies for production and land taxation were implemented in similar ways. More generally, Stallsmith argues that crops selection and agricultural production is not only determined by environmental factors, but also the political goals of the elites and the associated economic policy.

The Venetian Republic obtained Crete as a result of their support of the 4^th Crusade. Through this support they gained various ports and trading concessions, but also purchased access to this land. For Venice, Crete was the first colony of significant size with a large amount of arable land. This land became an essential producer of grain for export to Venice. The Ottomans had a different agenda in their conquest of the island, which took place between 1647 and 1669. Although it was the last significant territorial addition to the empire, the Ottoman agenda was less about territory and resource acquisition that about the “noble and holy endeavor” of spreading the religion of Islam. Despite these differences, both the Venetians and Ottomans set up similar land exploitation systems.

Stallsmith uses primarily written sources to document the history of agriculture in these periods. The Archives of Venetian Crete include senatorial decrees and legal documents (property relations, dowry agreements, wills). For the Venetian period, there are also accounts of travelers, pilgrims, and officials that contain useful anecdotal details. For the Ottoman period, the Turkish archives in Iraklion include documents of the land tenure system, marriage, inheritance, taxes, conversion, crime, censuses, land sales, export permits, and imperial decrees. Traveler’s accounts also exist from the 18^th and 19^th century with some agricultural observations. Stallsmith briefly says that villages and agricultural settlements provide some evidence for agriculture, but seems to indicate that there is not enough archaeology, especially for the earlier Venetian period, to provide useful material correlates to this documentary evidence.

The documents show that after 1211, peasants – who were tied to the land --gave 1/3 of everything they grew to feudatores. Additionally, they owed a fixed number of days of forced labor, and could even be required to work on fortifications or serve galley duty. Although by the 13^th century some free peasants owned land but still owed a feudatory 1/3 of all their crops to the government. By the 16^th century, however, many of the 'feudatores' who controlled the land no longer felt strong connections with Venice, and they often engaged in agriculture and trade without explicit permission or without following the Venetian rules. Interestingly, in the earlier periods, wheat was grown in such quantities that much of it could be exported to feed Venice. Wine was also made, but it was not a major export. This began to shift by the end of the 16^th century along with the political situation, and the farmers began to grow more wine. They began to have to import wheat to keep up with the local demand, but despite this growing wine was more profitable overall. The Venetian policies expected to control wheat production were no longer able to be successfully enforced.

Under Ottoman rule, Crete was divided into 4 provinces, each of which was ruled by a pasha. Most of the land remained in the possession of Christian owners, under the condition that they acknowledge Ottoman authority and pay a land tax (similar to the Venetian 1/3 tax on produce). Landowners who fled or resisted Ottoman authority lost their land, which would then be sold at auction. Under Ottoman rule, many did convert to Islam, but the overall population did not shirt substantially. Because the Ottomans were focused on keeping the land productive, grain production was increased and there was a surplus of grain again. Wine production decreased as French and Italian wines became more popular, and the cash crop shifted to olive oil (perhaps also because of the Muslim prohibition on wine, but Stallsmith suggests that this was not the primary reason).

Stallsmith concludes, rightly, that the kinds of crops produced during each period were directly tied to the political and economic situation of the Venetians and Ottomans, and not only related to the physical geography and local populations. This study is relatively straight-forward and the author does successfully show the relationship between the big picture politically, and local decision making in terms of agricultural production.

Questions:

-How might this picture be enhanced by a closer look at the archaeological record? (Ie: the archaeobotanical record for these periods, traces of terracing, and even settlement patterns in the rural landscape)

-How did the politics of Venetian and Ottoman control affect other elements of the economy in Crete, and would looking beyond agricultural production to crafts production or industrial production provide a more complete picture of what was going on?

-Should agriculture and rural production be a larger element of the stories we write about empire and big-picture politics?

Posted at Apr 11/2013 08:34PM:
Alexis Jackson:

Questions for Week 12

Olympios:
• What are the methods for observing (proving) the movement of ideas in current scholarship? If ideas move with people, do all kinds of people “work” as transmitters (example: can a nun move a masonry technique)? Does idea transmission require direct 1-to-1 type evidence (i.e. being able to trace an individual of satisfactory status, who went from the “originating place” of the idea to the “depositing place” of the idea)?

• Under what circumstances and in what way do representatives from different monastic orders interact on Cyprus? (Legal, land, architecture, politics)

• When looking for the sources of architectural details/designs, how do we know what “inspires”? Is it really transmission or inspiration just because of chronology (building project take a long time, and in some circumstance s overlap with each other, they are not attached to a single date)? What does it say about transmission if sites are using the same workshops, or a combination of the same (or related) masons/designers/workmen? Would they serve against the idea of “transmission” in a particular case, or embody it?

• Given the vastly different contexts, is it fair to say that elements of 14th century Cypriot churches are “copied” from northern French churches? (What constitutes a “copy”?)

Carr:
• How can we de-homogenize populations? (example: separating out “the Italians” from Westerners/Crusaders/Franks in general)

• On pp.341-342, Carr suggests that the high quality of a Greek funerary panel “scarcely bespeaks oppression,” and that instead, it “implies an intimate interpenetration of cultures.” Is poor-quality art a sign of oppressed locals? (Does this imply the colonialist idea that colonized local populations are somehow more primitive, despite the effort Carr is making to be post-colonial throughout the article?)

• Does a person’s origin define their artistic identity? (i.e. must a painter born in Constantinople be a “Byzantine painter”?) On a related note, how long must a person be in a place for it to form a part of their artistic identity? Must an “Tuscan style” painter be from or have been to Italy at all? (Same goes for the identity of objects: manuscripts, icons, etc.)

Arbel:
• Coming back to Alba’s question last week about a “plan”, what about the way that Arbel talks about developments in Venetian rule in 15th/16th century Cyprus? What’s the methodological difference between Venice “developing more lenient policies” and “Venice’s old policies becoming untenable and falling apart”?

• How should religious differences be treated when puzzling out ethnic (or political, or class, or linguistic, or gender) differences?

Papakostas:
• How much of the issue of categorizing culture is a problem of naming? (i.e. “Franco-Byzantine”) Are there historical documents that demonstrate the vocabulary used to describe these buildings in the 15th and 16th centuries?

• What role does proximity play? For instance, Hodegetria’s north porch faced the west porch of the Latin Saint Sophia cathedral- what kind of social communication/interaction does this suggest? Is it an entirely different kind of evidence than architectural “imitation” on the interior of churches (visual access)?

Jacoby:
• What role does the Mediterranean Sea play in the formation and maintenance of identity? (from the place that brought us the “sea people”) Today, water can be owned or “international waters”. What does social meaning doe maritime mobility have? How rooted to their land residences are merchants?

• What role did taxes play in forcing/enforcing national or ethnic identities?

• What can we learn from the currency used in international transactions/contracts? What can the currency used in a specific location (or instance) tell us about political influence or control? Does currency convey “permanence”? Tying back to the Arbel reading, what is the social/political message conveyed by the use of large sums of money? (Does many speak louder than other assets/advantages in the 15th/16th century Mediterranean?)

Jacoby, D. 2009. The Venetians in Byzantine and Lusignan Cyprus: Trade, Settlement, and Politics. In A. Nicolaou-Konnari (ed.), La Serenissima and la Nobilissima: Venice in Cyprus and Cyprus in Venice, Nicosia, pp. 59-100

Alba Serino

Venice's political and military operations and territorial expansion were directed towards the consolidation and expansion of commercial and maritime activities. At the same time these activities largely conditioned the state's policies. David Jacoby underlines how this Venetian strategy was evident for the island of Cyprus. The pivotal function in commerce of Cyprus depended from it's geographical location first of all. Also the political and economical circumstances were determining. Venice became interested in Cyprus from the 12th century, in relation to the increasing presence and activity of its citizens on the island. Cyprus (through the ports of Phasos and Limassol) became part of a triangular commerce network between Venice, the Frankish States of the Levant and Egypt. In Paphos, Limassol and Nicosia there were already, around the half of the 12th century, three Venetian communities prosperous and well organized, but small. Venetians operated in three sectors of Venetian economy: export from Cyprus, regional trade in commodities (other than Cypriot produced, such as alum) and investments in urban real estate. Their activity on the islands can be divided into two periods: from 1191 (conquest by king Richard I of England) to 1290 (fall of the Frankish states) and from 1290 onwards. After the fall of the Frankish states in fact, Cyprus gained a major role in both regional and long-distance commerce: from a consumer market, it became a major transit and transshipment site, attracting more Venetian merchants and maritime carriers. From the 1250s, the Venetian involvement in Cypriot trade was promoted by the ongoing concentration of immigrants from the Frankish states of the mainland to Cyprus. The rising interest in the island in this period was also due Venice's policy to stimulate salt imports. By the late 1290s the Venetian community (formed by Venetian citizens, subjects of Venice's maritime colonies and naturalized foreigners) in Cyprus formed a distinctive body, defined by legal status. Jacoby notices the strong connection existing in the late 13th century between the geographic pattern of immigration and settlement in Cyprus, the rapid economic rise of Famagusta and the policies of the leading Western maritime powers in the island. The Genoese conquest of Famagusta in 1374 had a long- lasting impact on the economy and maritime trade of Cyprus. Venetian commerce in Famagusta decreased but was not interrupted. In the 14th century Venice was also active in the pilgrim traffic, establishing a direct pilgrimage shipping line to Jaffa. In the 15th century, also non-resident Venetians were active in Cypriot trade and Venetian bankers and merchants were dominant among the kings' creditors, some heavily investing in salt trade, sugar and cotton production and marketing. From the 1460s Venice's interaction with Cyprus was largely determined by its rivalry with the Ottomans. Cyprus was transformed into a Venetian protectorate during the Venetian-Ottoman war (1463- 1479); the island was considered of great strategic importance for the containment of the Ottoman expansion. In the second part of his article, Jacoby talks about the commerce of commodities produced on the island (sugar, cotton, camlets) and the role of Venice in their commerce. Cyprus was the largest Mediterranean producer of salt and, even if it was a royal monopoly, its export and shipment were in the hands of Genoese and Venetians operating in Cyprus.

Jacoby (as you warned me) likes to use a lot of words for his arguments. He uses at least three examples from literary sources for every statement he makes and repeats himself a lot. All his arguments describe in many details the private and state economic interests for Cyprus, its being a convenient stopover from Venice to Syria and Egypt and the interest of Venice in its economic and fiscal resources. An interaction that was working very well, on the complete opposite of Crete. Besides the strong economical presence of the Venetians on Cyprus, was there also an artistic or religious kind of influence? Is there any evidence of it? Did the presence of Venice on the island also condition the development of its landscape (architectural types, ports, farming areas, monuments)? Why was it so "easy" for Venice to consolidate its power on Cyprus and so "hard" to do the same on Crete?

Papacostas, Tassos. 2010. “Byzantine Rite in a Gothic Setting: Aspects of Cultural Appropriation in Late Medieval Cyprus.” In Towards Rewriting? New Approaches to Byzantine Archaeology and Art, Warsaw, edited by, P. Grotowski and S. Skrzyniarz, 2:117–132. Warsaw.

Linda Gosner

This relatively short article by Tassos Papacostas examines aspects of cultural appropriation in Late Medieval Cyprus. Strangely enough, he seems to argue that there were very few instances of meaningful cultural appropriation, at least with respect to church architecture in the so-called “Franco-Byzantine” style of the 14^th century. This particular architectural style is defined by the combination of a basilical plan with a dome that often has rib vaulting. Traditionally, the basilical plan has been attributed to an appropriation of the Byzantine tradition and the dome to the Gothic tradition. As it turns out, there are only about 6 monuments that fall into this category. Papacostas examines several of these examples in detail to show that none fit the type consistently, and suggests that these attributes were not necessarily connected with an appropriation of past traditions.

One example is the Hodgetria, a late medieval Greek Orthodox cathedral in Nicosia that is now in ruins. The building as a whole had phases dating from the middle Byzantine through the Venetian period, with the 16^th century being the latest phase of construction. Although the building has both a Gothic rib-vaulted and domed nave, this was apparently not added until the later phase – two centuries after the supposed “Franco-Byzantine” style emerged. There is a similar situation with the two monastic domed basilicas often attributed to this style: the Enkleistra of Saint Neophytos and that of Saint Mamas at Morphou. Neither is securely dated, but the author suggests that they were probably also 16^th century constructions in their final forms.

The cathedral of Saint George of the Greeks at Famagusta is another architectural example typically attributed to this style. The layout of the sanctuary and the semi-circular apses could be Byzantine in style, but Papacostas argues there is no indication that this was a deliberate appropriation. It could have just been a convenient and already known construction method. In addition, some have claimed that there was a style dome over the central nave, but a more thorough architectural analysis seems to show that it would have been hard or impossible to make a standing dome in this particular location.

Collating these examples, Papacostas writes that they do not have a lot in common, nor to they correspond to the imaginary model for a Franco-Byzantine architectural style. He rejects completely the idea of this architectural style existing as an entity, and writes that the “intentional evocation of the island’s byzantine heritage in the 14^th century, allegedly reflected in the domed basilicas, never was.” Instead of looking to this more ancient past, Papacostas tries to contextualize the cathedral of Saint George in its contemporary history in order to explain its architecture. The cathedral was in purely Gothic style, he says, and there was no particular cultural or ethnic affiliation with this. Instead, he suggests that the cathedral was built in a period of regeneration during which the architects borrowed from the architectural style of the nearby Latin cathedral, not the Byzantine architectural style from before the Latin conquest happened. Both the Latin cathedral and the Greek orthodox cathedral were meant to dominate the landscape, and vie for visual attention.

This article brings up some important issues, many of which are ones worth confronting at an Institute where we talk so much about memory, the past in the past, and the significance of phenomena like borrowing from past architectural traditions. It is important not to look for meaning and invent historical memory where it did not necessarily exist. There must have been cases of indifference or forgetting in the ancient world, and we need to consider that people in the 14^th century might not have known or cared a lot about the Byzantine architectural tradition. In the particular case study presented here, I think it is just too hard to tell whether there was cultural appropriation and a link with the Byzantine past or not. With the few examples presented here, I do agree that maybe we cannot talk about a “Franco-Byzantine” style, but it might be going to far to say that the Byzantine architectural tradition on the island had no bearing on later architectural styles. It’s an issue worth questioning, but with data this incomplete and scarce, it is hard to find real answers.

Questions:

-How can we prove whether we have a case of cultural appropriation or simple coincidence when we are looking at poorly-documented examples, or archaeological evidence alone?

-Is appropriation the best way to describe what is (or is not) happening here?

-How can we study historical memory and collective memory? How can we recognize ancient indifference and forgetting? How can we access the thought process behind building decisions?

-If these buildings are not Franco-Byzantine what should they be called, and should they be grouped together at all?

Olympios, M. 2009. Networks of Contact in the Architecture of the Latin East: The Carmelite Church in Famagusta, Cyprus and the Cathedral of Rhodes. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 162: 29-66

Clive Vella

This article by Olympios tries to discuss one of the most ‘intriguing’ (probably a bad choice of expression) problems in the study of Gothic architecture in the Latin East. Seemingly, Balducci in 1933 had already stated that diverse groups interacted and recruited craftsmen from Cyprus to work in Rhodes. While one would probably think that this assertion would make another article in the same vein superfluous, Olympios seeks to tackle this proposal from the point of view of the Carmelite church of Famagusta and the Cathedral of our Lady of the Castle in Rhodes. Therefore, to achieve these intents, Olympios is interested in shedding light on the particular instances, conditions and considerations that led to the movement of architectural ideas from Cyprus to Rhodes.

The history of this church of Famagusta is also inevitably tied to the Carmelite western expansion after the 1230s, which occurred particularly at a time of tense relations in the Holy Land. The earlier houses founded in the West appear to have been at Nicosia, Famagusta, Paphos, Limassol and Fortamia. A letter by Pope Clement V, dated to 13 March 1311, authorized the order to receive landed estates in Famagusta, amongst other ecclesiastical structures. The letter was only followed by the actual foundation of the convent by a decade, but why? Visits and patronage by numerous individuals, including Peter Thomae the Latin patriarch of Constantinople and papal legate, encouraged the preservation of the memory of grand events. Guy Babin, a knight of the diocese of Nicosia, was even buried in the middle of the choir providing support for the foundation of the convent. Therefore, to no surprise one of the vault bosses included the depiction of the arms of Jerusalem in the centre and flanked by those of Archbishop John of Conti and Guy Babin. These players illustrated in this vault could be considered primary players in the building process but does not clearly illustrate the exact degree of participation of each patron.

By the 14^th century only the church of the convent survived, with a plain exterior with a rib-vaulted interior space carried on corbels. Its general plan, a single nave ending in a polygonal apse, was particularly common in Cypriot Gothic architecture. Also, a Franciscan church at Famagusta provided an architectural parallel, yet, the (most miniscule) architectural details suggest the master mason’s reliance on a variety of different models. For example, the vaulting system at the Carmelite church was a feature already introduced in the Franciscan church and in the hospital of St Anthony. However, Olympios also tries to suggest that a combination of features might have been deriving from great architectural centers from the kingdom, as implied by the great west window, which is where I think the argument starts to fall apart. Perhaps it is my own non-architectural interest, or perhaps because I do not feel it is possible to imagine stone masons as grand masters of the great cathedrals but then also copy-cats of local churches in Famagusta!

The account moves to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Castle in Rhodes, which it would seem could have been built by Cypriot craftsmen. Aside from the historiographic details that led Cypriot clerics west, the design of the Rhodes Cathedral was heavily indebted to the style of the church of the hospital of St Anthony in Famagusta. The gothic architectural elements infused into the Rhodes Cathedral are taken by Olympios that owe their form to Byzantine prototypes but seemingly coming from Cypriot sources. Therefore, some of the ‘Byzantine’ elements seen in the construction of this cathedral suggests the use of local builders, who would have had little experience with Gothic construction.

Ultimately, this article looks at architecture as imbued with a transmission of knowledge and ideas. Aside from architectural traditions and ideas, the role of funding and personal connections of archbishops lend a more human level to ecclesiastical projects. The article itself does not necessarily blare any loud alarms but I am slightly concerned by the way that these two structures are combined with each other. By stressing the development from a monastic church to a later cathedral, I think we might the missing the forest for the trees.

In particular, can architectural details really be considered as proof of funding or even diffusion of ideas? Can we really diminish space and time by comparing the cathedral of Nicosia or the Troyes cathedral to smaller ecclesiastical institutions? What can we make of the patronage or association of individuals to churches? Also, the effect of less or more funding available to build these institutions?

Posted at Apr 15/2013 07:25AM:
reyhan durmaz: Weyl Carr, A. 1995. Byzantines and Italians on Cyprus: Images from Art. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49: 339-357.

Carr’s article aims at analyzing artistic production on Cyprus in the Middle Ages, as well as the role of various traditions in formation of the former. The first example she analyzes is a panel painting from a church in Nicosia, which displayed both Latin and Orthodox features. She emphasizes that architectural spaces might have been featured by Gothic forms, whereas artistic presentations called for more hybrid traditions created between the Latin, Cypriot and Byzantine realms. After exemplifying intricateness of artistic production on the island, Carr turns to the question of Italian influence on Cypriot painting. She argues that particularly after the fifteenth century Italian influence on Cypriot painting was prominent, yet selects the early, pre-1453, examples as her data set. She begins her analysis of early paintings by asking what was “Byzantine” or “not Byzantine” about Cyprus, and she demonstrates that there were different approaches to Cyprus as a part of the Greek Orthodox world (or not) in different time periods. She also points out the fact that “Italian” or “Byzantine” features of Cypriot painting were difficult to identify and separate from each other. Carr also discusses that some of the forms previously identified as “Italian,” such as the babies in the scenes of Visitation, were in fact closer to the art of the Middle East, particularly to that of Armenia. Then, she allocates a lengthy section to analyze multiple building and decoration phases of the church at Lyso. She demonstrates that there has been multiple phases and influences which she refers to as “Gothic,” “Orthodox,” “Cypriot,” “Italian” and “Syrian.”

After briefly commenting on the possible means of transmission of artistic traditions, such as commerce and the Mendicant order, Carr argues that while some Cypriot painting styles could only be connected to Italy, some could be contextualized in a wider geography, and yet others would be identified strictly as Cypriot, like the gold or red veil on icons. She concludes by stating that specific regions of Italy, like Tuscany, were in direct dialogue with the art of Cyprus, yet Cyprus’ art comprises of all of the surrounding cultures, reaching the island from various directions and through different means.

In general I found Carr’s article and arguments difficult to follow. At the beginning the reader gets the impression that she would define the Italian art and demonstrate its connection with the Cypriot art, yet she makes more general conclusions. Her determination of artistic influences rests only on direct visual comparisons with other pieces of art, without having an attempt to contextualize those influences within the tides of social, economic and religious history. She also freely uses the terms like “Gothic” “Italian” “Orthodox” “Syrian” “Latin” etc, without providing proper clarification. Moreover, her assumption of “western artistic inflow to the east” and “artistic influence of the centers on the peripheries” underlie majority of her arguments. The article raises the following questions: whta is the scope of comparison in determining artistic influences, both between images and genres? What should be the criteria in determining various artistic "schools"? For instance, to say that Tuscany had a different tradition of painting than Venice, what should one look at? what is the extent of flexibility while artistic influences disseminate throughout wide geographies and time?

Arbel B. 1995. Greek Magnates in Venetian Cyprus: The Case of the Synglitico Family. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49, pp. 325-337

Ian Randall

This article by Benjamin Arbel on a “Greek” Magnate’s family in Venetian Cyprus was incredibly straightforward, though interestingly its problems are, to my mind, its largest saving grace. They expose some of the important issues about identity that we’ve been discussing and make it clear with very specific examples why colonial categories of colonizer and colonized tend to fall apart on the ground. Benjamin Arbel didn’t really pick up on this, despite the fact that his entire article was centered on this very theme, but we can make sterling use of the no doubt extensive archival research he has done.

This research focuses on the Synglitico family, a series of Greek-Cypriot up-and-comers that rise from the status of chancery clerks under the Lusignan dynasty, to nobles in the late 14th or 15th century and, by the close of the 16th, very wealthy and important ones at that. The reason for this focus, Arbel states, is to explode the myth of harsh Venetian rule that has been kicking around the scholarship for some time. The Venetians have been characterized as cruel to the Greek peasantry, and suspicious, even to the point of out and out hostility, to the Latin nobility on the island. An in depth look into the Synglitico family history, by virtue of their being both Greek AND Noble Arbel surmises, should expose the true attitude towards these two groups by the Venetians. This is problematic, not least because you can’t just mix and match social and ‘ethnic’ categories. A Greek peasant is very different from a Greek noble, in nearly everyone’s eyes for likely different reasons. Still, I’ll get to this in a bit.

The Syngliticos, it should be noted, are not an isolated case. Arbel points out that there were 10 families of Greek descent who had achieved noble status, and were treated in much the same way as their Latin counterparts, a point that should have offered a clue as to what was going on socially on the island and that would have allowed Arbel to take his article further. Still, he focuses in admirably on the specifics of the Synglitico case, offering that rare glimpse of personality and family that for archaeology, at least in earlier periods, is so often difficult to access. Likely descended, as previously noted, from chancery clerks under the Lusignans, by 1318 they are listed as owning a small vineyard in the countryside around Nicosia. At the end of the 14th century you find them as doctors, priests, scribes, physicians, and even courtiers on the island; a fairly well to do family under the Lusignans, despite their “Greekness.” In the 1460’s they are found as affluent supporters of both camps in the dispute over the crown between Jacques, the Bastard, and his sister Charlotte de Lusignan. Sometime before 1489 and the Venetian takeover, they had achieved noble status, with some apparently holding large tracts of land and marrying into other noble families with frequency.

Nicolo Synglitico is the first real focus of the article and many details of his life are telling. Fabulously wealthy, he made frequent trips to Venice, invested a thousand ducats in the Venetian public debt and in 1505 was even made governor of Limassol! This point alone is instructive. That a “Greek” nobleman could rise so fast, within 16 years of the Venetian takeover, displays clearly that ethnic categories were largely of little import in doling out offices and responsibilities. This trend continues over the next hundred years with Nicolo’s son Zegno purchasing several villages, being named viscount of Nicosia (a title that was to appear frequently in the family), and then finally becoming Count of Roucha. Arbel notes that he was the first Greek-Cypriot to be made a count, but indeed the documentary evidence allows us to see that likely few cared about that fact; Zegno asks specifically that the 1500 ducats he loaned to Venice not be mentioned when the title is conferred. Zegno continues to play with massive amounts of money during the rest of his life, spending over 80,000 ducats to confirm titles over various villages and arranging a dowry for his granddaughter’s marriage to a Venetian nobleman at a whopping 21,000 ducats. His son Giacomo, or Jacopo, a decidedly un-Greek name, is even knighted. This, while Arbel notes in an aside at the end of the article, he was not completely fluent in Italian. If anything can be said, it’s that money talks, and there is little evidence that his Greek-ness mattered at all in his meteoric social climb. Giacomo went on to be named viscount of Nicosia, and while taking some losses in the tax farming business, managed to retain the title of count. His son, another Zegno, also suffered some misfortune at the death of his wife, the inheritance of his father’s debt, and the loss of some estates, but, by marrying into the Venetian nobility, managed to right his family’s financial ship and was named the collateral general of the Venetian army on Cyprus in 1564. He was also instrumental in putting up the funds for the new walls of Nicosia that, I can attest, are still there and quite impressive. Zegno, commander of the Venetian forces in Nicosia when the Ottomans attacked, died along with several other members of his family defending Venice, and Cyprus, at the siege of Nicosia in 1571. His last will and testament stipulated that his son be raised Catholic.

Arbel notes that this story was typical for the families of the Greek nobility on the island and clearly displays, he states, that there were ample opportunities for Greeks and Latins on Venetian Cyprus. Now, I don’t know about you, but this strikes me as a bit simplistic. For starters are Greek and Latin even emic terms we should be concerned with? What meaning do they have on the ground? I suspect at this point little. Greeks and Latins had been living side by side for over 300 years at this point, at least among the upper classes, and it is likely that noble and peasant meant a lot more than Greek or Latin. Numerous recent studies have born this out, and the degree of slippage between the two categories, particularly by the end of the 13th century, becomes rather extreme. By the time the Venetians arrive I suspect the breakdown would have been more along the lines of Cypriot and Venetian and, as the case of the Synglitico family eloquently attests, even that distinction was breaking down a hundred years later. This is colonialism in action folks. Initial categories of colonizer and colonized can quickly cease to have significant meaning in the face of other social pressures. Class is an amazing leveler; the poor and the rich tend to sup at their own tables, regardless of other distinctions. This is not always the case of course, but this tale of the Syngliticos is instructive in breaking down assumptions about colonial identity, and displays the true discursive nature of that process.

How then should we categorize the Syngliticos? What were the major factors that influenced their identity in Venetian Cyprus? How were these navigated? What was the likely role of material culture? It is worth noting as well that the Syngliticos, some of them anyway, escaped the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus and took up residence in Venice. They are found over a hundred years later holding posts in the University of Padua and the Catholic church.