Economic networks and social interactions in the Byzantine koinè: settlement pattern in the Adriatic Sea between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (ca. 600-ca. 900 CE.)
Keywords:
Byzantine Empire, Adriatic Sea, cities, harbors, koinè.
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to compare the unfolding of urban trajectories in some coastal urban centers located in the so-called Byzantine koinè during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (i.e., between ca. 600 and ca. 900). In this light, the contribution will focus on a few important harbors and/or coastal sites located in Dalmatia (Zadar), southern Adriatic (Butrint), and the so-called Adriatic crescent (Comacchio and Civitas Nova Heracliana) as famously described by Michael McCormick. [1]
Indeed, the increased focus on the coins, seals, and ceramics as yielded in stratigraphically-aware excavations allows us to sketch commonalities in the social, administrative, political, and military functions of urban and urban-like settlements located in coastal (like the Adriatic itself) or insular areas too often regarded as peripheral to the so-called Byzantine heartland (the Aegean and the Anatolian plateau) in the period under scrutiny. In fact, these areas were part a geographically scattered but economically and administrative inclusive and socially coherent set of spaces (the Byzantine koinè) also having a common importance as vectors for regional and trans-Mediterranean commerce and social movements.
Therefore, the paper takes its cue from the fragmentation of the Mediterranean as an economically disjointed, socio-politically conflictual, religiously divided, and culturally disputed space at the turn of the eighth century; nevertheless, it summons the scanty literary and documentary sources for the period (as paired with archaeology) to highlight the role played by major harbor-urban sites on the Adriatic coasts as they boasted a good level of socio-economic activity, as predicated upon resilient trade links, shipping routes, and social movements between the western and eastern half on the Mediterranean.
[1] M.McCormick, Origins of the European Economy. Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300-900 (Cambridge Mass., 2001), pp. 523-43.
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