Byzantine Epirus

This text draws on five years of archaeological and topographical fieldwork in order to attempt a re-reading of Byzantine texts in accordance with recent perceptions of the historicity of space.

Much of the past twenty years of scholarship on late-antique and medieval landscapes and settlement has introduced theoretical patterns reflecting meta-narratives of evolution and transition. This book draws on 5 years of archaeological and topographical fieldwork in order to attempt a rereading of Byzantine texts in accordance with recent perceptions of the historicity of space. The result is a fresh interpretation of settlement in Western Greece (Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania) from 600 to 1200 AD, springing from a postmodern theoretical background. While representing real progress in the treatment of the Middle Byzantine regions, the book makes an ecological contribution to historical and social studies through a new evaluation of the transformation of medieval settlement as a result of interaction between physical/social space and human agency.

The district of Epiros in north-western Greece became an independent province following the Fourth Crusade and the dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire by the Latins in 1204. It retained its independence despite the recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks in 1261. Each of its rulers acquired the Byzantine titles of Despot, from which the term Despotate was coined to describe their territory. They preserved their autonomy partly by seeking support from their foreign neighbours in Italy. The fortunes of Epiros were thus affected by the expansionist plans of the Angevin kings of Naples and the commercial interests of Venice. Until 1318 it was governed by direct descendants of its Byzantine founder. Thereafter it was taken over first by the Italian family of Orsini, then conquered by the Serbians, infiltrated by the Albanians, and appropriated by an Italian adventurer, Carlo Tocco. Like the rest of Byzantium and eastern Europe it was ultimately absorbed into the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century. The Despotate of Epiros illuminates part of Byzantine history and of the history of Greece in the Middle Ages.

This volume offers new perspectives on the history of the Byzantine Balkans and beyond—regions that lived for centuries under the long shadow of Constantinople—as well as unique insights into the complex world of late medieval and early modern southeastern Europe during a period of catastrophe.

Maskwork is a new way of looking at the art of masks and mask-making: a unique combination of ethnography, design and practical advice. Jenny Foreman's book for teachers and practitioners of drama, art, design and technology grew out of a research bursary from the UK's National Society for Education in Art and Design. They received her report with great enthusiasm as "one of the very best projects . . . likely to make a valuable and useful contribution" to both specific and cross-discipline school and college courses as well as to adult performing groups. The first part explains the anthropology, nature, use and meaning of masks around the world, from prehistory to modern times. Richly illustrated with colour and black-and-white photographs, this section introduces the ethical implications of free use of masks which have ethnographical connections - an important aspect completely neglected elsewhere. The second part comprises eight theme workshops, including theory, background and instructions for mask-making, supplemented by photographs of assembly and use by groups of people from all age-ranges. Materials are inexpensive and easy to acquire, while line drawings aid step-by-step construction. A bibliography and reference section helps readers go on to even greater understanding and achievements.

The Byzantine Dark Ages explores current debates about the sudden transformation of the Byzantine Empire in the wake of environmental, social and political changes. Those studying the Byzantine Empire, the successor to the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean, have long recognized that the mid-7th century CE ushered in sweeping variations in the way of life of many inhabitants of the Mediterranean world, with evidence of the decline of the size and economic prosperity of cities, a sharp fall in expressions of literary culture, the collapse in trade networks, and economic and political instability. Michael J. Decker looks at the material evidence for the 7th to 9th centuries, lays out the current academic discourse about its interpretation, and suggests new ways of thinking about this crucial era. Important to readers interested in understanding how and why complex societies and imperial systems undergo and adapt to stresses, this clearly written, accessible work will also challenge students of archaeology and history to think in new ways when comprehending the construction of the past.

The Principality of Epirus was a medieval Greek state established in the western part of the Balkans after the fall of Constantinople to the forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Epirote rulers from the Komnenos Doukas family claimed to be legitimate successors to the Byzantine imperial throne and, with the support of the high clergy and the aristocracy within their domain, carefully maintained their Byzantine identity under the conditions of exile. This book explores a corpus of Epirote architecture, frescoes, sculpture, and inscriptions from the early thirteenth to the early fourteenth century within a comparative and interdisciplinary framework, focusing on the nexus of art, patronage, and political ideology. Through an examination of a vast array of visual and textual sources, many of them understudied or hitherto unpublished, the book uncovers how the Epirote elite mobilised art and material culture to address the issues of succession and legitimacy, construct memory, reclaim Constantinople, and mediate encounters and exchanges with the Latin West. In doing so, this study offers a new perspective on Byzantine political and cultural history in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade.

The volume – whose chapters originated at panels at the International Byzantine Congress in Belgrade and at the IMC in Leeds – seeks to offer an introduction into various aspects of social and geographical mobility, and the intrinsic relationship between the two, as well as into the microstructures of social action in the Byzantine world during the high and late Middle Ages. Based on a balanced approach to the role of personal agency and social structure, the authors of the individual chapters seek to clarify how and why various kinds of people mobilized to either change place and/or social position, or to form groups whose actions shaped social reality both at the imperial centre and the provincial periphery.