Last week, I wrote a bit about Timothy Gregory’s 1986 article in Byzantine Studies/Etudes byzantines titled “Intensive Survey and its Place in Byzantine Archaeology”. Some 7 years earlier, however, in the same journal John Rosser offered similar thoughts in an article titled “A Research Strategy for Byzantine Archaeology”. In this article, Rosser suggests that Byzantine… Read More →
This spring I’m contributing to a symposium put on by Dumbarton Oaks on archaeological survey and Byzantine archaeology and history. I’ve been asked to talk about how Byzantine archaeologists have looked across chronological barriers in the context of survey. I decided to begin with Timothy Gregory’s 1986 article in Byzantine Studies/Etudes byzantines titled “Intensive Survey… Read More →
It was a pleasure to read Amelia Brown’s contribution to the inaugural volume of Herom, a journal dedicated to Greek and Roman material culture. She presents a useful overview of some evidence for pilgrimage in Corinth, Athens, and elsewhere in southern Greece. While textual evidence provides the overarching framework for her paper, she does take… Read More →
This springs Dumbarton Oaks Spring Symposium is titled Byzantine Survey Archaeology: Reflections and Approaches. The symposium will feature speakers covering a range of topics central to discussions about intensive pedestrian survey archaeology in a Byzantine context. My paper is among the last of the symposium and in a session called “Reading the Data/Reading the Future”.… Read More →
I’ve spent the last week or so perusing M. Veikou’s very new book on Byzantine Epirus (Leiden 2012). It’s a monumental tome with over 300 pages of analysis and 300 more of figures, catalogues, and a site inventory. I’ve commented on Veikou’s work on this blog before so I was pretty excited to get my… Read More →
Last week I blogged a bit about working my way through J. Bintliff’s new survey of the archaeology of Greece. This week, I reflected on the sections dedicated to the archaeology of Byzantine and Crusader Greece. These three chapters are strong enough to stand on their own as a short survey of Byzantine archaeology. They… Read More →
A few people privately and publicly have asked that I post the program for the Conversations on Byzantine Archaeology meeting this past weekend. I hadn’t realized that the program was not public, but it obviously should have been. Hopefully, the comment threads in blogs like this can continue the conversation beyond the meeting. In particular,… Read More →
I returned yesterday from an interesting meeting on the future of Byzantine archaeology (mostly in the US) hosted by Dumbarton Oaks and the Council for American Overseas Research Centers. The meeting focused on pressing issues in the health of Byzantine archaeology in the US and the role that the AORCs (American Overseas Research Centers) could… Read More →
Later this week, I head east to the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library to a meeting on the state of Byzantine archaeology. This is second such meeting; the first occurred in 2010 in the spring (and Kostis Kourelis provided a useful chronicle of it here and here.) I was invited in 2010, but unfortunate was not… Read More →
Just a quick post today as I continue my hosting duties for Kostis Kourelis. I did, however, want to provide a quick report on his talk. We had a great turn out for the talk yesterday with over 40 people from all across campus in attendance. We also have 15 people logged into the online… Read More →
As I am sure you all know, today is the 2011 Cyprus Research Fund Lecture. It will be delivered by Prof. Kostis Kourelis of Franklin and Marshall College at 4 pm (CST) on the beautiful University of North Dakota’s campus in the elegant East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz library. His talk is on Byzantium and… Read More →
David Pettegrew and I continue to analyze the Byzantine pottery from the Eastern Corinthia Survey for a short discussion of intensive survey and Byzantine archaeology (see also: Sampling the Byzantine Landscape and Corinth’s Byzantine Countryside). This past week, I did a RBHS (Rim, Base, Handle, Sherd) analysis of the Byzantine sherds from the survey assemblage.… Read More →
I always get excited to discover a new scholar’s work, but I get really happy when I find scholarship that cuts through my various interests and offers some useful insights. Over the past few days I’ve been reading three articles by Myrto Veikou on Byzantine settlement in the region of Epirus. One is a working… Read More →
This weekend I began the almost overwhelming task of negotiating L. Brubaker and J. Haldon’s Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680-850: A History (Cambridge 2011). The runs to just shy of 800 pages of text and with an addition 100 pages of bibliography. It continues in the trend of Byzantinists writing big books; M.… Read More →
A reference in Daniel Faltesek’s contribution to Dougherty and Nawrotzki’s Writing History in the Digital Age caught my interest. Faltesek discusses the rise of non-linear editing particularly in film, but he refers to an article by Thomas Edison from 1878 which celebrated the potential of the phonograph for both recording and playing back sounds. In… Read More →
