IMC 2019: Sessions
Session 1340: Byzantine Materialities, IV: Workshops, Trade, and Manuscripts
Wednesday 3 July 2019, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman & Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham |
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| Organiser: | Leslie Brubaker, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman & Modern Greek Studies / Institute of Archaeology & Antiquity, University of Birmingham |
| Moderator/Chair: | Rebecca Darley, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London |
| Paper 1340-a | Macedonian Materialities: The Menologion of Basil II (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Social History |
| Paper 1340-b | Material Evidence for Middle Byzantine Commerce (Language: English) Index terms: Archaeology - Artefacts, Byzantine Studies, Economics - Trade |
| Paper 1340-c | Men at Work: Stucco Workshops on Mount Athos (Language: English) Index terms: Architecture - General, Art History - Sculpture, Byzantine Studies |
| Abstract | This session is the last of four interconnected panels concerned with Byzantine Materiality. Here we return to trade, exchange and workshops making Byzantine materials. The session opens with a paper on the well-known Menologion of Basil II (c.1000), a joint product of several painters identified in the manuscript itself; the paper explores the implications of communal workshop practice in a very deluxe setting. The second paper moves away from the palace and back to the docks and streets to look at what archaeology - the most material of Byzantine disciplines - tells us about commerce in the Middle Byzantine period. It has long been argued that the Byzantines distained commerce: this paper debunks that notion, on the basis of a profound understanding of Byzantine Materiality. The final paper moves the discussion of Byzantine materials to late Byzantine Constantinople, with an exploration of hitherto unpublished brick and kiln evidence. |