IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 1704: Britain and Byzantium at the End of Antiquity
Thursday 9 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Organisers: | Janel Fontaine, Treasure Trove Unit, National Museums Scotland Sihong Lin, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Jonathan Shepard, Faculty of History, University of Oxford |
| Respondent: | Brittany Nebiolini, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic / Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 1704-a | Coinage as Contact: Byzantium and Scotland in the 6th Century (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Numismatics |
| Paper 1704-b | Writing the Far West in a World Crisis: Britain and Ireland in 7th-Century East Roman Sources (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Hagiography |
| Abstract | While the (eastern) Roman Empire’s enduring influence across the Mediterranean world after the ‘fall’ of Rome has long been investigated, connections to Britain and Ireland have received less attention. Not only were the islands further from the empire’s heartlands, the written sources also only provide limited evidence of mobility and exchange. Building on recent work on the archaeological evidence and ecclesiastical sources for east-west interactions, this session will contribute to the growing scholarship arguing that even islands at the edge of the world remained connected to the eastern Mediterranean at the end of antiquity. Focusing respectively on the numismatic evidence, religious iconography, and Greek texts, the three papers together also illustrate how this understudied topic would benefit from conversations across fields and disciplines |