Angelo Castrorao Barba – författare

Varied approaches to an overlooked timeperiod in the history and archaeology of the Mediterranean

Thisbook presents multidisciplinary perspectives on Greece, Corsica, Malta, andSicily from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries, an often-overlooked time inthe history of the central Mediterranean. The research approaches and areas ofspecialization collected here range from material culture to landscapesettlement patterns, from epigraphy to architecture and architecturaldecoration, and from funerary archaeology to urban fabric and cityscapes.

Topicscovered in these chapters include late Roman villas; the formation of Byzantineand Islamic settlements in western Sicily; reuse of protohistoric sites inlate antiquity and the middle ages in eastern Sicily; early Christianlandscapes and settlements in Corsica; the transition from late antiquitythrough Byzantine rule to Muslim conquest in Malta; trade network trajectoriesof the Aegean islands and Crete; and crosscultural interactions in medievalGreece. Together, these essays show the potential of post-Ancient andpost-Classical archaeology, highlighting missing links between the Roman worldand medieval Byzantium and broadening the horizons of new generations ofarchaeologists.

Contributors: Carla Aleo Nero | Effie F. Athanassopoulos | Giuseppe Bazan | AmeliaR. Brown | Gabriele Castiglia | Angelo Castrorao Barba | David Cardona | SantinoAlessandro Cugno | Michael J. Decker | Franco Dell’Aquila | Scott Gallimore | MattKing | Rosa Lanteri | Pasquale Marino | Roberto Miccichè | Philippe Pergola | FilippoPisciotta | Natalia Poulou | Grant Schrama | Claudia Speciale | Davide Tanasi

Research on late antique and early medieval migrations has long acknowledged the importance of interdisciplinarity. The field is constantly nourished by new archaeological discoveries that allow for increasingly refined pictures of socio-economic development. Yet the perspectives adopted by historians and archaeologists are frequently different, and so are their conclusions. Diverging views exist in respect to varying geographical areas and scholarly traditions too.

This volume brings together history and archaeology to address the impact of the inflow and outflow of migrations on the rural landscape, the creation of new settlement patterns, and the role of migrations and mobility in transforming society and economy.

Such themes are often investigated under a regional or macro-regional viewpoint, resulting in too fragmented an understanding of a widespread phenomenon. Spanning Eastern and Western Europe, the book takes steps toward an integrated picture of territories normally investigated as separate entities, and critically establishes grounds for new comparisons and models on late antique and early medieval transformations.