(22134522 - Late Antique Archaeology) Artisans and Traders in The Early Byzantine City - Exploring The Limits of Archaeological Evidence

THE MIDDLE CLASS
Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

via University of Oxford
ARTISANS AND TRADERS IN THE
EARLY BYZANTINE CITY: EXPLORING THE LIMITS OF
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
Enrico Zanini
Abstract
The application of research methodologies and strategies derived from

western urban archaeology to Early Byzantine contexts renders tradi-
tionally obscure social groups, like the productive and commercial
“middle class”, visible in the archaeological record. Working from both
a re-examination of written sources and an assessment of new archae-
ological data, it seems possible to trace the evolution of the social and
economic role of artisans and shopkeepers in the Early Byzantine city
between the 5th and 7th centuries. At the same time, the investigation
of such undetermined social groups calls for a reflection about the lim-
its of archaeological knowledge and the need for closer interaction
between different disciplines and research perspectives.
Introduction
The ‘stratigraphic revolution’ that for the past 15 years has charac-
terised the archaeological study of the eastern Mediterranean, and in
particular the archaeology of the Early Byzantine world, has been
responsible for numerous positive transformations in the discipline.
Perhaps the most significant change is that researchers now feel capa-
ble of asking the archaeological evidence a range of questions that
only two decades ago would have seemed futile and hopeless.1 The
era in which archaeology was only considered fit to study the great
public monuments of the past is long gone, and our research into the
archaeology of the Early Byzantine world now incorporates questions
regarding its residential, productive, and commercial structures. Whilst
we still lack a full understanding of these structures, a series of key
excavations has shown that when stratigraphic analysis is applied to
1
Ward-Perkins (1996a).
W. Bowden, A. Gutteridge, and C. Machado (edd.) Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity
(Late Antique Archaeology 3.1 – 2005) (Leiden 2006), pp. 373–411

374 enrico zanini
well-preserved archaeological contexts, archaeology can provide inno-

vative ways to understand complex socio-economic phenomena.
Alongside these innovations in field techniques, and a concomitant
growth in their appreciation, an increasingly nuanced interdisciplinary
approach is also being developed: we are becoming more skilful at
combining data recovered from archaeological excavation with tradi-
tional historical narratives. In other words, the focus of our research
is shifting away from simple concerns over the availability of basic
information towards exploring the ways in which the information
available might help us to respond to complex questions.2 Indeed,
this paper will itself be aimed towards just such a complex question:
the continuity and evolution of the roles played by artisans and small
traders in the economic and social system of Early Byzantine cities.3
From this perspective, the aim of this paper is not to provide a
synthesis of all available archaeological information related to such
artisanal production and trade.4 Instead, it will focus on the need for
a more self-conscious approach to the complex issue of reconstructing
and interpreting archaeological data recovered from the urban con-
texts of Early Byzantine society and the potential of such an approach.
This offers a departure from the cognitive limitation that is intrin-
sic to the way in which we understand the archaeological record
(whereby we attempt to weave a broad tapestry of social history from
the threads of micro-history preserved by archaeological deposits) by
applying conceptual models and methodologies derived from other
schools of archaeology to the context of the Early Byzantine world.
If one seeks to transcend one’s own constraints, it is first necessary
to recognise them. Therefore, if we want to develop ways in which
archaeology can say more about the past, the first step towards this
goal is to understand its present limitations. In this case, one possible
approach is to apply to the field of Early Byzantine archaeology the
broader theoretical ideas advanced by T. Mannoni and his school,5
based around what he calls ‘changing disciplines at the junction of
knowledge’.6 This method—if one might summarise it in schematic
2
Sodini (2003).
3
Kaplan (2001).
4
Effective syntheses are Sodini (1979); Morrison (1989); Ward-Perkins (2000) and
(2001); Dagron (2002); and Morrison and Sodini (2002); all of which include ref-
erences to the extensive earlier bibliography.
5
Mannoni, Cabona, and Ferrando (1988).
6
Mannoni (1994) and (1997).

artisans and traders in early byzantine city 375
form—is aimed toward developing what is termed a ‘spiralling cog-

nitive approach’: that is, one begins with an intensive analysis of the
available archaeological record in its entirety, in order that one may
arrive at the point at which the material evidence and those meth-
ods used to understand it have exhausted all of its inherent possi-
bilities. Arriving at this methodological intersection (Mannoni’s ‘junction
of knowledge’) one does not in fact cease enquiry, but rather one
turns to new types of evidence and new methodological tools in order
to critique the evidence. If our interpretative models can be expanded
and enriched in this way, then it becomes possible to return to our
original evidence with new hypotheses to verify and new interpretative
strategies. We are therefore equipped with new lenses through which
to view the material evidence (objects, monuments, deposits), and
consequently may hope to advance our state of knowledge.
Who were Traders and Who were Artisans?
The subject under consideration is particularly complicated for two

different reasons. Firstly, artisans and small traders did not, in Antiquity,
represent any sort of homogeneous or identifiable social group. The
very idea of a ‘middle class’ is a modern one that has no parallel
in the ancient world, where the intermediate classes between the rel-
atively well-described groups of aristocrats and the ‘poor’ appear as
a rather vague horizon, constituted by individuals of very weakly dis-
tinguished social status, and who existed in continuous evolution.7
Secondly, due to this very lack of precise social identity, the visibil-
ity of this intermediate class in the historical and archaeological
record is very limited. In both cases, the intermediate classes often
appear as a background noise, in which substantial research might
occasionally identify and study specific groups or discrete individuals.8
The Written Sources

The knowledge that can be drawn from written texts concerning arti-
sans and small traders active in Early Byzantine cities is limited by
7
Garnsey and Saller (2003) 129–52.
8
Sodini (2003) 42–45.

376 enrico zanini
the ideology of the sources (i.e. non-vernacular texts, such as historio-

graphy, treatises, monumental and ornamental epigraphy, and similar)
which invariably reflect the viewpoint of the elite. Following Graeco-
Roman cultural tradition, those activities designated as artisanal or
commercial (from which substantial portions of the ruling classes
indirectly derived some of their own wealth) continued to be perceived
as occupations unbecoming to an aristocrat, and were instead to be
reserved for individuals of lower rank.
These social activities tend, therefore, to be largely ignored by the
sources, or rather they suffer from a curious phenomenon of ‘dual
social identity’. In other words, although there is apparent disinterest
or disdain towards commercial activity, the goods themselves (their
rich variety and their exotic origin), and the evident presence of opu-
lent marketplaces, are constantly associated with the concept of pros-
perity and form an important way through which urban and rural
lifestyles are differentiated from one another. One of the most signi-
ficant evidence of this might be found in Libanius’ description of late
4th c. Antioch and its surroundings: here, the system of urban por-
ticoes, the shops of which displayed products from all over the known
world, becomes a key symbol of urban opulence (fig. 1).9 In the same
way, those regular markets or fairs that took place in neighbouring
villages and at which inhabitants could find everything they needed
without going into the city,10 evidently qualify as ‘urban’ character-
istics despite the smallness of the settlements they served.
In a very different literary context—a prescriptive rather than a
descriptive text—such a concept reappears six centuries later, in the
famous 10th c. Book of the Eparch, which suggested, albeit slightly ana-
chronistically, the model of an ideal city that might be applied to
Early Byzantine Constantinople.11 It ratified a topographic hierarchy
of commercial activities within the city, in which the shops in which
luxury goods were sold (both the exotic, and the merely important)
were perceived, just as they were in the time of Libanius, as a defin-
ing element in the concept of ‘urban dignity’. As such, they had the
right to be located along the main colonnaded street of Constantinople
(the Mese),12 thus reviving the city’s image as a commercial capital,
9
Antiochikos 11.251–55; Festugière (1959) 33–34; Petit (1955).
10
Antiochikos 11.230–32; Festugière (1959) 29–30.
11
Koder (1991).
12
Thomov and Ilieva (1998); Mundell Mango (2000).

Fig. 1 A workshop depicted in a floor mosaic in the Yakto Complex at Daphne, near Antioch (5th c.) (after Levi 1947).

378 enrico zanini
and following the model of the great caravan cities of the ancient east-
ern Mediterranean.13 Shops that sold somewhat less exclusive (though
still highly valued) merchandise, occupied an intermediate location,
most usually along the colonnaded streets that depart perpendicular
to the main road. Finally, the workshops that produced the cheapest
goods, and the shops that sold them, were not considered to enhance
the dignity of the city, and indeed detracted from it, due to their
being sources of danger, noise, and malevolent odours. As such, they
were to be located on the city’s periphery or even in its extra-urban
areas. The single exception to this rule were the retailers of domestic
goods (saldamarioi ), whose function was to provide immediate satisfac-
tion to the needs of daily life, a fact that explains their capillary dis-
tribution throughout all quarters.
When one turns, however, to more minor or vernacular sources,
such as chronicles, hagiographies, private epigraphy, and archival
sources, one gains an alternate perspective. Although this corpus has
not yet been the subject of a systematic search for information relat-
ing to commercial activities, and the evidence itself is dispersed and
fragmentary, a handful of examples illustrate how such material, per-
haps in itself more closely related to daily life than more official
written sources, might create a richer and more precisely articulated
image of the role of commerce, and of the social status of artisans
and small traders. Hagiographies offer a particularly interesting insight
in this sense, allowing us to gain a more precise idea of the articu-
lation of the social groups that formed the majority of the population
of small and medium urban centres.14 This social make-up can also
be glimpsed and understood with a similar clarity in the corpus of
private epigraphy,15 both of funerary (as shown in particular by the
collection of inscriptions from Korykos in Cilicia),16 and non-funerary
character.
The most important of the non-funerary inscriptions are proba-
bly the many references to the activities of architects, engineers, and
master masons that have been preserved in epigraphy from the vil-
lages of the limestone massif in northern Syria.17 These inscriptions
13
Mundell Mango (2001).
14
Mangoulias (1976).
15
Trombley (2004).
16
Patlagean (1977) 158–70; Trombley (1987).
17
Tate (1991).

testify how, regardless of the social importance of the building under

construction (many inscriptions indeed refer to private buildings), arti-
sanal activity was in itself a way for an individual to extract themselves
from the mass anonymity of the urban plebs, and preserve themselves
and their names. They were recorded as the owners of specific knowl-
edge and skills that might qualify them as worthy of recognition in
the social and economic fabric of the urban community in which
they lived and worked. In short, alongside those archival sources that
have been conserved, studied, and published, (such as the corpus of
Egyptian papyri),18 these inscriptions probably represent our best
instrument for understanding the complex web of relationships and
mechanisms that regulated the organisation of artisanal production
and the articulation of small-scale trade in the different parts of the
Early Byzantine empire.
A Social Class in Evolution?

This comparison between the images of artisans preserved in the
more ‘official’ written sources and those culled from so-called ‘minor’
sources almost seems to indicate a progressive social evolution in the
ways in which these individuals and their roles were perceived within
Early Byzantine urban society. It seems possible that the period in
question saw changes to the ‘labour market’ that represent the first real
alteration in the very static horizons of the ancient economy, and
that these changes were to create the very conditions in which the
work of artisans and traders was for the first time to achieve both
economic value and social visibility.
Some indications of this gradual evolution emerge from evidence
connected to a wide variety of artisanal trades, but most especially
those workers involved with the building industry. In one well-known
passage, Gregory of Nyssa mentions how, in late 4th c. Iconium, he
tried to employ 30 specialised workers capable of building a chapel,
and declared his willingness to pay a salary equivalent to four times
that established for such artisanal labour in Diocletian’s edict of
prices, only a century before.19 This demand for artisanal skills in
the construction trade is particularly interesting, as it bears witness
to the creation of new forms of public and private building (both
18
Van Minnen (1987); Fikhman (1994).
19
Analysis and commentary in Cracco Ruggini (1980) 57.

380 enrico zanini
ecclesiastical foundations, and the sumptuous urban residences that

played a role in the social recognition of an aristocratic class),20 and
the way in which this need created a new kind of labour market
and encouraged the inter-regional mobility of those artisans who had
a particular specialisation.21
The famous inscription from Sardis, dated to 459,22 is also indicative
of an increasingly formalised labour market, as the text details the
rules that regulated the relationship between building entrepreneurs
(oikodómoi ) and patrons, particularly with reference to the time allowed
for the completion of works (fig. 2). Whilst both of these texts are
relevant in a local context, they are paralleled in imperial legislation
that (especially from the second half of the 5th c.), often appears
aimed at repressing construction artisans whose behaviour is con-
sidered ‘improper’ and who appear to have attempted to create some-
thing akin to ‘cartels’ with the intention of controlling the labour
market and artificially determining price rises.23
Some Justinianic legislation, which was evidently directed towards
halting the rising salaries of artisans and other categories of labourer,
refers to this same scenario of socio-economic self-assertion by mem-
bers of the artisanal and commercial classes. This is perhaps most
evident in the text of a novella that was promulgated at a moment of
grave social and economic distress subsequent to the plague of 542,
an event that had brought the productive and commercial system of
many urban centres to the very brink of collapse.24 Artisans and
traders were associated with farmers and ship-owners, all charac-
terised by the eyes of the law as being in the very grip of the hate-
ful practice of greed; this suggests that processes similar to those well
documented for the building industry (due to its relatively high vis-
ibility in literary and epigraphic sources) might be extended to many
other productive and commercial sectors. It might also be a valuable
20
Guidobaldi (1999).
21
We might compare information about the presence of Isaurian stone-cutters
active in Antioch and maybe even in Constantinople, or those Egyptian workers
who were employed in the reconstruction of Jerusalem after the Persian sack of
614: Sodini (1979) 76.
22
For a comprehensive re-reading of the interpretative problems of this inscrip-
tion see, most recently, Di Branco (2000), with synthesis and commentary of the
vast preceding bibliography.
23
See Cod. Theod. 15.1.1–53; Cod. Iust. 8.10.1–14; 8.11.1–22; Janvier (1969); Saliou
(1994).
24
See Nov. 122, datable to 544.

Fig. 2 The inscription from Sardis (after Di Branco 2000).

382 enrico zanini
indication of a wide-ranging transformation in the economic roles of

artisans and traders within the social organisation of the Early
Byzantine cities.25 Moreover, this is a transformation of which the
continuation can be defined throughout other professional categories
in subsequent centuries.26
The Archaeological Sources

As detailed above, the recent developments in the field of Early
Byzantine archaeology have actually produced a profound transfor-
mation in the nature of the available data that might be used to
reconstruct the socio-economic panorama of Early Byzantine cities,
and most especially the urban environment of the middle classes.
Significant sections of urban landscape have been excavated at different
sites, revealing areas of residential, productive, and commercial char-
acter. Although in many of these cases publication is not yet definitive,
it is still possible to glean from these sites a better understanding of
the archaeological traces left by the lives and activities of urban arti-
sans and small traders in the Early Byzantine world.
Of these sites, the most extraordinary is that of the shops at
Sardis,27 where it has been possible to investigate—even via the exca-
vation methodologies and recording strategies of the 1960s—an entire
commercial complex that was destroyed by fire at the beginning of
the 7th c., in which even the goods on sale at the time of the conflag-
ration have been preserved (fig. 3).28 Houses, offices, and shops belong-
ing to members of the productive and commercial lower/middle
classes have also been excavated at Anemurium,29 where research into
the domestic instrumentum and its social context originally formed part
of a significant methodological agenda,30 even though this research
directive did not find until today appropriate space in the final publi-
cation of the excavations. Research into the SW quarter of the upper
city at Cari‘in Grad31 has attempted to throw new light on the round of
daily activities that took place even in this urban landscape, the highly
25
Cracco Ruggini (1971).
26
Cheynet, Malamud and Morrison (1991); Dagron (1991).
27
Foss and Scott (2002).
28
Crawford (1990).
29
Russell (2002).
30
Russell (1982) and (1986).
31
Bavant, Kondić and Spieser (1990).

Fig. 3 The shops at Sardis during the excavation in 1960’ (after Crawford 1990).

384 enrico zanini
symbolic and newly-fashioned ‘miniature’ capital of Early Byzantine

Illyricum, the functions of which were predominantly administrative.32
Further excavations of commercial and artisanal areas at Sagalassos,33
Scythopolis,34 Caesarea in Palestine,35 Hierapolis in Phrygia,36 Iol
Caesarea in Africa,37 and Beirut38 (and such a list of these important
sites, recently excavated and published, is by no means complete, or
even exhaustive) have contributed to our reconstructions of a multi-
faceted panorama of life in the Early Byzantine cityscape. This field
of knowledge will be further enriched by those excavations recently
begun at Chersonesos,39 at Carthago Spartaria,40 and at Gortyn.41
Naturally, if our aim is to produce reliable synthetic considerations
of the issues at hand it will be necessary to wait for a more complete
publication of at least some of these fieldwork projects, but in the
meantime it remains possible to note the positive effects of this gen-
eral reconsideration of our approaches to these research problems.
A fruitful confrontation between raw data and more interpretative
models (which are themselves derived from both archaeological and
non-archaeological sources) is, for example, one of the most impor-
tant elements in the recently published volume The Economic History
of Byzantium,42 in which detailed case-studies of archaeological evidence
from several of the sites mentioned above are used to sustain the
volume’s arguments.
From Archaeology to Social History:

A Question of Visibility?
The value of these new excavations has not been restricted to the
provision of data useful for the reconstruction of the economic fabric
of the Early Byzantine city. They also constitute an important oppor-
32
Popović (1990).
33
Waelkens et al. (1997).
34
Tsafrir and Foerster (1997).
35
Patrich (1999).
36
Arthur (2002a); D’Andria (2003).
37
Potter (1995).
38
Perring (1997–98).
39
Kazanski and Soupault (2000).
40
Ramallo Asensio (2000).
41
Di Vita (1987); Zanini and Giorgi (2002) and (2003); Zanini (2004).
42
See Laiou (2002) 6.

tunity for the methodologies employed by archaeologists to be further

sharpened, so that we might better understand the ways in which
we approach difficult questions. As such, this research agenda allows
us a chance to assess what it is we mean by visibility in the archae-
ological record, and how, in the midst of the archaeological traces
of a complex society, certain classes or sections might be distin-
guished, identified, and described.
Shopkeepers
In theory at least, shopkeepers should be relatively visible in the
archaeological stratigraphy of the Early Byzantine city, not least be-
cause those buildings of a commercial character are often closely
associated with the grand monumental nuclei of any city, or at least
lie in their vicinity. This urban core has often been the principal re-
search focus of programmes of archaeological excavation (at least in
the formative years of the discipline), and so we might expect such
work would naturally reveal concomitant commercial premises along-
side a city’s monumental heart. In the case of Sardis, it is clear that
this, the most significant example of commercial property uncovered
from the Early Byzantine world, was discovered largely through the
aegis of blind chance, rather than a directed programme of research
into the nature of the city’s mercantile fabric, as it was discovered
via an exploration of the monumental complex to which the work-
shops were attached. Analogous cases might be cited from Hierapolis,
Gortyn, Scythopolis, and from Caesarea Palestina, where the explora-
tion of the commercial space of the Early Byzantine city originated
in excavations of the monumental complexes of the earlier imperial
Roman period.
In contrast to these instances of topographic serendipity, one might
also cite the inevitable archaeological near-invisibility of any human
activity that occurs principally at a small scale. Local commerce is
a clear example of one such micro-social activity. Similarly, it is self-
evident that commercial spaces tend to be difficult to identify as a
category, and it is also hard to differentiate typologically between
their many varied manifestations. As with all areas and structures that
are of an exclusively functional purpose, shops and workshops were
the subject of a strong structural traditionalism and a marked absence
of typological differentiation. At Constantinople, as in the provinces—
and as in ancient, medieval, and modern Rome—the buildings and

386 enrico zanini
spaces destined for commercial enterprise were always typologically

identical to each other: simple rectangular areas, delineated by (often
windowless) walls pierced by one or two entrances, and with one or
more benches either structurally incorporated into the building or,
more commonly, added as furniture.
In both the contemporary and ancient cityscape of commerce, the
principal factor that distinguishes the shop of a goldsmith, a bookseller,
or a merchant of carpets (and a crucial element in the historical dis-
courses that we construct about the diversity of economic roles played
by the shopkeeper in the Early Byzantine world) is not the form of
the container, but rather its contents. However, it almost goes with-
out saying that in the overwhelming majority of cases the contents of
a commercial space have not been conserved in the archaeological
deposits that we can recover, not only because the commercial mate-
rial itself may well have been perishable, but also because once any
commercial property has been abandoned, its stock is very rarely left
lying idle in the empty shops. This is true for all periods: it is enough
to consider for a moment how our knowledge of small-scale commerce
in the earlier Roman world would have been affected had we not had
evidence from the exceptional case of Pompeii on which to draw, a
site at which the eruption of Vesuvius captured the socio-economic
fabric of an entire city in the archaeological record. The result of
this is that our research models often, by necessity, place heavy em-
phasis on a handful of extraordinary sites with exceptional levels of
preservation, such as Sardis (fig. 4),43 and thus construct frameworks
around such examples, into which data derived from other, less for-
tunate contexts, must be forced.
A second avenue of approach into the nature of commerce during
the period is to examine instead the manufactured and traded objects
themselves. Yet this territory is a no less treacherous object of study,
since the undoubtedly widespread and multifaceted network of trade
survives to us through only ephemeral traces. In very general terms
43
In this context, another such site of extraordinary preservation is the exedra
of the Crypta Balbi in Rome. Here, excavations revealed an accumulation of mate-
rial that evidently derived from the demolition of a multi-function workshop; this
workshop was clearly situated in the immediate vicinity of the monument, although
its exact location has yet to be identified. Despite the fragmentary nature of the
material from the exedra, and its secondary-depositional state, its recovery has never-
theless provided a much better picture of the nature of workshops in Rome during
the period: Saguì and Manacorda (1995); Saguì (1998); Arena et al. (2001).

artisans and traders in early byzantine city
Fig. 4 A schematic section of archaeological deposits from the shops of Sardis, with evidence of a two-storey structure
(after Crawford 1990).
387

388 enrico zanini
one might easily affirm that the visibility of commerce is closely linked
to the movement of the objects in question: that is to say, it only
becomes possible to infer the existence of a commercial mechanism
when objects evidently move through space. Although this appears
a rather banal observation, it has some serious implications for our
ability to construct a ‘social archaeology’ of commerce in the Early
Byzantine urban landscape, because the archaeological record allows
us to see only a restricted portion of a vast and complex world of
merchants.
The evidence of traded objects allows us to see and identify those
who moved large quantities of goods of limited value over large dis-
tances (such as those who traded fine African table ware or amphorae
containing Syrian/Palestinian wine throughout the Mediterranean)
(fig. 5),44 or those who transported precious goods over long and
short distances (such as might be evident in the complex mechanism
of fairs and other exchange systems that moved goods toward the
frontier regions)45 (fig. 6). However, it rarely allows us to identify or
appreciate those who sold goods of local production that were everyday
urban necessities, and who doubtlessly represented the overwhelming
numerical majority of all of those involved in trade transactions. If
we only approach trade and commerce through the evidential medium
of objects that can be identified as moving through space, then this
group of people—central to any assessment of trade and traders in
the Early Byzantine world—is rendered almost wholly invisible in
the archaeological record.
This is the problem that faces us, and it has become vital to develop
a methodology with which we can confront it. Firstly, we must adopt
a new and more holistic approach in our assessments of what con-
stitutes archaeological indicators of commercial activity. This means
that at the level of artefact analysis, great attention must be paid to
the specific context in which manufactured articles are found; at a
wider level, this means that some of the more traditional categorisa-
tions of individual objects (typological microvariation, chronological
seriation, frequency percentages) might be eschewed in favour of an
overall assessment of artefacts as indicators of human activity, from
production, to distribution, to abandonment.46
44
Lopez (1959); Durliat (1990).
45
For a southern Italy example, see Arthur (2002b) 140.
46
Ikäheimo (2003).

Fig. 5 African Red Slip from the 7th c. deposit of the Crypta Balbi, in Rome (after Arena et al. 2001).

390
enrico zanini
Fig. 6 The distribution map of ‘Lupu Biba’ type fibulae reveals the existence of a fair system throughout the Lombard-Byzantine
frontier in southern Italy (after Arthur 2002b).

Secondly, there is a need for a more careful approach, from a

methodological point of view, towards data retrieved from excava-
tion contexts. The archaeological invisibility of commercial activities
might be significantly reduced if a closer reading was given to the
stratigraphy, especially through an increased awareness in any
ephemeral residues of human activity. The research conducted at Iol
Casearea is exemplary in this sense.47 Here the minute documenta-
tion of traces left by portable wooden structures on the pavement
of the forum, and their association with numerous small coins found
in the interstices of the paving stones, provided archaeological evi-
dence of human activity that would otherwise have never emerged
from generic references in the sources (fig. 7).
Thirdly, it is vital that a longer chronological span is considered
than has hitherto been the case for these issues, since that which
remains invisible over the arc of a short time span can instead become
evident if one searches for continuity over a longer period. In this
sense, the case of the city of Palmyra in Syria represents a particularly
interesting case study. Our knowledge of this city during the Early
Byzantine period is essentially limited to its defensive works and to
several churches in its so-called Byzantine Quarter; we know noth-
ing of the commercial activities that could have continued to develop
in the Early Byzantine period along the grand colonnaded street that
traversed the entire city. However, archaeological investigations have
revealed that during the Umayyad period the physical appearance
of this space changed radically (it was now occupied by two lines of
shops, separated by narrow alleys) yet its function as the commer-
cial nucleus of the city remained unaltered.48 This functional continuity
accompanied by a radical spatial transformation (fig. 8) might be
interpreted as sufficient to postulate the vitality of this commercial
nucleus in the preceding Early Byzantine period as well, even in the
absence of secure archaeological evidence that might well have escaped
the notice of investigations that were not specifically aimed at their
recovery.
This last point leads us to a final methodological reflection. As was
the case in the Graeco-Roman world, and as would also prove to be
47
Potter (1995) 32–61.
48
Al-As"ad and Stepniowski (1989). For a theoretical model (albeit disputed) of
the functional continuity between the late antique porticoed street and the Arab
souk in the Syrian cities of the 7th–8th centuries see Sauvaget (1934) 99–102; Bejor
(1999) 106–110.

392 enrico zanini
Fig. 7 Forum pavement at Iol Caesarea showing traces of wooden structures

(after Potter 1995).

Fig. 8 The change from colonnaded street to souk in a schematic model by Sauvaget (after Sauvaget 1934).

394 enrico zanini
the case throughout the Medieval period and into today’s contem-
porary Mediterranean society, much of the material fabric of com-
mercial activity in the Early Byzantine city was of a temporary nature,
as business was conducted in the form of an open-air market. These
impermanent stalls, varying their locations over time, leave little
recoverable trace in the archaeological record. Perhaps it might
become possible in this instance to talk of ‘inverse archaeological
evidence’ because, paradoxically, it appears that the absence of archae-
ological data might constitute the best archaeological proof for a
continuity of function in those areas of the Early Byzantine city that
had traditionally been given over to commercial life: fora and por-
ticoes. In other words, the reconstruction, restoration, and even the
maintenance and upkeep of these areas that kept them free of detri-
tus (activities that are also often attested by written sources) could
constitute secure archaeological evidence for the continuity of com-
mercial activities in the cities of the Early Byzantine Mediterranean.49
In this case, one cleans and maintains in order that a utilised space
remains both functionally and conceptually associated with a specific
activity in the round of daily life. Thus, the structural and functional
conservation of open areas and grand porticoes, something that is
archaeologically demonstrable as one of the characteristic traits of
Early Byzantine urbanism in the Mediterranean until at least the
end of the 6th c.,50 assumes a new significance: it should not be
treated merely as an abstract celebration of either imperial or local
euergetism, but instead as a concrete indication of a continuously func-
tioning commercial urban society (fig. 9).
In this sense, and to cite only two of many possible examples, dis-
tinctive archaeological indications such as the reorganisation of the
colonnaded street at Apamea in the aftermath of earthquakes in 526
and 528 which recreated a kind of great ‘pedestrian island’ in the heart
of the city,51 or the simple inscription related to the cleaning of the
forum at Terracina in the middle of the 7th c.,52 appear united by a
49
Ward-Perkins (1996b).
50
For a list of those sites in which archaeological investigations have demon-
strated the continued functional existence of porticoed streets in the Early Byzantine
period see Claude (1969) 60–62; Crawford (1990); in general on the porticoed streets
of cities in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, see Segal (1997) 5–53; Bejor
(1999); on the porticoed streets of Constantinople in particular, see Mundell Mango
(2001). See also Lavan (this volume).
51
Balty (1989).
52
Zanini (1998) 186–87.

Fig. 9 The Cardo of Jerusalem in the Madaba map.

396 enrico zanini
thin yet robust evidential thread that permits us to imagine both the
principal street of a great Syrian city and the small forum of a forti-
fied city in Byzantine Italy populated by merchants, customers,
andtheir wares (although obviously on a slightly different scale in the
two cases). In fact, this is not wholly removed from the scene at
Antioch two centuries earlier, as described by Libanius in the cele-
brated passages discussed above, or the similar setting that was to
be revealed 13 or 14 centuries later when early photographs recorded
life in the street markets of cities great and small throughout
Mediterranean Europe in the pre-industrial age (fig. 10).
Craftsmen
In the case of craftsmen, the problem of their visibility inside the Early
Byzantine city might be phrased in a different way, and in fact appears
to assume an essentially chronological character. By their very phys-
ical nature, the activities of craftsmen are particularly evident in the
archaeological record, in so far as they leave the solid traces of both
the object itself, and the area in which it was produced or worked. We
might find, for example, highly specific types of structures (in par-
ticular, those for which fire was essential to production), remains of
raw materials, specialised tools, waste and debris from the process of
production, and ultimately the finished products themselves.53 Our as
yet limited knowledge of craft activities in the Early Byzantine city
thus must be attributed to the fact that there are still very few inves-
tigations that are explicitly orientated towards these particular research
issues. To a certain extent, this very issue is exacerbated by the fact
that at least until the middle or the first two thirds of the 6th c.,
this type of activity continued to be relegated to the more periph-
eral quarters of the city, if not wholly exterior to the defined perime-
ter of the urban area. A series of judicial directives and customs that
concerned this issue, which dated back to the late Republican era,
continued to be enforced right until the end of the Justinianic period;
they stipulated that those activities that produced noise, bad odours,
or were otherwise indecorous should be located on the urban periph-
ery.54 On this point both the written sources and the archaeological
data seem to be in accord.
53
Mannoni and Giannichedda (1996).
54
Morel (1987); Papi (2002).

Fig. 10 19th c. street market in a village of the Roman countryside (after Becchetti 1983).

398 enrico zanini
In terms of the historical sources, the most illuminating text is

without doubt the so-called Urban Treatise of Julian of Ascalon55 which
was written in the middle of the 6th c., and is a brief text of a pre-
scriptive character which describes the rules and customs relating to
the location of buildings in Palestine. All the evidence within the text
points to regulation at a local level. This is particularly interesting,
in that it allows us to comprehend how central imperial regulation
emanating from Constantinople might have been actually applied in
specific regions, albeit in a more succinct form.56 In the text of Julian,
moreover, the requirement for a location outside of the city is parti-
cularly explicit for all those industrial activities that constituted a
potential risk of fire, such as furnaces for the production of glass or
the smelting and working of metal, and also for all those activities,
most especially tanning and cheese making, that were the source of
foul odours. In any case, no craft activities save for the working of
gold or other precious materials were to be located in the very centre
of the city. This proscription must have been heeded, because it is
exactly such a picture that has recently begun to emerge from the
archaeology of the Early Byzantine city, as its focus has begun to move
outwards and away from its early concentration upon the monu-
mental civic core.
As suggested above, the absence of certain evidence might be
argued to provide some archaeological proof, as generally speaking,
craftsmen and their activities are absent from the Early Byzantine
cityscape until the end of the Justinianic era. Subsequently, from the
middle, or from the last quarter, of the 6th c. and then visibly devel-
oping at the start of the 7th c., there was a radical change in the
archaeological record, and the craftsmen and their activities become
an evident part of the Byzantine urban landscape. A detailed exam-
ination of the archaeological evidence shows a progressive conquest
of the ancient central monumental areas of the city by a type of
building that was a newcomer to the urban core: the dwellings and
workshops of an artisanal class.
This phenomenon is particularly significant for a variety of different
reasons. Firstly, it appears throughout almost all of the urban centres,
both large and small, that have hitherto been excavated, and it appears
to occur throughout these examples during the same brief time period.
55
Saliou (1996).
56
Saliou (1994) and (2000).

Secondly, it always displays the same characteristics in the way that

it develops. Initially at least, the new buildings occupy only open
areas and are reasonably ordered constructions with some form of
urban planning evident, but this phase is succeeded by a second in
which the development of urban space occurs in a more haphazard
fashion. In this second phase new dwellings and workshops are carved
out of ruined public monuments and spaces through privatisation
and subdivision, the most common forms of which are the blockage
of intercolumniations along porticoed streets by impermanent structures
and the installation of small-scale industrial facilities in abandoned
monumental buildings.57 (fig. 11) Thirdly, it appears that this phe-
nomenon was not necessarily connected with rising levels of socio-
economic insecurity caused by invasions and the perennial state of
war in which some territories existed: it is evident in the cities of
the frontier regions, in those of the more secure interior regions, and
also in those cities that were completely secure, such as those situated
on the large islands of the Mediterranean, that would surely not have
suffered directly from the overall rise in military conflict during the
period. Seen thus in its entirety, the phenomenon appears so wide-
spread that one might surely affirm that, together with the appearance
of churches and other religious buildings within the walls and the
steady increase of intra-mural burial practice, this arrival of the work-
ing and living quarters of artisans into the heart of the urban fabric
represents one of the most significant signs of the transition between
the ancient and Byzantine cities.
The traces of this process mark the archaeological manifestation of
an epochal transformation of both society and economy in the Early
Byzantine city. From a social point of view, the growing presence
of artisans in the urban fabric clearly coincides with the profound
reorganisation in the traditional hereditary assets of the ancient world:
in the East, this arrival of artisans is contemporaneous with the final
stages of a progressive decline in the power of the urban aristocracy,
evident in the end of the urban curia.58 These social processes were
57
Of the numerous widespread examples from all regions of the empire, several
might be cited as significant because they relate to urban centres that differ in size,
history, and political/administrative function: for those documented in the Palestinian
region, see Walmsley (1996) 144–45; for Greece, see Sodini (1984) 370–73; for
Illyricum, see Popović (1982); for Justiniana Prima in particular, see Kondić and
Popovic´ (1977).
58
Laniado (2002).

400
enrico zanini
Fig. 11 7th c. house-workshop walls between the pillars of the 6th c. aqueduct in Gortyn.

commensurate with the emergence of newer forms of urban power:

the potentiores in the citizen body; the milites in the various grades of
the state’s peripheral administration; and the bishops and ecclesiastical
hierarchy, who were to assume direct power of a civil character. In
such a context of profound social transformation, the considerable
presence of artisans evidently raises some new issues, principally about
the identity and origin of these new urban inhabitants of the city who,
until this period, remained archaeologically invisible.
One cannot fail to note how this phenomenon of ‘spatial saturation’,
so evident in the eastern cities of the second half of the 6th c.,
appears to have much in common with the parallel phenomenon
that had occurred in the cities of the western Mediterranean one or
two centuries earlier. As such, it appears reasonable to at least attempt
to construct a common explanatory model that might include both
phenomena. The model most commonly proposed is one which seeks
to explain the evidence via the concepts of abandonment and decline
in the grand public spaces, and the emergence of a poorer class of
‘squatter’ occupation. However, in the light of the material discussed
above, this argument seems questionable in the case of the western
cities, and wholly unlikely in the face of the evidence from the urban
centres of the East.
The widespread nature of this phenomenon suggests that ‘squat-
ting’ is too simplistic an explanation when one considers the scale of
the evidence: why would so-called squatter occupants, whose inhab-
itation of space was by definition occasional and temporary, found
it necessary to flood all the public spaces in the urban centres of the
West with their precarious temporary structures when they had at
their disposal an immense patrimony of buildings left vacant by demo-
graphic crisis? Why house artisanal activities and small-scale indus-
trial facilities in fragile structures carved from the ruins of the great
antique monuments when the very same demographic crisis must
have liberated those ready-made productive buildings that would
have been supplying the Roman city only one or two centuries
before? For the cities of the eastern Mediterranean these same con-
siderations are ultimately reinforced by another obvious observation:
those who occupy areas and monuments with their dwellings and
productive activities clearly have nothing in common with the idea
of ‘squatters’, who seek only to survive and have a parasitical rela-
tionship to the socio-economic fabric that hosts them. Upon closer
examination, those occupying the spaces in question appear to be

402 enrico zanini
possessors of a material culture that remains well-structured, and that

is able to equip them to produce objects of quality through the use
of relatively sophisticated technology for the manufacture of metals,
ceramics, glass, and other commodities.59
In other words, those artisans who lived and worked in the dwellings
and workshops that were to so profoundly transform the Early Byzan-
tine city’s monumental centre are very likely those who fed the trade
of basic and precious commodities that constituted one of the char-
acteristic elements of the urban economy. In this view, the plausible
explanation for their presence in the centre of the townscape—and
thus for their concomitant new archaeological visibility inside the city—
may well be a model which sees them as protagonists in a pheno-
menon that might be termed ‘micro-migration’. The artisans that we
now see appearing in cities may be none other than the same artisans
who previously lived and worked—according to established laws and
customs—in the margins of the urban landscape and in productive
buildings located fully outside the perimeters of the city. This phe-
nomenon of a migration by small-scale industrial/productive activities
into the town centre is archaeologically attested in Africa,60 where by
the middle of the 6th c. there is evidence for the significant movement
of the production of fine table wares (ARS) into the interior of urban
centres, notably through the occupation of disused public structures
(and specifically bath houses, at least initially).
The “micro-migration” might also explain one further recurrent
element of these installations, namely the question of their limited
dimensions. The production of objects of a reasonable quality is most
usually associated with a relatively limited quantity: this is not man-
ufacturing on a production-line scale, but rather in relation to instal-
lations of a limited capacity, and involving a small number of people,
probably all linked to a single family nucleus. The most plausible
hypothesis is one in which people perform a dual economic role.
For certain months of the year they would be engaged in subsistence
farming and occupied in the cultivation of agricultural land in the
59
One example of this is by the so-called ‘Quartiere Bizantino’ at Gortyn, which
from the second half of the 6th c. to sometime in the 8th c. appears to have been
populated by a group of craftsmen who possessed the technical knowledge necessary
to produce (albeit in limited quantities) glass objects and coarseware ceramics that
sported elegant painted decoration, and which were notable for the quality of the fab-
ric, the accuracy of the moulding, and the finesse of the decoration: Di Vita (1987).
60
Bonifay (2003) 124–28.

environs of the city (which they could reach every day, or otherwise
reside there in temporary accommodation). For the remainder of the
time they would be occupied in small-scale artisanal activities that
were aimed at the creation of monetary surplus. In this hypothesis
these ‘new’ urban artisans would, therefore, be concrete evidence of
the urbanisation of the productive classes who had traditionally been
extra-urban, and who brought a varied material culture into the city
while participating in both agricultural and artisanal activities.61
The force driving this significant mass of population to a progressive
urbanisation remains difficult to identify. In the peripheral regions
of the empire a considerable role was doubtless played by increasing
levels of insecurity stemming from the state of permanent conflict that
characterised the immediate aftermath of the Justinianic era but, as
has been indicated above, such an explanatory model is unsuitable
for other regions that also display this urban characteristic and were
sheltered from such conflict. An explanation must therefore be sought
in other, more general, spheres of life and most likely in more struc-
tural aspects of economic transformation. Although on the whole
these structural changes still largely escape us, some preliminary con-
siderations in this direction can be offered. The artisanal production
of high quality goods suggests that this was still a lively economic
context: glass vessels and lamps, finely decorated pottery, and dress
ornaments in bronze or precious metals (merely some of the principal
products that came out of these small workshops) are evidently not
products of basic necessity. They are not direct sources of sustenance
in the manner of agricultural products, they are not tools that are
indispensable for life and for subsistence work, and neither might
they be used as a means for paying tax directly. Once produced,
their destiny must lay in commerce, as they can be sold to obtain
currency that might be deployed to purchase other more basic goods
or to pay taxes.
From this point of view, the presence of such artisanal activity in
the Early Byzantine city, and the very form that it takes in this
instance, appears to constitute an effective testimony for the contin-
uation of a monetary economy, or perhaps even the ‘renewed mon-
etisation’ of the urban economy. Of note in this context is the evident
61
Mazzarino (2002) 153.

404 enrico zanini
contemporaneous recovery of monetary circulation evidenced by the

vertiginous peak of coin finds—and in particular of medium-value
bronze denominations ( folles and half folles)—in the archaeological
levels of much of the 7th c., from the reign of Heraclius to that of
Constans II.62 The exact relationship between these two distinct and
parallel phenomena is necessarily a matter for reflection on the part
of historians of the Byzantine economy, but I believe it is apparent
that they might be treated as two concordant evidential elements,
that can together contribute to the rethinking of the complex panorama
of the Early Byzantine urban economy.
Conclusions: A Common Destiny?
This investigation into the archaeological visibility of artisans and

small traders in the Early Byzantine cityscape has, in many ways,
confirmed some of the more theoretical propositions with which the
article began. To synthesise the available information about such
multifaceted a social group is a difficult task, but it is also a particularly
important research objective because both the archaeological and
historical sources have such rich potential. Merchants and craftsmen
might initially appear to be of limited visibility in Early Byzantine
urban contexts, but when we attempt to identify their presence and
activities, they become bearers of information that is fundamental in
understanding the complex mechanisms of transformation that were
occurring throughout a society in transition.
The conclusions that it is possible to draw are therefore as much
methodological as they are interpretative. Archaeology offers in this
instance some potentially concrete knowledge, provided that some
preconditions concerning our methodologies are met and maintained
in our research strategies. Firstly, there needs to be a greater focus
on ‘historical’ questions; that is to say, the research goals of a social
archaeology (in the widest sense, not merely those issues concerning
the Early Byzantine city raised here) need to derive from a fuller inter-
action between different fields of learning. It is vital that we utilise
and integrate elements of other disciplines: not only their research
questions, but also the interpretive models that are deployed to answer
62
Morisson (1989).

them, and the sources that are used to construct them. In this sense, it
is more crucial than ever before that archaeologists, historians, econ-
omists, philologists, epigraphers, and art historians must strive to raise
their eyes from their specialisations and experiment with the practice
(and also the pleasure) of dynamic collaboration with specialists from
apparently distant disciplines, the goals of whom overlap their own.
Secondly, it is necessary to further improve the quality of excavation,
of documentation, and of publication. The stratigraphic revolution that
has been applied to Middle Eastern archaeology has created a set
of methodological conditions in which a range of interdisciplinary
questions might be asked, and has therefore shown the vast informative
potential of archaeological investigation when it equips itself with
adequate tools, strategies, and objectives. The next step must be to
extend these practices, honed in the complex archaeology of urban
centres in northern and western Europe, and use them to investigate
the archaeology of the Mediterranean in order to recognise, document,
and interpret its own complicated networks of micro-evidence, includ-
ing (in this instance) issues such as the commercial and economic
systems of the Early Byzantine city.63 Thirdly, it is necessary that we
continue to develop a reflexive methodology that recognises our own
interpretative capacity, including its limits and its potential. It is vital
that we try to examine the archaeological evidence before us with
new eyes, and are able to understand the significance of absence as
well as presence and not be afraid to include new sources of evidence
in our efforts to reconstruct the past.
The following closing interpretative conclusions are offered as pro-
visional, and should be seen as suggesting future directions for research
questions, rather than a set of specific answers. One initial point is
that of the nature of the (apparently new) roles played by the pro-
ductive and commercial middle classes in the Early Byzantine city.
Artisans and small traders would doubtlessly have played a precise
role within an economic system that appears to remain strong, and
which was based on varied production, on organised exchange, and
on monetary circulation. In the Early Byzantine city—even until the
end of the 7th c.—goods intended for both mass consumption and
for luxury use continued to be produced and traded, and raw materials
63
An example of this might be the current urban archaeological project in Beirut,
where the vast areas of post-war reconstruction in the modern city are transforming
our knowledge of its ancient and Byzantine forebears (cfr. Perring (1997–98) and (2003).

406 enrico zanini
such as glass, base metal, and silver continued to be transformed and

worked through the application of relatively sophisticated technology.64
There does not, therefore, appear to a perceptible shift towards non-
specialised general production of low technology goods that is one
of the characteristics of contemporary western Europe, including, to
a certain degree, the western basin of the Mediterranean. It is pos-
sible that with this continuity—and perhaps even an enhancement—
of their economic role in the midst of a society in transformation,
the artisanal and mercantile classes and merchants witnessed a rise
in social status.65 The end of a structured urban aristocracy would
have left some vacant space at the higher end of the pyramid of
social status, a development that might have proved opportune to
members of a class traditionally excluded from public civic visibility,
and this might be seen in the wider context of a progressive redefinition
of what urban society meant during the period.66
A second fundamental point is the nature of the chronological se-
quence in which these complex changes occurred. In short, it appears
possible to identify some substantial continuity between the ancient
socio-economic structure, and that of the Justinianic era. Throughout
this lengthy period, artisans and small traders continued to occupy
the same position in the economic system, the social structure, and the
urban topography. A rapid change, however, can be noted from the
middle of the 6th c. onwards. This was when the expansive thrust of
territorial conquest slowed, and there were grave demographic and
economic crises generated by the plague and the first harbingers of
military insecurity at the frontiers of the empire. These factors led
to a sudden change in the both the social and the economic order
of the empire in general, and of its cities in particular. The reaction
to this change might be identified, as has been argued, as the signi-
64
Hodges (1998).
65
It is worth noting that during the exact same span of time an Arab society
was developing, in which the figure of the merchant was to assume a hitherto
unknown social prominence (cf. Kennedy (1985) 23–25; Carver (1996)).
66
A celebrated passage of the Chronicon Paschale (1.713) appears to allude to this
new role of the productive and commercial middle class within the urban social
hierarchy: it relates to the presence of representatives of the capital’s artisan com-
munity in the procession of honour that was provided by Heraclius to accompany
the Avar Khan to the city’s gates (cfr. Dagron (2002) 407; Sodini (1979) 117–18
attributes little significance to the episode). There are similar, and more frequent,
attestations of public offices filled by members of this class within municipal and
provincial councils (for an Italian case, cfr. Cosentino (1999)).

ficant transformation of urban spaces and the creation of a new

order, in which activities of both production and exchange became one
of the central characteristics of a new Early Byzantine urban panorama.
This new order was to endure until at least the central decades of
the 7th c., when the great crisis of the Mediterranean economy began
to impact severely upon the Byzantine city, an event that was to
create a definitive epochal break, and which led to the formation of
a new economic system in the Medieval Byzantine period.
Acknowledgements
This paper was translated by William Bowden and Carlos Machado.
Bibliography
Al-As"ad K. and Stepniowski E. (1989) “The Umayyad Suq in Palmyra”, Damaszner

Mitteilungen 4 (1989) 205–33.
Arena M. S. et al. (2001) edd. Roma dall’Antichità al Medioevo. Archeologia e storia nel
Museo Nazionale Romano Crypta Balbi (Rome 2001).
Arthur P. (2002a) “Hierapolis tra Bisanzio e i Turchi”, in Saggi in onore di Paolo
Verzone, ed. D. De Bernardi Ferrero (Rome 2002) 217–31.
—— (2002b) Naples. From Roman Town to City-State (London 2002).
Balty J.-C. (1989) “Apamée au VIe siècle. Témoignages archéologiques de la richesse
d’une ville”, in Hommes et richesses dans l’Empire byzantin. IV e–VII e siècle (Paris 1989)
79–96.
Bavant B., Kondić V. and Spieser J.-M. (1990) edd. Cari‘in Grad II. Le quarter sud-
ouest de la ville haute (Belgrade-Rome 1990).
Becchetti P. (1983) Immagini della Compagna Romana. 1853–1915 (Rome 1983).
Bejor G. (1999) Vie colonnate. Paesaggi urbani del mondo antico (Rome 1999).
Bonifay (2003) “La céramique africaine, un indice du développement économique?”,
AnTard 11 (2003) 113–28.
Carver M. O. H. (1996) “Transition to Islam: urban rôles in the East and South
Mediterranean, fifth to tenth centuries A.D.”, in Towns in Transition. Urban Evolution
in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, edd. N. Christie and S. T. Loseby
(Aldershot 1996) 184–212.
Cheynet J.-Cl., Malamut E. and Morisson C. (1991) “Prix et salaires à Byzance
(Xe–XVe siècle)”, in Hommes et richesses dans l’Empire byzantin. II. VIII e–X ve siècle
(Paris 1991) 339–74.
Claude D. (1969) Die byzantinische Stadt im 6. Jahrhundert (Munich 1969).
Cosentino S. (1999) “Il ceto dei ‘viri honesti’ (oi aidesimoi andrei ) nell’Italia tardoan-
tica e bizantina”, Bizantinistica 1 (1999) 13–50.
Cracco Ruggini L. (1971) “Le associazioni professionali nel mondo romano-bizan-
tino”, in Artigianato e tecnica nella società dell’alto medioevo occidentale (Spoleto 1971)
59–193.
—— (1980) “Progresso tecnico e manodopera in età imperiale romana”, in Tecnologia,
economia e società nel mondo romano (Como 1980) 45–66.

408 enrico zanini
Crawford J. S. (1990) The Byzantine Shops at Sardis (Cambridge 1990).

Dagron G. (1991) “«Ainsi rien n’échappera à la réglamentation». État, Église, cor-
porations, confréries: à propos des inhumations à Constantinople (IVe–Xe siècle)”,
in Hommes et richesses dans l’Empire byzantin. II. VIII e –X ve siècle (Paris 1991) 155–82.
Dagron G. (2002) “The urban economy, seventh-twelfth centuries”, in The Economic
History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. A. Laiou
(Washington 2002) 393–461.
D’Andria F. (2003) Hierapolis of Phrygia (Pamukkale). An Archaeological Guide (Istanbul
2003).
Di Branco M. (2000) “Lavoro e conflittualità sociale in una città tardoantica. Una
rilettura dell’epigrafe di Sardi CIG 3467”, AnTard 8 (2000) 181–208.
Di Vita A. (1987) “Gortina bizantina”, Studi Tardoantichi 4 (1987) 341–51.
Durliat J. (1990) De la ville antique à la ville byzantine. Le problème des subsistances (Rome
1990).
Festugière A. J. (1959) Antioche païenne et chrétienne. Libanius, Chrysostome et les moines de
Syrie (Paris 1959).
Fikhman I. F. (1994) “Sur quelques aspects socio-économiques de l’activité des cor-
porations professionelles de l’Égypte byzantine”, ZPE 103 (1994) 19–40.
Foss C. and Scott J. A. (2002) “Sardis”, in The Economic History of Byzantium: From
the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, vol. 2, ed. A. Laiou (Washington 2002) 615–22.
Garnsey P. and Saller R. (2003) Storia sociale dell’impero romano (Rome 2003).
Guidobaldi F. (1999) “Le domus tardoantiche di Roma come ‘sensori’ delle trasfor-
mazioni culturali e sociali”, in The Transformations of Urbs Roma in Late Antiquity,
ed. W. V. Harris (Portsmouth 1999) 53–68.
Hodges R. (1998) “Henry Pirenne and the question of demand in the sixth cen-
tury”, in The Sixth Century. Production, Distribution and Demand, edd. R. Hodges and
W. Bowden (Leiden 1998) 3–14.
Ikäheimo J. P. (2003) Late Roman African Cookware of the Palatine East Excavations, Rome.
A holistic approach (Oxford 2003).
Janvier Y. (1969) La législation du Bas-Empire romain sur les édifices publics (Aix-en-
Provence 1969).
Kaplan M. (2001) “Les artisans dans la societé de Constantinople au VIIe–XIe
siècles”, in Constantinople. Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life, ed. N. Necipo<lu
(Leiden 2001) 245–60.
Kazanski M. and Soupault V. (2000), “Les sites archéologiques de l’époque romaine
tardive et du haut Moyen-Age en Crimée (IIIe–VIIe s.): état des recherches
(1990–1995)”, in Les Sites archéologiques en Crimée et au Caucase durant l’Antiquité tar-
dive et le haut Moyen-Age, edd. M. Kazanski and V. Soupault (Leiden 2000) 253–93.
Kennedy H. (1985) “From Polis to Madina: urban changes in late antique and early
Islamic Syria”, PastPres 106 (1985) 3–27.
Koder J. (1991) Das Eparchenbuch Leons des Weisen: Einführung, Edition, Übersetzung und
Indices (Vienna 1991).
Kondić V. and Popović V. (1977) Cari‘in Grad, utvrdjeno naselje u vizantijskon Iliriku
(Beograd 1977).
Laiou A. (2002) “Writing the economic history of Byzantium”, in The Economic History
of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. A. Laiou (Washington
2002) 3–8.
Laniado A. (2002) Recherches sur les notables municipaux dans l’empire protobyzantin (Paris
2002).
Levi D. (1947) Antioch mosaic pavements (Princeton–London 1947)
Lopez R. S. (1959) “The role of trade in the economic readjustement of Byzantium
in the seventh century”, DOP 13 (1959) 67–85.
Mangoulias H. J. (1976) “Trades and crafts in the sixth and seventh centuries as
viewed in the lives of the saints”, Byzantinoslavica 37 (1976) 11–33.

Mannoni T. (1994) “Dai dialoghi di Pantalone. Cultura materiale e mentalità”,

Tema (1993) 63–67.
—— (1997) “Metodi pratici e attendibilità teoriche delle ricerche archeologiche”,
in Atti del I Congresso Nazionale di Archeologia Medievale (Florence 1997) 14–15.
Mannoni T., Cabona D. and Ferrando I. (1988) “Archeologia globale del territo-
rio. Metodi e risultati di una nuova strategia della ricerca in Liguria”, in Structures
de l’habitat et occupation du sol dans les pays méditerranéens: les méthodes et l’apport de
l’archéologie extensive (Rome 1988) 43–58.
Mannoni T. and Giannichedda E. (1996) Archeologia della produzione (Torino 1996).
Mazzarino S. (2002) La fine del mondo antico. Le cause della caduta dell’impero romano
(Milan 2002).
Morel J. P. (1987) “La topographie de l’artisanat et du commerce dans la Rome
Antique”, in L’Urbs. Espace urbain et histoire (I er siècle av. J.-C.–III e siècle ap. J.-C.)
(Rome 1987) 127–55.
Morisson C. (1989) “Monnaie et prix à Byzance du Ve au VIIe siècle”, in Hommes
et richesses dans l’Empire byzantin. IV e–VII e siècle (Paris 1989) 239–64.
Morisson C. and Sodini J.-P. (2002) “The sixth-century economy”, in The Economic
History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. A. Laiou
(Washington 2002) 171–220.
Mundell Mango M. (2000) “The commercial map of Constantinople”, DOP 54
(2000) 189–205.
—— (2001) “The porticoed street at Constantinople”, in Byzantine Constantinople.
Monuments, Topography and Everiday Life, ed. N. Necipo<lu (Leiden 2001) 29–51.
Papi E. (2002) “La turba inpia: artigiani e commercianti del Foro Romano e din-
torni (I sec. a.C.–64 d.C.)”, JRA 15 (2002) 45–62
Patlagean E. (1977) Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance. 4e–7e siècles (Paris 1977).
Patrich J. (1999) “The warehouse complex and governor’s palace”, in Caesarea Papers
2, edd. K. G. Holum, A. Raban and J. Patrich (Portsmouth 1999) 70–107.
Perring D. (1997–98) “Excavations in the Souks of Beirut: an introduction to the work
of the British-Lebanese team and summary report”, Berytus 43 (1997–98) 9–34.
—— (2003) “The archaeology of Beirut: a report on work in the Insula of the
House of the Fountains”, AntJ 83 (2003) 195–230.
Petit P. (1955) Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche au IV e siècle après J.-C. (Paris
1955).
Piccirillo M. (1989) Madaba: le chiese e i mosaici (Cinisello Balsamo 1989).
Popović V. (1982) “Desintegration und Ruralisation der Stadt im Ost-Illyricum vom
5. bis 7. Jh. N. Chr.”, in Palast und Hütte, edd. D. Papenfuss and V. M. Strocka
(Mainz 1982) 545–66.
Popović I. (1990) “Les activités professionelles à Cari‘in Grad vers la fin du VIe et
le début du VIIe siècle d’après les outils de fer”, in Cari‘in Grad II. Le quartier sud-
ouest de la ville haute, edd. B. Bavant, V. Kondić and J.-M. Spieser (Belgrade 1990)
269–306.
Potter T. (1995) Towns in Late Antiquity. Iol Caesarea and its Context (Oxford 1995)
Ramallo Asensio S. F. (2000) “Carthago Spartaria, un núcleo bizantino en Hispania”, in
Sedes Regiae (ann. 400–800), edd. G. Ripoll and J. M. Gurt (Barcelona 2000) 579–611.
Russell J. (1982) “Byzantine Instrumenta Domestica from Anemurium: the significance
of context”, in City, Town and Countryside in the Early Byzantine Era, ed. R. L.
Hohlfelder (New York 1982) 133–64.
—— (1986) “Tranformations in Early Byzantine urban life: the contribution and
limitations of archaeological evidence”, in The 17th International Byzantine Congress.
Major Papers (Washington 1986) 137–54.
—— (2002) “Anemourion”, in The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh
through the Fifteenth Century, ed. A. Laiou (Washington 2002) 221–28.
Saguì L. (1998) “Il deposito della Crypta Balbi: una testimonianza imprevedibile

410 enrico zanini
sulla Roma del VII secolo?”, in Ceramica in Italia: VI–VII secolo, ed. L. Saguì
(Florence 1998) 305–30.
Saguì L. and Manacorda D. (1995) “L’esedra della Crypta Balbi e il monastero di
S. Lorenzo in Pallacinis”, Quaderni di Archeologia Laziale 23 (1995) 121–34.
Saliou C. (1994) Les lois des bâtiments (Beirut 1994).
—— (1996) Le traité d’urbanisme de Julien d’Ascalon. Droit et architecture en Palestine au
VI e siècle (Paris 1996).
—— (2000) “Le traité de droit urbain de Julien d’Ascalon. Coutumier et codification”,
in La codification des lois dans l’antiquité, ed. E. Lévy (Paris 2000) 293–313.
Sauvaget J. (1934) “Le plan de Laodicée-sur-Mer”, Bulletin d’études orientales 4 (1934)
81–114.
Segal A. (1997) From Function to Monument. Urban Landscapes of Roman Palestine, Syria
and Provincia Arabia (Oxford 1997).
Sodini J.-P. (1979) “L’artisanat urbain à l’époque paléochrétienne”, Ktema 4 (1979)
71–119.
—— (1984) “L’habitat urbain en Grèce à la veille des invasions”, in Villes et peu-
plement dans l’Illyricum protobyzantin (Paris 1989) 341–97.
—— (2003) “Archaeology and late antique social structures”, in Theory and Practice
in Late Antique Archaeology, edd. L. Lavan and W. Bowden (Leiden 2003) 25–56.
Tate G. (1991) “Les métiers dans les villages de la Syrie du Nord”, Ktema 16 (1991)
73–78.
Thomov T. and Ilieva A. (1998) “The shape of the market: mapping the Book of
the Eparch”, BMGS 22 (1998) 105–16.
Trombley F. R. (1987) “Korykos in Cilicia Trachis: the economy of a small coastal city
in Late Antiquity (saec. V–VI)—a précis”, The Ancient History Bulletin 1 (1987) 16–23.
—— (2004) “Epigraphic data on village culture and social institutions: an interre-
gional comparison (Syria, Phoenice Libanensis and Arabia)”, in Recent Research on
the Late Antique Countryside, edd. W. Bowden, L. Lavan and C. Machado (Leiden
2004) 73–101.
Tsafrir Y. and Foerster G. (1997) “Urbanism at Scythopolis-Bet Shean in the fourth
to seventh centuries”, DOP 51 (1997) 85–146.
Van Minnen P. (1987) “Urban craftsmen in Roman Egypt”, Münsterische Beiträge zur
Antiken Handelsgeschichte 6 (1987) 31–88.
Waelkens M. et al. (1997) “The 1994 and 1995 excavation seasons at Sagalassos”,
in Sagalassos IV. Report on the survey and excavation campaigns of 1994 and 1995, edd.
M. Waelkens and J. Poblome (Leuven 1997) 103–216.
Walmsley A. (1996) “Byzantine Palestine and Arabia: urban prosperity in Late
Antiquity” in Towns in Transition. Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages, edd. N. Christie and S. T. Loseby (Aldershot 1996) 126–58.
Ward-Perkins B. (1996a) “Urban survival and urban transformation in the eastern
Mediterranean”, in Early Medieval Towns in Western Mediterranean, ed. G. P. Brogiolo
(Mantova 1996) 143–53.
—— (1996b) “Urban continuity?”, in Towns in Transition. Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity
and the Early Middle Ages, edd. N. Christie, S. T. Loseby (Aldershot 1996) 4–17.
—— (2000) “Specialized production and exchange”, in Late Antiquity: Empire and
Successors, A.D. 425–600, edd. A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins and M. Whitby (The
Cambridge Ancient History 14) (Cambridge 2000) 346–91.
—— (2001) “Specialization, trade, and prosperity: an overview of the economy of
the late antique eastern Mediterranean”, in Economy and Exchange in the East
Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, edd. S. Kingsley and M. Decker (Oxford 2001)
167–78.
Zanini E. (1998) Le Italie bizantine. Territorio, insediamenti ed economia nella provincia bizan-
tina d’Italia (VI–VIII secolo) (Bari 1998).

—— (2004) “Lo scavo nel “quartiere bizantino” di Gortina. Il contesto metodologico

dell’avvio di una ricerca”, in Bisanzio, la Grecia e l’Italia, ed. A. Iacobini (Roma
2004) 145–59.
Zanini E. and Giorgi E. (2002) “Indagini archeologiche nell’area del ‘quartiere
bizantino’ di Gortina: prima relazione preliminare (campagna 2002)”, ASAtene 80
(2002) 898–918.
—— (2003) “Indagini archeologiche nell’area del ‘quartiere bizantino’ di Gortina:
seconda relazione preliminare (campagna 2003)”, ASAtene 81 (2003) 913–45.
List of Figures
Fig. 1. A workshop depicted in a floor mosaic in the Yakto Complex at Daphne,

near Antioch (5th c.) (after Levi 1947).
Fig. 2. The inscription from Sardis (after Di Branco 2000).
Fig. 3. The shops at Sardis during the excavation in 1960’ (after Crawford 1990).
Fig. 4. A schematic section of archaeological deposit from the shops of Sardis, with
evidence of a two-storey structure (after Crawford 1990).
Fig. 5. African Red Slip from the 7th c. deposit of the Crypta Balbi, in Rome
(after Arena et al. 2001).
Fig. 6. The distribution map of ‘Lupu Biba’ type fibulae reveals the existence of a
fair system throughout the Lombard-Byzantine frontier in southern Italy (after
Arthur 2002b).
Fig. 7. Forum pavement at Iol Caesarea showing traces of wooden structures (after
Potter 1995).
Fig. 8. The change from colonnaded street to souk in a schematic model by Sauvaget
(after Sauvaget 1934).
Fig. 9. The Cardo of Jerusalem in the Madaba map (after Piccirillo 1989).
Fig. 10. 19th c. street market in a village of the Roman countryside (after Becchetti
(1983)).
Fig. 11. 7th c. house-workshop walls between the pillars of the 6th c. aqueduct in
Gortyn.


(22134522 - Late Antique Archaeology) Artisans and Traders in The Early Byzantine City - Exploring The Limits of Archaeological Evidence

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(22134522 - Late Antique Archaeology) Artisans and Traders in The Early Byzantine City - Exploring The Limits of Archaeological Evidence

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

THE MIDDLE CLASS

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

The application of research methodologies and strategies derived from

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

well-preserved archaeological contexts, archaeology can provide inno-

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

form—is aimed toward developing what is termed a ‘spiralling cog-

Who were Traders and Who were Artisans?

The subject under consideration is particularly complicated for two

The Written Sources

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

the ideology of the sources (i.e. non-vernacular texts, such as historio-

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

testify how, regardless of the social importance of the building under

A Social Class in Evolution?

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

ecclesiastical foundations, and the sumptuous urban residences that

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Fig. 2 The inscription from Sardis (after Di Branco 2000).

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

indication of a wide-ranging transformation in the economic roles of

The Archaeological Sources

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

symbolic and newly-fashioned ‘miniature’ capital of Early Byzantine

From Archaeology to Social History:

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

tunity for the methodologies employed by archaeologists to be further

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

spaces destined for commercial enterprise were always typologically

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

via University of Oxford

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

via University of Oxford

Secondly, there is a need for a more careful approach, from a

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Fig. 7 Forum pavement at Iol Caesarea showing traces of wooden structures

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Fig. 9 The Cardo of Jerusalem in the Madaba map.

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

In terms of the historical sources, the most illuminating text is

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Secondly, it always displays the same characteristics in the way that

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

via University of Oxford

commensurate with the emergence of newer forms of urban power:

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

possessors of a material culture that remains well-structured, and that

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

contemporaneous recovery of monetary circulation evidenced by the

Conclusions: A Common Destiny?

This investigation into the archaeological visibility of artisans and

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

Downloaded from Brill.com05/06/2019 10:47:58AM

such as glass, base metal, and silver continued to be transformed and