Additional information
by Luca Zavagno (Author)
This book explores the "Byzantine" islands of the late antique Mediterranean through different methodologies and a wide array of sources in comparative perspective. It deals with transversal themes centered on the peculiar political and economic structures of insular societies (such as the episcopate and the archontate or, in the case of Sicily, the theme). Reassessing the exaggerated space that the historiography on Byzantine islands has traditionally granted to literary and documentary sources, this book draws upon archaeological evidence that points instead to a less violent and disruptive phase in the islands' history as Late Antiquity passed into the early Middle Ages. The islands are also considered as hubs of connectivity where the Islamic and the Byzantine cultures encountered and heavily influenced the local "insular" political, economic, and social structures across the centuries.
Author Biography
Luca Zavagno ============ Luca Zavagno is Associate Professor of Byzantine History at Bilkent University, Ankara. A historian of Europe and the Mediterranean in the medieval period, he specializes in Byzantine history and archaeology.
