Byzantine Anatolia: Space and Communities, Fifth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium, Istanbul, June 24–26, 2019

For almost a thousand years Anatolia was the center of the Byzantine Empire. Through centuries of strife, the Empire and its successor states struggled for dominance of the Anatolian heartland against encroaching neighboring powers and internal rivals. Yet behind the high drama of politics, intrigue and conflict, Anatolia was also a rich and complex network of regional settlements which would shift and change with environmental, social and economic conditions, and whose character was expressed in the art, culture and politics of actively involved populations. Too often, however, in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies the province and its many regions have been overlooked in favor of the major urban centers – in particular, Constantinople.

The Fifth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium will redress this balance by focusing on the settlements and communities of Anatolia. The symposium will present new voices from diverse disciplines to share ideas, challenge established views and showcase a wealth of new material emerging from field studies and research in history and art history. Contributions from international and domestic scholars actively involved in the study of Byzantine Anatolia will be brought together to create a new reference for future research.

The symposium will focus on three main topics:

• Settlement and environment: In this stream we will focus on issues of reciprocity, interdependence and the ways in which communal identities were reflected on Anatolia’s civic and rural landscape. We will study how communities affected their environment (and vice versa) drawing on material evidence, architectural remains, technological analysis, landscape, water and earth management studies.
• Notions of space: Perceptions of space and nature in Byzantine mentality (in other words, how Byzantine people perceived Anatolia) can be traced from descriptions and depictions of landscapes, cityscapes and buildings in visual arts and literature. In this stream we will also study the definitions and interpretations of cultural space found in artistic practices and their relation to the sacred.
• Interactions, Networks and Mobility: In this stream we will explore relations and movement among communities in Anatolia, including seasonal migrations and the forced displacement of people. Often the result of interdisciplinary projects, evidence for the mobility of human groups such as merchants, pilgrims, armies, refugees and artistic workshops can be found with a diverse range of methodological approaches.