‘Not the last frontier’: the Byzantine insular system between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, lecture by Luca Zavagno (Bilkent University), King’s College London, November 21, 2017, 5:30–7:00 pm

Byzantine historiography has often regarded the great Mediterranean islands as mere peripheral additions to the Byzantine heartland, which Chris Wickham defined as the uneasy coupling of two wildly different geographical zones: the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean. Islands are seen as marginal to the political, social and economic changes the Byzantine heartland was experiencing from the seventh century until they were recaptured by the gravity of an expanding empire in the tenth century (Crete and Cyprus) or were lost forever (Sicily, Malta and the Balearics). Scholars have also lingered on their importance as strategic and military bulwarks (Crete, Cyprus and, possibly, Sardinia) or soon-to-be neglected outposts (Malta and the Balearics) along the Arab-Byzantine Mediterranean frontier. The only exception was represented by Sicily because of its relevance as a secure source of grain. By contrast, this paper aims at reassessing the concept of periphericity of the Byzantine insular world and suggests that Sicily and Cyprus (and to a lesser extent Crete, Malta, Sardinia and the Balearics) acted as a third political and economic pole between the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean Sea in the Byzantine Mediterranean. Coinage, seals and ceramic together with other types of less studied material sources will be paired with literary and documentary evidence and used in a comparative perspective to tip the unbalanced dialogue between margins and metropolis, pointing to a relatively higher welfare of the insular world compared to the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean region.

Luca Zavagno graduated from the University of Venice (2002) and obtained his Ph.D. (2007) at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on the society, economics and politics of Byzantine cities in the early middle ages. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Bilkent University. He is the author of many articles on the early Medieval Mediterranean, and two monographs: Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (British Archaeological Reports-International Series, 2009) and Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. An Island in Transition (Routledge, 2017). He co-authored (with Özlem Caykent) the edited volumes Islands of Eastern Mediterranean. A History of Cross Cultural Encounters (I.B. Tauris, 2014) and People and Goods on the Move. Merchants, Networks and Communication Routes in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean (IMK, 2016).