Institute for Medieval Studies

Session	325
Title	Byzantium in Context, II: Environment, Economy, and Power - Crisis and Renewal in the Byzantine World
Date/Time	Monday 6 July 2015: 16.30-18.00
Sponsor	Institut für Byzanzforschung / Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien / Institute for Historical Research, Section of Byzantine Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens
Organiser	Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Moderator/Chair	Ekaterini Mitsiou, Institut für Byzantinistik & Neogräzistik, Universität Wien
Paper 325-a	Byzantium and Global History: Towards a New Determinism? (Language: English) Mark Whittow, Faculty of History, University of Oxford Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Economics - General; Geography and Settlement Studies; Social History
Paper 325-b	The Middle Byzantine Revival from an Environmental Perspective: A Return to the Antique Models? (Language: English) Adam Izdebski, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Demography; Economics - General; Geography and Settlement Studies
Paper 325-c	Topography, Ecology, and (Byzantine) Power in Early Medieval Eastern Anatolia and Armenia, 700-1050 (Language: English) Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Economics - General; Geography and Settlement Studies; Islamic and Arabic Studies
Paper 325-d	A Concerted 'discourse': Interplay between Environment and Human Agency in the Area of Smyrna (Modern Izmir) in the 13th Century (Language: English) Myrto Veikou, Institutionen för lingvistik och filologi, Uppsala universitet Index Terms: Archaeology - General; Byzantine Studies; Economics - General; Geography and Settlement Studies
Abstract	The long history of the Byzantine Empire includes several periods of severe crisis and almost collapse (7th/8th century, 11th century, late 12th century) as well as subsequent political and economic recovery. While environmental and climatic factors for these developments have been discussed frequently in scholarship, new paleo-environmental as well archaeological evidence provides a firmer basis for an evaluation of the impact of these phenomena. In this session, studies for various regions and periods will analyse their overall dynamics as well as the specific interplay between environment and human societies in the various regional ecologies, which can be found in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Near East.