The Insular Worlds of Byzantium, ca. 550-ca. 900

Zavagno, Luca

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.