56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies - Byzantium from below: rural and non-elite life in the Byzantine world

Location
Arts Building
Dates
Saturday 12 April (09:30) - Monday 14 April 2025 (12:00)
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The Byzantine Empire was built on the backs of the rural and urban labour force.

From agricultural production and the extraction of raw materials to the physical construction of urban centres and buildings, the strength of the empire’s economy and its imperial administration rested upon complex networks of labourers, artisans and ‘local notables’, across its natural landscapes, in villages, and cities. While huge advances have been made in studying labour processes in recent years, the experiences of such populations within the Byzantine world have received comparatively less attention when compared to other fields of late Roman and western medieval studies. How the Byzantine Empire was experienced and understood by those far removed from its centres of governance and central networks of power, are crucial questions for understanding the lived experience of the mostly silent majority whose lives played out both within, and around, the empire’s fluctuating ‘borders’. Beyond exploring the contribution of rural communities and non-elites to modes of production, this symposium will also explore what can be said of the intricacies of their lives, societies, and what it meant to ‘be Byzantine’, viewed from below.  

Symposiarch

Dr Daniel Reynolds 

Cost

Full three days:

  • Members of SPBS - £95
  • Non-members - £110
  • Students/ unwaged: - £50

One day:

  • Members of SPBS - £55
  • Non-members - £65
  • Students/ unwaged - £30

Symposium Feast

Sunday 13 April 1930 (Kolkata Lounge Restaurant) - £40 per head

Online:

  • Members: £20
  • Non-members: £35
  • Students/unwaged: £10

Programme 

Saturday 12th April

  • 09:30-09:45: Welcome from symposiarch 
  • 09:45-10:30: Keynote: Sharon Gerstel (UCLA), “Seeing villages over time: case studies from rural Greece”
  • 10:30-11:00: Tea and coffee  

Session 1: Documented Lives  

  • 11:00-11:25: Matthew Kinloch (Oslo), “Non-elite characters in late Byzantine history writing”
  • 11:25-11:50: Dora Konstantellou (Dumbarton Oaks), “When is a rural painter identified by name? Reading representations of painters in late Byzantine/medieval rural societies”
  • 11:50-12:00 Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala), “Collective subjectivity in the Athonite archives”
  • 12:00-12:10 Nikolas Hächler (Zurich), “The Dialogus de scientia politica: an anonymous comment on and critique of the early Byzantine state under Justinian I” (Communication)
  • 12:10-12:30: Questions 
  • 12:30-14:00:  Lunch 

Session 2: Law, Land and Property

  • 14:00-14:25: Arietta Papaconstantinou (Aix-Marseilles) “Byzantine “tormented voices” from the edge of empire”
  • 14:25-14:50: Jenny Cromwell (Manchester Metropolitan), “Patrons and property in rural Egypt in the early 8th century”
  • 14:50-15:00 Franka Horvat (UCLA), “Islanders’ perspective: the case of the Elaphiti Archipelago” (Communication)
  • 15:00-15:10 Thomas Laver (Cambridge), “Using tax registers to study labour relationships in the villages of Byzantine Egypt”
  • 15:10-15:30: Questions 
  • 15:30-16:00: Tea and coffee

Session 3: Landscape and Settlement

  • 16:00-16:25: Jim Crow (Edinburgh), “Rural settlement in the Cyclades: excavations at Kato Chora”
  • 16:25-16:50: Archie Dunn (Birmingham) “From communal corvées to fiscal and communal enterprises in medieval Byzantium” 
  • 16:50-17:15: Sophia Germanidou (Hellenic Ministry of Culture), “Unseen, unheard and disregarded: tracing female labour in the Byzantine countryside through an interdisciplinary approach"
  • 17:15-17:35: Georgios Makris (British Columbia), “Modest luxury? Rural cemeteries and grave goods in the Valley of Kalamas, Epiros”
  • 17:35-18:00: Questions 
  • 18:00-19:00: Wine reception

Sunday 13th April  

Session 4: Material Approaches and Labour  

  • 10:00-10:25: Flavia Vanni (Newcastle), “The contribution of rural artisans to Byzantine sacred spaces (11th-13th centuries)”
  • 10:25-10:50: Sean Leatherbury (Dublin) “Craft labour and rural communities in the late antique east”
  • 10:50-11:15: Anna Kelley (St Andrews), “Career opportunities: apprentice contracts and social networking in late antique workshops”
  • 11:15-11:25: Zeynep Olgun (Cambridge), “Ships in villages: maritime labour in Byzantine society” (Communication)
  • 11:25-11:35: Questions 
  • 11:35-12:00: Tea and coffee

Session 5: Social Life 

  • 12:00-12:25: Sophie Moore (Newcastle) “Title TBC”
  • 12:25-12:50: Vicky Manopoulou (Durham), “Processing villages: litanic experiences of rural communities in Byzantium”
  • 12:50-13:00: Rachael Helen Banes (Vienna), “Artisans or amateurs: who wrote the graffiti at late antique Aphrodisias?” (Communication)
  • 12:50-13:10:  Jacopo Dolci (Nottingham) “A Monument in Transition: The Artemision and the Evolving Urban Landscape of Late Antique Gerasa (c. 350–750)”
  • 13:10-13:20: Questions 
  • 13:30-14:30 Lunch (SPBS Exec)

14:30-15:30: Communications 

1) Irakli Tezelashvili (Courtauld), “Painted and adorned for the salvation of all of this valley: great and lesser’: Svan Churches of T’evdore, ‘the King’s Painter,’ Revisited”

2) Giuseppe Belsito (independent scholar), “The rural context in the Sicilian Theme (6th-8th centuries AD): an impoverished or a dynamic economic area within the overall Byzantine polity? Contradictory data emerging from recent archaeological excavations in Sicily”

3) Husamettin Simsir (Notre Dame), “Anthroponymic appellations, names, sobriquets, nicknames and titles of mid-15th-century post-Byzantine landholders in the Ottoman Balkans”

4) Nicolas Varaine (Paris), “Ordinary devotion in the late Byzantine world: looking for the modest donors of  Venetian Crete”

5) Bjarke Bach Christensen (Cambridge) New Ostraka Evidence for an Integrated Estate in Sixth-Century Byzantine North Africa

  • 15:30-16:00: Tea and coffee 

Session 6: Comparative perspectives 

  • 16:00- 16:30: Chris Wickham (Oxford) “The West’” 
  • 16:30-17:00: Hugh Kennedy (SOAS), “Slavery as a vehicle for social mobility in the early Islamic world”
  • 17:00-17:30: Questions 
  • 17:30-18:30: Wine reception 
  • 18:30-19:30: Travel to feast
  • 19:30: Feast (Kolata Lounge, 1488 Pershore Rd, Bournville, Birmingham B30 2NT)  

Monday 14th April

Session 7: Rural Life on Islands and Peripheries 

  • 09:30-09:55: Luca Zavagno (Bilkent), “‘From the gentle coast and where the stream descends from the grove of the river and all the high peaks there’. The countryside of large Byzantine islands in the early Middle Ages”
  • 09:55-10:20: Basema Harmaneh (Vienna), “On peripheries: exploring the non-elite universe in the late antique Levant”
  • 10:20-10:45: Angelo Castrorao Barba (Granada), “Living in the Sicilian countryside during the Byzantine-Islamic transition: archaeological perspectives”
  • 10:45-11:00: Questions
  • 11:00-11:30: Tea and coffee 
  • 11:30-12:00: AGM 
  • 12:00-12:30:  Closing remarks by Stuart Pracy (Exeter) and Leslie Brubaker (Birmingham)
  • 12:30: Closing of the symposium and announcement of the next symposium

Venue

The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom

The Symposium will be hosted in the Arts Building on the University of Birmingham’s main campus (map reference R16):

Getting to campus

Train 

The University of Birmingham has its own train station known as ‘University’. Trains leave every 10-15 mins from Birmingham New Street Station, usually departing from platform 11B.  

It may be possible to get cheaper tickets, especially for longer-distance rail travel within the UK.

By bus 

Local routes 61, 63, 41, 48, 76, X21, X22, 19, 20, 20A directly serve the University of Birmingham campus, linking the university to the city centre, local train stations and neighbourhoods. The circular 11A and 11C routes also run nearby.

Car Parking

Northeast multi-storey car park (Pritchatts Road, B15 2SA). 

You can park here for up to ten hours. Parking charges apply Monday to Sunday, between 8am and 6pm. This includes Bank holidays and university closed days.

Charges start from £3.40 and are capped at £10 (as of October 2024) Monday to Friday. If parking at the weekend or on a Bank holiday, there is a flat day rate of £2.50.

Taxi 

TOA Taxis are a Birmingham-based company which is recommended by the university. 

Accommodation

The university has its own onsite hotel accommodation, now known as the Edgbaston Park Hotel.

The city centre has a greater range of accommodation options and is located around 10-15mins away by train. 

Explore further information on city centre options.

Medical assistance

First Aid: Dr Daniel Reynolds (symposiarch) is a qualified first aider.   

Emergency service numbers: 999 or 112

Medical Practice:

The university has its own dedicated GP practitioner for non-emergency care.

UBHeard is a confidential listening and support service for all registered students (undergraduate and postgraduate) at the University of Birmingham. It offers immediate emotional and mental health support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Call the service on 0800 368 5819 (Freephone UK*) or 00353 1 518 0277 (International), or visit the UBHeard portal (create an account with your UoB email address). You can also text ‘Hi’ to +44 74 1836 0780 for SMS & WhatsApp support (standard rates apply) or contact UBHeard via Live Chat.

Security

If there is an immediate risk to life, safety or security – yours, another person’s, or property – call the emergency services on 999. Then call Security on 0121 414 4444. If you are a member of the University of Birmingham, you can also alert them through the SafeZone app.

If you’re calling to report an alleged crime (especially assault/sexual assault, indecency, fraud, theft, or burglary), you should always contact both the police and Security. Security will be able to support you while you wait for the emergency services to arrive.

To report a non-emergency crime (e.g., theft), call Security on 0121 414 3000 or report an incident through the SafeZone app. You should also report the incident to the police online or by calling 101. 

Food and drink

Lunch and refreshments will be provided for all symposium delegates. However, the campus also has a wide range of options you may prefer to explore

The Main Library

The University Main Library is open 0800-2000 during university holidays and is open to visitors for consultation. 

Symposium Feast (Sunday 13 April 1930)

The symposium feast will be held at Kolkata Lounge 1488 Pershore Rd, Bournville, Birmingham B30 2NT.