A major concern for archaeologists and historians in the early medieval period (7th-9th centuries) is the fate of the classical city. Views differ about whether this should be understood as an end or a transformation (see the review of the historical and archaeological approaches in early medieval Italy in Ward-Perkins
1997)- The archaeological and historical evidence allows a number of interpretations (see Wickham 2005: 626-35; Haldon 1999) although discussions are not always sufficiently nuanced in recognizing regional diversity from the Adriatic to eastern Pontos (cf. Hodges 2006:184-5). It is important to recognize that there is greater diversity in the range of evidence than is frequently admitted; for Anatolia we simply do not have clear archaeological evidence from cities like Ikonion or Caesarea, and very little for major centres such as Ankyra or Nicaea. A case can be made that the monumental archaeology of city defences and a few major churches either represents effective resistance and the maintenance of urban centres with an effective imperial administration (Howard-Johnston 2004) or alternatively as ‘the hollow parodies of a classical town’ (Hodges 2006: 185). The excavations at Amorion reveal continuing economic activity (Lightfoot 2007) and it is important also to recognize how some urban centres came to take on specific functions but did not necessarily conform to the pattern of citta ad isole, like some cities in the west which ‘had gone over the edge into deurbanization’ (Wickham 2005: 676). Without the archaeology of early medieval housing (see Dark 2004), as is now known from Rome at this period, it remains difficult to contextualize the surviving Christian and defensive monuments from Byzantine poleis (see Crow and Hill 1995, and Crow 1996 for a discussion of examples from Amastris and northern Anatolia).
Middle Byzantine and later towns are more readily understood from surviving remains such as Mistra and Geraki in the Peloponnese and from excavations at Corinth (see a general discussion by Ousterhout in Evans and Wixom 1997:192-9, and the studies of late Byzantine and Ottoman housing by Sigalos 2004 and Vionis 2008). In Anatolia the excavations at Amorion reveal settlement and economic activity up to the late medieval period, but elsewhere investigations from this phase are more restricted and the neglect of the Byzantine past in Anatolia is matched
For Seljuk and later periods (see Ozdgan, in Meskell 1998: 119), where the main academic interest until recently has remained art historical.
World History
