Monumentality in Early Christian Architecture

In May, I am going to a conference on the topic of monumentality in archaeology. When invited, I fired off a rather superficial abstract that talked about how Early Christian church architecture in Greece both used existing, earlier forms of urban and domestic architecture to communicate the new status of the Christian religious elite, but also subverted these forms by establishing new relationship between donor, visitors, and the social structures that informed traditional elite architecture.

This week, I’ve slowly turned my attention to this paper after completing a revised draft of the historical conclusion to the PKAP Survey Volume.

To begin, I re-read Kafka’s short story “The Great Wall of China”. The fictional narrator of the (obviously fictional) story considers the construction of the Great Wall of China and tells of how it was built piecemeal across China to preserve the moral of the workers. According to the narrator, the very enormity of the task ran the risk alienating the labor of the individual worker by reducing it to something inconsequential by comparison. To combat this, the workers built a single section of the wall – often in a remote location – and returned home for a time of recovery before heading out again like departing heroes to build another section. Thus the wall came to represent the entire community of China – and the narrator himself who hailed from the south, not the north where the wall stood – could take tremendous pride in its construction even though the purpose and extent remained as obscure and paradoxical as the body of the Emperor himself who called for the Wall’s construction. In Kafka’s story (hardly the only one in his oeuvre that featured architecture), the Wall represented the enormity of the Empire, the incomprehensibility of the Emperor, and the tension between the fragile individual and abyss of time, space, and power that surrounds human existence. (And I have to assume that the story means many other more significant, literary, and existential things!). Monumentality formed the delicate link between the individual and things much larger, more abstract, and more remote.

This story contributed to my larger meditation of monumentality in the discourse of Late Antiquity (or the Early Christian period). Shifting attitudes toward monumental architecture has represented a key indicator in social, religious, political, economic, and cultural change in the ancient world. Indeed, scholars often argue that the end of the ancient world came with the neglect and sometimes destruction of the pagan temple and the construction of Early Christian basilica style churches in their place. The widespread abandonment of basilica style churches, in turn, marks the end of the transitional period between ancient and “Medieval” or “Byzantine” forms of architecture, and scholars have neatly synced the transformation of architectural styles with political, economic, and social changes.

The link between architecture and social change often comes through the study of patronage practices. If we understand the social practices that led to the construction of Early Christian architecture to be largely identical to those that produced earlier forms of monumental architecture, then we can argue that these shift in building types is largely stylistic or a matter of taste or practice.  In other words, we can see monumental architecture as evidence for continuity between the ancient world and Late Antiquity. If we see different social mechanisms producing the Early Christian monumental building boom, then it becomes easier to claim that the shift in large scale building practices represents a shift in the organization of society on a more profound level. Along these lines, scholars have seen Early Christian architecture as evidence for discontinuity between antiquity and the Middle Ages. The issue is, of course, that we still do not understand the mechanisms that produced the boom in Early Christian architecture and how these intersect with, say, changing attitudes toward the poor among the same group of people (and the study of Late Antique attitudes toward poverty is a particularly fertile ground for recent study).

The flip side of this concern with patronage, of course, is how these buildings were understood by their audiences across the Late Antique world. Not only are did these building represent a point of contact between massive and abstract institutions like the church and the bodies of individuals living throughout the Early Christian world, but they also represent a place of critique around which community responses to new forms of religious or social organization could cohere.

As Kafka articulated in a fictional context, monumental architecture had the potential for alienating the individuals responsible for their construction as the tension between their massively concrete appearance comes all too close to the abstract entities, institutions, and ideologies which they represent. This alienation provides fertile ground of critique inscribed on the monuments themselves, on the bodies of the laborers who produced them, and in the attitudes toward the buildings in broader social discourse.

Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean

Sometime in the past couple of months a Special Edition of the Bolletino di Archeologia On Line appeared with a lightly edited copy of a paper we prepared for the International Congress of Classical Archaeology in 2008. The paper is titled “Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Model from Cyprus” and considers the relationship between trade and settlement on the island during Late Antiquity. In particular, we take aim on the lingering dichotomy between urban centers and a dependent countryside by showing how a non-urban and non-rural site like Pyla-Koutsopetria occupied a rather extensive stretch of the Late Roman coastline and possessed a distinctive assemblage of Late Roman material. The distinctive assemblage of ceramics is particularly important because it suggests that the site had a unique relationship with patterns of Mediterranean exchange.

The unique pattern of engaging larger networks of trade and exchange undermines the now dubious model of urban centers representing hubs of trade in the Roman world while outlying communities availed themselves to goods that moved through larger, regional centers. This model has justified scholarly attention to urban area which represented the centers not only of a region’s economic life, but also a region’s cultural life.

By showing that non-urban places like Pyla-Koutsopetria had distinct economic relationships with the wider Mediterranean world, we are justifying more recent attention in the countryside. In effect, we are noting that non-urban sites had as large a role in forging economic relationships and cultural production as urban ones.

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Byzantium in Transition at the University of Cyprus

This is a pretty interesting conference being held this weekend at the University of Cyprus.  Apparently, it will be the first in a trilogy of conferences designed “to shed more light on the ‘invisible’ eras or period of major transformations in economy, society, and culture after the end of Late Antiquity by (re)evaluating old and new archaeological data, namely dated to (a) the Byzantine Early Middle Ages, middle 7th-8th centuries, (b) the Middle to Late Byzantine or Early Frankish era, Late 12th – early 13th centuries, and (c) the Late Byzantine/Frankish to Early Ottoman period, middle 14th – late 15th centuries.”

The schedule of speakers looks pretty impressive (although a bit light on people doing active field research in Cyprus) with most of the usual suspects represented.

The poster is snazzy.

It’s always useful to notice the way in which these kinds of conferences organize sessions because they both capture the areas of specialty among the participants and the questions central to research in the field. Sessions on urban and rural space suggest, at least, that tradition ways of viewing ancient settlement with the conceptual divide between town and country continues to persist (although it is possible that the papers could critique the title of the session). The next session on “trade networks and the economy” suggests more fluid and integrated view of economic relationships that might offer a counterpoint to the seeming rigid city/countryside divide. The final session bring the term “material culture” to the conference and opens up the potential to consider how objects both embody and communicate cultural expectations.  It remains to be seen how fully the participant embrace the complex concept of material culture or just use it as a synonym for architecture and small-finds.

The program is as follows:

Byzantium in Transition

Introductory Session: Setting the Scene

Islam and its relations with ByzantiumAlexander Beihammer (University of Cyprus)

Latin Christendom and its relations with Byzantium, c. 700-900 AD
Richard Hodges (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, USA)
keynote speaker (hospitality sponsored by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation)

Approaches to Early Medieval Byzantium
John Haldon (Princeton University, USA)

Session I: Urban and Rural Space

Urban and rural space: surface survey and its problematics
John Bintliff (University of Leiden, The Netherlands)

City and countryside in Greece
Guy Sanders (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece)

Island and coastal landscapes in Greece and Cyprus
Timothy Gregory (Ohio State University, USA)

City and countryside in Asia Minor: Amorium as model or misfit?
Christopher Lightfoot (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA)

City and countryside in the western fringes
Paul Arthur (University of Salento, Italy)

Session II: Trade Networks and Economy

A ceramic koine as evidence for continuity and economy
Athanasios Vionis (University of Cyprus)

Amphorae and trade networks
Stella Demesticha (University of Cyprus)

Pottery in seventh-century Cyprus: ceramic economies in a Sea of change
Marcus Rautman (University of Missouri, USA)

Towards a new definition of Mission Creep: trade with the western peripheries
Pamela Armstrong (University of Oxford, Wolfson College, UK)

Coins, exchanges and the transformation of the Byzantine economy (7th-10th c.)
Cecile Morrisson (CNRS, France)

Session III: Artistic Testimonies and Material Culture

The culture of Iconoclasm
Leslie Brubaker (University of Birmingham, UK)

Church planning and sculpture in Late Antique Cyprus: their connections with the regional environment
Jean-Pierre Sodini (Universite de Paris- I, Sorbonne, France)

Early Christian basilicas: changes or continuities in post-Justinianic Cyprus?
Doria Nicolaou (Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, Italy)

The art of metalwork in Byzantium
Marlia Mango (University of Oxford, St John’s College, UK)

Early Medieval archaeological evidence from central Greece
Olga Karagiorgou (Academy of Athens, Greece)

Cross-posted to Corinthian Matters.

A Cool, Busy Week

This is the time of the semester when my calendar fills up with events, meetings, and activities. In some years, this has been a relentless drag from meeting to meeting. This year, however, there are some really cool things going on. So, here’s a inducement to check out the activities this week.

First, the Department of Art and Design (and others!) are hosting their Arts and Culture Conference on campus. The theme is: Politics and the Graphic Image.

The headliners of this conference are the members of the WW3 collective. The group, founded by Peter Kuper and Sethe Tobocman, has produced a politically charged comic World War 3 Illustrated since 1978.  The conference includes discussions with these two artists as well as fellow contributor Sabrina Jones. They have gallery shows at both the Hughes Fine Arts center and at the Third Street Gallery (downtown). The WW3 folks will talk about their work in a round table format Tuesday at 3 in the Ballroom of the Union!

Tuesday, October 25
Seth Tobocman – Artist’s Lecture
9:30am, Hughes Fine Arts Center Room 227

Sabrina Jones – Artist’s Lecture
12:30pm, Gillette Hall Room 303

WW3 Panel featuring Peter Kuper, Seth Tobocman and Sabrina Jones
3:00pm, UND Memorial Union, River Valley Room

Wednesday, October 26
Peter Kuper – Artist Lecture
11:30am – Hughes Fine Arts Center Room 227

2002 Pulitzer Prize Winning Cartoonist Clay Bennet In Conversation,
3:00pm, Hughes Fine Arts Center
Josephine Campbell Recital Hall

This Wednesday at noon, the Working Group in Digital and New will host working group member, Mike Wittgraf, who will talk about Music and Computer/Human Interaction: Interface and Improvisation in the Working Group lab. Mike is an international master of computer mediated music of all kinds. He’s going to present some of his work on our fabulous sound system and talk about the technology and theory behind the next wave of music and computer/human interaction.

Be sure to check out the Music Department’s trumpet recital on Thursday night where Mike will premier his work Gold Digger (for four trumpets and a computer).

 

Workshops, Conferences, and Lectures

The next few weeks will be busy ones here at the University of the Northern Plains.

On Friday and Saturday, the University of North Dakota will host the International Anchoritic Society Conference at the Memorial Union on campus.  I’ll be giving a paper at 10:45 in the Badlands room titled “Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean“. The title is rather more ambitious than the paper!

Next Friday, September 23rd, at noon in the Working Group in Digital and New Media Lab inimitable Tim Pasch and I are teaming up to produce a short workshop on Digitizing Your Workflow. (I really wanted to call it Digitizing Yo Workflo, but people might not get it.)  The workshop will be particularly geared toward graduate students in the humanities and social sciences and introduce some useful digital tools that will help them streamline their workflow.

Finally, on September 28th, I’m giving a lecture in the OLLI lecture series here on campus that will provide an overview of the island of Cyprus and my work there. Unfortunately, as far as I understand it, this lecture will not be open to the public, which is a bit of a bummer, but maybe there will be a way to stream it live or record it.

 

A new semester and a new year…

The new semester begins tonight at 5 pm (or something). This is my first semester with tenure which I officially received on August 15.  It felt a lot like my team winning the World Series (which I have experienced) or the Super Bowl.  I woke up the next day expecting things to be or feel different and then was disappointed when they were the same. My coffee tasted the same, the sky looked the same, my office did not become larger or smaller.

And my teaching and research loads did not change either. So here’s my fall semester:

1. Two old classes. I’m teaching two classes that I’ve taught every semester for the past four years. I love the routine, the opportunity to tweak the classes minutely and judge the results the next semester, the battle with boredom of going through the same material each semester (which I liken to acedia, a kind of monastic boredom), and the chance to compare students in very similar situations. And I often think of it as a kind of cricket match (as I watch Sachin Tendulkar in what is likely his last at bat in England). The patience to do the same thing over and over, but also the flexibility to adjust to variables and changes. The two classes are: History 101: Western Civilization I (online) and History 240: The Historians Craft, which is the required course for our majors.

2. A new class. I am also teaching a new class of sorts. I am teaching a digital and public history practicum. This course will focus on developing a boutique-y collection of digital artifacts to celebrate the Chester Fritz Library’s 50th Anniversary (The Fritz @ 50: 1961 to 2011).  I have a class of four diligent but inexperienced graduate students, some good allies in the Department of Special Collections, a Gigapan, a brilliant tech advisor, and a bunch of good will.  Like my effort in the Spring, our goal is to produce a small, well-curated digital exhibit, for the library using off the shelf components as much as possible.

3. Got Papers? I have somehow committed to four (?) conference papers this fall and winter. I have no idea how this happened. I’ve posted a rough draft of the first one here already. I’ll be giving “Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean” at the International Anchoritic Society Conference here in Grand Forks. At the American Schools of Oriental Research Conference, I’ll be (co-)authoring a paper on our ongoing work at the site of Pyla-Vigla on Cyprus. (I might also be involved in a paper on my work on Polis at this conference, although this is not at all clear). Finally, in January I’ll be giving a paper with David Pettegrew at the Archaeological Institute of America’s Annual Meeting titled “Producing Peasants in the Corinthian Countryside“. This paper will draw on our decade old survey data from around the Corinthia.  (To make my life easier, I’ve decided not to actually attend ASOR or the AIA.)

4. Publication Projects. I also have four ongoing publication projects. The first and most pressing one is to shape my paper, “The Ambivalent Landscape of Christian Corinth” from the Corinth in Contrast Conference into publication shape. I’ve received really good feedback from the editors of a volume that will come from this conference, and now I need to take it all in. I also need to push into final form my short encyclopedia article on Early Christian Baptisteries. I’ve also (more or less) committed to writing up a piece on post-colonialism in Byzantine Archaeology.  This will develop from a paper I wrote years ago, with every intent of publishing, and gave at a working seminar at the Gennadius Library in Greece. The last publication project involves the results of our survey on Cyprus. We have finally decided to publish the results of the survey aspects of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Survey separate from the results of our excavations at the site. We have a completed draft of this manuscript more or less prepared and have submitted a book proposal to the American Schools of Oriental Research Archaeological Reports Series.

5. And the other stuff:

• Did I mention that we’re moving?
• I continue to tilt at windmills in an effort to document an early 20th century church here in Grand Forks. We have a verbal agreement with an architect to illustrate the building.
• I’ve been working with some people looking to revitalize the College of Arts and Sciences webpage (ssshhhh… this is the top secret not ready for primetime development page.)
• Teaching Thursday!
• At least one book review.
• Following Formula 1, NASCAR, Cricket, Baseball, the NFL, and College Football.

So it should be a fun semester!!!

Rough Draft: Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean

The scholarly process can be a source mystery for students and the general public. Even I occasionally wonder how my peers transform ideas into provocative and sophisticated final products. Part of the goal of this blog was to make my scholarly process a bit more transparent. Typically my ideas begin as blog posts, I develop them into conference papers, and then, if they seem like they have potential, I attempt to mold them into some kind of publishable shape. Often my best ideas languish between conference papers and lectures.

In the spirit of transparency, I’m posting a rough draft of a paper that I will deliver at the International Anchoritic Society Conference here in Grand Forks.  The paper’s title is “Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean”. I’ve blogged on the paper here and here.

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Anchorites in Grand Forks

The conference website is up, so it must be official! The University of North Dakota will host the International Anchroitic Society conference this fall (September 16th-18th).  In my effort to shatter a personal record for conference papers in a single semester (my personal best is 4), I have submitted an abstract for consideration at this conference.

Also, the Cyprus Research Fund is one of the sponsor (check us out on the sponsorship page!). It seemed like a really good thing to have Cyprus Research Fund support this conference as the Cypriot St. Neophytos ranks high on any list of dedicated anchorite saints.

So here is my hastily written abstract. If you can make anything of this, I hope you can see my shift from an interest in space (e.g. my work on St. Theodore of Kythera, in particular) to an interest in time (e.g. my recent reading and comments on Kathleen Davis’s Periodization and Sovereignty.)  The paper has not been accepted and the abstract is a bit on the raw side, but it is not dissimilar to some ideas that have been contemplating lately.

“Margins of Space and Time in Hagiography of Middle Byzantine Greece”
Abstract for the 2011 International Anchoritic Society Conference

The early Middle Byzantine Era in Greece is a dynamic period in both the history of the region and in the literature of Byzantine monasticism. In general, scholars have argued that this period saw a shift from individualized asceticism to practices oriented around more coenobitic forms of monasticism. At the same time, the region of Greece and the Aegean witnessed significant shifts in population that produced new areas of wilderness in which various monastic vocations could engage. The activity of Arab raiders in the Aegean depopulated islands making them into deserts, coastal regions went from being literally liminal to politically liminal, and geopolitical shifts re-opened for Christian settlement territories abandoned as too exposed to the Muslim raids.

This paper looks at several locally produced saints’ Lives from the Aegean basin and considers the role of the wilderness and liminality in the interplay between Byzantine monasticism and Byzantine society. In particular, this paper will argue Middle Byzantine hagiography from the Peloponessos played a key role in the re-occupation and appropriation the margins of both space and time. Unlike better-known saints associated with the Imperial capital of Constantinople, the lives of more obscure and often neglected local saints, like St. Nikon, St. Luke of Steiri, St. Theodore of Kythera, and St. Ioannis “the Stranger”, engaged a local landscape at a moment when Byzantine institutions were undergoing a significant change.

Spatially, the middle Byzantine saint – through their authors – sought to re-center the profane world by traveling out into the wilderness. By focusing their sacred activities in the margins, the Byzantine saint created a spiritual counter-weight to the populated centers of institutional authority in the towns and cities under Byzantine control. The demographic, political, and economic changes of the so-called Byzantine Dark Age and the revived fortunes of the Byzantine state and local communities stimulated the need to reinforce social and institutional centers. Sacred margins implied profane centers and bonded human to the divine by spatializing this fundamental Christian duality.

The authors also discovered in these liminal spaces evidence for the margins of local time. Local saints wandered not only the depopulated spaces beyond the edge of local settlement, but also among the ruins left by the earlier inhabitants. By setting their sacred dramas among these earlier buildings, largely in ruins, the authors and their holy men and women marked out not only the end of inhabited space but also the edge of the present. The visible remains of past prosperity reminded local residents of the disruptions of 7^th and 8^th centuries and located the sacred world of the saint on the ragged edge of the local present. Reclaiming the ruins of the past for the present re-established local continuity and like the monastic occupation of the wilderness, re-centered the profane world through contact with the sacred.

By focusing largely on local saints, this paper is able to contextualize the efforts of those authors in a specific time, place, and historical circumstances. In these narratives, holy men and women incorporate the margins into a renewed Byzantine landscape by appropriating it for the sacred center. The profound division between sacred and profane in Byzantine Christianity paralleled the distinction between the wilderness and the reviving profane centers of Byzantine society, economy, and administration. The activities of local saints to reclaim the margins for the sacred landscape reinforced profane centers by establishing the limits in time and space of their opposite.

Posters and the Scholarly Forum

One of the great perks of the Graduate School’s Scholarly Forum here on campus is that you get to see so many academic posters. As some of you may know, the academic poster is the new conference paper. While commonplace in the social and applied sciences, the post has made significant inroads into the humanities with poster sessions appearing even at such august and tradition bound gatherings as the American Historical Association annual meeting.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, two of my digital history students presented a poster at the scholarly forum. In general, their work was well-received, but I have to admit that their poster was not the flashiest or most attractive.  After wandering the over 100 posters present at the Forum, I’ve come up with a simple list of things that made posters stand out to me:

1. Flashy colors. A few of the best and most noticeable posters used some kind of flashy color to attract my eye. While I know that poster sessions shouldn’t necessarily be driven by visceral reactions to common advertising ploys, bright colors do draw the attention to content.

2. Visual Content.  The best posters also relied heavily on pictures, charts, diagrams, and other illustrations. Posters are really ideal for communicating visual data. Our poster included too much text and it was tricky for people to find the time and space to stop and read a text heavy poster in the bustle of the poster session. Some of the best posters communicated their message through straight forward diagrams and visual images.

3. Non-linear. I’ll admit that despite my training as a historian, I find linearity boring.  Posters that depicted linear processes from one stage to the next did not attract me. I found myself drawn to posters that captured non-linear character of processes.  Posters are a great place to experiment with non-linear explanations and descriptions because they allow the reader to engage the content of the poster from multiple starting points. Just as long blocks of text make engaging of the content of a poster difficult in the bustle of a crowded ballroom, a non-linear approach allows viewers to engage the content of the poster from different angles and directions.

4. So many icons. I really liked the posters that marked the project’s affiliation, partners, and funding through icons. It made it easy to understand the institutional basis for the research without having to read some small thank-you text at the bottom of the poster board. It reminded me of the importance to developing a slick logo or icon for our organization!

5. QR Codes and more information. One thing that our history poster DID do right is to include QR codes to allow the viewer to quickly get additional information on the material present. QR codes worked so much better than a clumsy url directing the viewer to a website. In fact, the QR codes worked so well that they actually drew attention and comment to our poster!

Check Teaching Thursday next week for an expanded versions of these observations with some visual complements!