8 - Community-Building and Collective Identity in Middle Byzantine Athens

Summary

Communities are dynamic and socially constituted institutions that rely on day-to-day interaction, shared experiences and shared qualities that allow their members to define and distinguish themselves from others. Community building often involves physical spaces that function as focal points of placemaking activities that include social encounters, daily rituals and practices that endow places with meaning and value. Cities are the physical manifestation of such interactions among different social and economic groups, both elite and non-elite.

Byzantine cities often do not correspond to modern urban aesthetics, nor do they easily conform to their Greco-Roman predecessors, making it easy for scholars to misunderstand or disapprove of them. Furthermore, despite the numerous publications on Byzantine cities that explore how local and regional conditions shape and manifest in the urban fabric, comparisons with Constantinople continue to inform our expectations of urban realities in the provinces. Provincial cities could be small, messy, ‘organically’ developed and haphazardly built, characterised at times by a distinct lack of civic buildings and monumentality. This ‘organic’ scenario often becomes synonymous with unplanned, crowded, chaotic, unsophisticated and ad hoc urban developments. However, such labels mask the intentionality and the decision-making processes included in organic development and undermine the study of the social and spatial practices involved in city-making. Spaces are socially produced and are shaped and conceptualised through social interaction. Such encounters are not always harmonious and peaceful; they can equally involve conflict, disagreement, indifference and/or collaboration. But the engagement in such processes is what ultimately creates shared spaces and experiences, and enhances a sense of belonging – that is, emotional and socio-economic ties among community members and with specific localities.

In this chapter I discuss city-making processes in middle Byzantine Athens as mechanisms of collectiveness and belonging. I seek the spatial and material imprint of community-building in an urban setting, focusing on evidence of placemaking activities such as architectural transformations, repurposing of buildings and spaces and new constructions that became key loci of interaction among city-dwellers. Emphasis is placed on the micro-scale, on the study of changes in Athens’ streets and neighbourhoods that involved the participation of the local inhabitants but rarely required that of the provincial or imperial authorities.