Book contents
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- Six Movement and Creation
- Seven Letters from the Edge
- Eight Antioch after Dark
- Nine Ars Sacra in the East and after Byzantium
- Ten The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun)
- Eleven Three Questions Concerning Armenian and Byzantine Art
- Twelve Makurian Visual Culture
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Eight - Antioch after Dark
Archaeology and the “Dark Ages” in North Syria
from II - Images, Objects, Archaeology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2024
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- Six Movement and Creation
- Seven Letters from the Edge
- Eight Antioch after Dark
- Nine Ars Sacra in the East and after Byzantium
- Ten The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun)
- Eleven Three Questions Concerning Armenian and Byzantine Art
- Twelve Makurian Visual Culture
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Summary
In this chapter we explore the textual and material evidence for the transformation of the city of Antioch in northern Syria from the seventh through ninth centuries. Through observations of the environmental shocks, including the Justinianic Plague, which first arrived in AD 542, as well as the effects of a series of major earthquakes, we assess demographic changes that likely accompanied these events. Following this, we explore some possible reconstruction of the population of Antioch and its hinterland. In the early medieval period, a reassessment of the material evidence, read together with descriptions from medieval texts, demonstrates that a level economic and social activity, probably significantly exceeding previous estimates, persisted through the ‘Dark Ages’ of the seventh-ninth centuries.
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- Worlds of ByzantiumReligion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East, pp. 226 - 251Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024