“Going to the Extremes”: The Balearics and Cyprus in the Early Medieval Byzantine Insular System
Luca Zavagno
This contribution mainly focuses on Cyprus and the Balearics, islands located at opposite geographical extremes of Byzantine Mediterranean, during passage from Late Antiquity to early Middle Ages. Historians have often regarded these as peripheral additions heartland Aegean Anatolian plateau; this article argues that, in fact, archaeological material indicators (such ceramics, lead seals coins), paired with scarce textual sources, point a certain degree economic prosperity abovementioned period under scrutiny, suggesting that they continued play an important role political, administrative religious structures Empire. A resilient insular economy continuity local production artefacts was ensured by persistence demand secular elites regular, if infrequent, contacts other areas or Muslim Mediterranean.
Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean|Bilkent University Institutional Repository (Bilkent University)