Pasts Imperfect (10.14.21)
Byzantine Studies, Exploding Canons, and More
This week, Alex Magnolia introduces us to the field of “Byzantine Studies” and explains calls to change its name, double-tapping Classics, a new study of Nestor’s Cup, GIS and Ancient China, and more
Alex Magnolia is a historian of the Medieval Roman Empire, sometimes referred to as “Byzantium.” His research focuses on various aspects of the Roman state, society, and church, including constructions of gender, sexuality, and kinship in the Middle Ages, as well as transnational epistolary exchange, diplomatic brides, and Roman identity. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, where he has taught courses on the Middle Ages and the Vikings. Alex has contributed to the journal Hortulus and other forthcoming publications, notably Women Who Changed the World, where he wrote about the Roman Empress Eirene and her remarkable reign, ca. 780-802. Today he provides a short bibliography for “Byzantine Studies.”
Peruse the key primary sources of the field we today call “Byzantine Studies.” You will find plenty of Romans—Rhomaioi, in Greek—but nearly no Byzantines. This is because—despite the ongoing scholarly debate about the utility of the name—the people of the state and culture centered at Constantinople, which endured against all odds until 1453, conclusively identified as Romans throughout the millennium of their history. Anthony Kaldellis’ The Byzantine Republic is one of the best recent explorations on the topic, convincingly recovering the Roman identity of the Byzantines. Kaldellis’ most recent monograph, Romanland, engages the history of “Roman denialism” which is a pillar, he argues, of modern Byzantine studies and the Western outlook generally. Averil Cameron nicely summarized the debates, historiography, and issues in “Late antiquity and Byzantium: an identity problem,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 40 (1).
Cameron is among those scholars comfortable with “Byzantium” as a name and conceptual framework. Roland Betancourt has compellingly explored the nuances and complexities of intersectional identities, including race, minority status, and gender, in Byzantine Intersectionality. Betancourt’s methodological innovations have also advanced the field in Byzantium/Modernism, edited with Maria Taroutina. Leonora Neville’s intentionally taut text Byzantine Gender is a stellar, must-read introduction to the complex systems and performances of gender in Byzantium. A fascinating recent volume, The Holy Apostles: A Lost Monument, a Forgotten Project, and the Presentness of the Past edited by Margaret Mullett and Robert G. Ousterhout, tries to recreate and understand a now-lost space, an essential Constantinopolitan church and imperial crypt destroyed after the Ottoman conquest. Another highlight of the field is the increasing historiographical interconnection of the Roman state with the broader world—for example the shared confessions and missionary efforts between the Romans and premodern Ethiopia (Aksum)—as highlighted in the work of Felege-Selam Yirga and others.
The modern revisionist historians doing the work of reclaiming the Roman identity of the Byzantines are working in a long historical trend. J.B. Bury (1861-1927), for example, wrote extensively on the history of the “Later Roman Empire,” well-aware of the onomastic and larger ontological issues and trying to undo the damage done by Edward Gibbon’s injurious, gendered, orientalist perceptions of Byzantium. Bury’s multi-volume histories (Vol. I and Vol. II) are dated but still important. Engaging in this vein and using longue durée methodology akin to Michael McCormick, Paul Stephenson’s forthcoming (2022) monograph promises to reassess New Rome: The Empire in the East, especially narratives of decline, from a scientific perspective.
Further reading:
Cameron, Averil. Byzantine Christianity: A Very Brief History. London: SPCK Publishing, 2017.
Hilsdale, Cecily. Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Krueger, Derek. Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Raffensperger, Christian. Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World, 988-1146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Runciman, Steven. “Gibbon and Byzantium.” Daedalus 105, no. 3 (1976): 103–10.
Seen in the Twitterverse and Beyond
On his blog, Aegean Prehistory, Dimitri Nakassis discusses the “double tap” zombie rule, canons, and the need to redraw the lines for Classics:
It does follow that we need to find a different way to define what we do, and that’s going to be hard work, because Classics (or whatever we call it) at its best isn’t all about the ancient world (reception!), or the Greco-Roman world (Persia!), or the Mediterranean world (Britain!). These labels are insufficient to contain the discipline.
A new article by Danya Ruttenberg and Katey Zeh in The Washington Post exemplifies the significance of translation (and the harms of mistranslation) in connection to the Hebrew word אסון ('ason’ meaning “harm”) and abortion rights:
An open access article, “Who was buried with Nestor’s Cup? Macroscopic and microscopic analyses of the cremated remains from Tomb 168 (second half of the 8th century BCE, Pithekoussai, Ischia Island, Italy)” in PLOS One by Melania Gigante , Alessia Nava, et al., looks at the Tomb of Nestor’s Cup using “gross morphology with qualitative histology and histomorphometric analyses of the burnt bone fragments.”
Our results point to the presence of at least three human individuals of different ages buried with Nestor’s Cup, possibly reinforcing Buchner’s initial reconstruction of the three distinct cremations. Even if it is not possible to estimate these three individuals’ age-at-death, none of them seems to pertain to a child.
What can Geographic Information Systems (GIS) reveal about ancient China? A new open access article, “The spatiotemporal evolution of ancient cities from the late Yangshao to Xia and Shang Dynasties in the Central Plains, China” by Lijie Yan, Ruixia Yang, et al. used GIS to create a “spatiotemporal database of ancient cities in the late Yangshao [5000-3000 BCE], Longshan, as well as Xia [c. 2070-1600 BCE] and Shang Dynasties [1600-1046 BCE] in the Central Plains.” The result is a striking map and contextual analysis of the evolution of the ancient cities within the lower reaches of China’s Yellow River over thousands of years.
Lectures we’d attend
Newcastle University is hosting a roundtable discussion between contributors to Denise McCoskey's Cultural History of Race in Antiquity, which will be published next month by Bloomsbury Academic.
Speakers: Denise McCoskey (Miami University), David Kaufman (Transylvania University), Jackie Murray (University of Kentucky); Grant Parker (Stanford University), Naoíse Mac Sweeney (University of Vienna), Shelley P. Haley (Hamilton College), Denise Buell (Williams College), Joseph Skinner (Newcastle University). Register here.
At Yale Law School, “The Dawn of the Hispanic Legal Tradition: A Conference on the Liber Iudiciorum” will run on Zoom from November 12-14, 2021. Co-organizer Noel Lenski assures us there will be much Visigothic legislation to be had.
New Online Journal Issues curated by @YaleClassicsLib
Millennium Vol. 18 (2021) NB: “Natural Disasters and Time: Non-eschatological Perceptions of Earthquakes in Late Antique and Medieval Historiography” by Armin F. Bergmeier
Journal of the History of Collections Vol. 33, No. 2 (Nov. 2021)
Classics@ Vol. 19 (Sept. 2021) #openaccess
Papers of the British School at Rome Vol. 89 (October 2021)
Philosophy & Rhetoric Vol.54, No. 3 (2021)
The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition Vol. 15, No. 2 (2021)
History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis Vol. 24, No. 1 (2021) Logic and Exegesis: The Logical Reconstruction of Arguments in the Greek Commentary Tradition
Dead Sea Discoveries Vol. 28, No. 3 (Oct. 2021) Formation of the Subject—Essays in Honor of Carol Newsom’s 70th Birthday
Apeiron Vol. 54, No. 4 (2021) NB: “Thought, Choice, and Other Causes in Aristotle’s Account of Luck” by Emily Kress
Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy Vol. 32, No. 1 (October 2021) Archaeological Failaka, recent and ongoing investigations
Byzantinische Zeitschrift Vol. 114, No. 3 (2021) NB: “Imprisoned martyrs on the move” by Christodoulos Papavarnavas
Pitches:
The Public Books section "Antiquities" is now taking pitches for articles to be published in early 2022. You can also pitch to our “Pasts Imperfect” column at the LA Review of Books using this form. We hope to hear from you and we especially encourage emerging and historically underrepresented scholars to consider working with our mentorship network.
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
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