Byzantine Countryside: Villages and Hamlets

During its long history, the Byzantine Empire was primarily a rural society. It had major cities such as Alexandria and Antioch in the early period, or Thessaloniki in the middle and late periods – and of course the glorious and immense capital, Constantinople. However, the lustre of urban life should not obscure the fact that most Byzantines lived in much smaller communities: villages and hamlets spread throughout the countryside, supplying the larger urban centers with food and goods for exchange in local markets and beyond. Let us now try to understand the landscape of the Byzantine countryside.

The Byzantine villages in the early Byzantine period.

During the late roman era and the early Byzantine period, the rural life doesn’t change much to what it had been. The exceptionally well-preserved houses in a region of central Syria, evacuated by their inhabitants in the face of the Arab invasion and never repopulated, have remained intact. They are often dated by Greek inscriptions following the Seleucid era.

The research at the archaeological site of Kotepetra, in Cyprus, can provide an insight into a village life in late antiquity and the dark age. Survey and excavations have established the extent of an unwalled community covering around 4 ha, extending along the east ridge of a river and located about 4 km from the sea. In the 6th and 7th centuries, around one hundred families may have lived here, while working the nearby fields. Small houses of varying complexity seems to have occupied much of the site. At least one large, well-built structure stood near the village center while smaller, less substantial buildings like press weights and grinding stones were found along the periphery.

The village was counting three churches, serving as physical and social landmarks for local residents. The earliest and largest of these was located at the upper edge of the settlement. The second was built some 200m to the south, perhaps when the village expanded over time in this direction. A third, slightly later basilica, the center of a small monastery, stood atop a low nearby hill to the east, apart from the settlement. Shared construction methods suggest that local residents built both houses and churches, perhaps with the advice of a visiting mason or architekton.

These three churches were among the Vasilikos valley´s most substantial buildings, and they reflect the synthesis of vernacular traditions and metropolitan ideas. They are built over three to four generations in the 6th century, and were similarly oriented, designed and assembled. Each basilica dominated its immediate environs and marked a primary approach to the village. All were built of locally available materials, primialry fieldstone and gypsum, and used important marble only for table surfaces. All employed a three-aisled plan and were supported by cylindrical piers with capitals made or mortared rubble in in imitation of freestanding columns. The presence of two cruciform nave piers at the east church, an arrangement without knoyn parallel on the island, suggest the influence of builders or liturgical practices from the mainland. The two earlier basilicas were furnished with opus sectile, apse mosaics, and gypsum-plaster moldings, capitals and decorative elements, which reflect the work of itinerant craftsmen. Opus sectile and floor mosaic patterns appear closely related to contemporary pavements elsewhere on the island. The two apse mosaic, framgnetarily preserved but finely worked of glass tesserae, lack local precedents and presuably were made by urban workshops. Some of the complex stucco moldings, which were cast in place using wooden forms, closely resemble earlier work at Salamis-Constantia. Representational pieces include laden baskets, a columnar shrine, animals, and a small panel of the seated Theotokos with Christ child. Fragments with carefully molded letters came from large inscriptions displayed within the nave of the south church, implying a level of literacy among its congregation. These fragile images, rare survivals of a technique once used accross the island, reflect close awareness of that artistic mainstrems of the times.

The churches of Kopetra offer clear evidence of the economic success achieved by this Cypriot village. Coins and pottery documents the inhabitants “wide-ranging commercial contacts”. The relative scarcity of coins suggest that minted currency was little used in daily commerce, even while abundant ceramics attest the central role of the village in local exchange. Large storage jars were made of coarse local clays, but most others wares originated elseyhere on the island : large quantities of Cypriot Red Slip pottery and red-fabric rooftiles arrived from the Paphos region in the west, while yellow-fabric rooftiles came from the lower Mesaoria valley to the east. Other fine wares, including the widely-distributed Phocean and north African red slip wares, were brought by ships from the Aegean. Packaged in amphoras and perishable containers, oild, wine, and varied agricultural commodities came from Cilicia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and other parts of Cyprus. The volume of external commerce apparently increased over the 6th century and peaked shortly around 600. During the 7th century, locally made ceramics seem to have become more important. Valley products, included large rooftiles and a series of handmade cooking pots of simple shape and uneven apperance. These likely were made at the neighborhood or household level, and may have been intended as a hodge against agricultural and market uncertainties.

Such material indicators attest the well-being of one representative Cypriot village. Important products of the Vassilikos valley no doubt included grapes and olives, but the main crop probably was grain. The local soils, climate and dispersed settlement pattern are wll suited to the cultivation of cerals, which would have become increasingly important to Constantinople in the later 6th and 7th centuries. A second major project was copper, extracted from large mine in the upper valley. Seasonal herding and household gardens would have completed the village´s subsistence economy. While much of this production would have taken place elsewhere, the residents of Kopetra clearly were positioned to control transport and exchange on the sub-regional level. The prominence of the village with its multiple church suggests that by 600 it had become the religious focus of the valley and may have assumed some administrative functions as well.

Its sudden and substantial abandonment circa 650, together with much of the surrounding countryside, reflects of period of widespread destruction followed by relocation. The decline of such specialized places – in the Vasilikos valley and across the island – points to the far-reaching impact of both political events of the mid-7th century and the economic disruptions that followed.

The Arab campaigns left Cyprus precariously balanced between east and west, and seriously affecting life in the coastal cities. Residents of Paphos and Soloi undertook repairs of their damaged buildings, which they continued to use for a while. Other cities like Kourion or Amathus were gradually eclisped by new, smaller settlements, often located some distance from the shore. The island´s former provincial capital of Salamis-Constantia impressed the 8th-century pilgrim Willibald as little more than a large village, even though its archbishop still resided here. Most coastal cities retained their episcopal status even while losing, together with their surrounding territories, many of their inhabitants. Teophanes write that up to 170000 Cypriots were removed as Arab prisoners to the mainland. Justianian II´s short-lived relocation of an uncertain number of families to Bithynia around 688 further depeted the local population. Such poorly understood population transfers may have left as few as 75000 Cypriots on the island.

Evidence of village life during this period is especially scarce. Surveys across the island have reported a sharp reduction in the occupation of the countryside, with few places clearly inhabited during the 8th and 9th centuries. The decline or consolidation of rural activies is especially clear along the coast, no doubts reflecting the diminished fortunes of nearby cities. As elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the related phenomena of deurbanization and rural abandonment may reflect political instability but also other factors, ranging from plague to climatic change and economic reorganization. The magnitude of this shift emphasized by the demise of traditional exchange networks that had long supplied standard types of glass and pottery to the island. Little Aegean pottery appears to have reached this contested territory of the Byzantine periphery, with the few known examples confined mainly to the coast. Coins and other metropolitan trade goods are no better atttested. This implies that a general turn toward self-sufficiency took place across much of the island, with a corresponding shift from permanent settlements to seasonal encampments that depended less on traditional communication networks.

The obscurity of the period is not total. The 9th-century Life of Demetrianos, the island´s only surviving hagiographic account from this time, describes a variety of settlements, including villages, towns and cities with churches and monasteries. Archaeology has yet to confirm all details of this picture. Cities like Paphos, Amathus and Salamis continued to be partially inhabited. Regional surveys have found that a few late Roman-sites were also occupied in the Middle Byzantine and later medieval periods, are likely during the interim as well. About 10% of late Roman sites in the Lapithos region and the lower Messoria valley were inhabited during these later years. The inland Yialias valley, which was less densely settled during late antiquity, saw renewed occupation of perhaps 40% of its earlier sites. Such patterns imply that a number of places continued to be inhabited despise the depopulation of coastal cities. The absence of familiar artifacts and monument suggests that these “Dark Ages” villages looked quite different from their late Roman predecessors: new types of tools and containers seem to have been made of less durable materials, agricultural strategies were adjusted for terrain and market, and habitation sites themselves may have shifted on a seasonal or periodic basis. Despite such chnages, rural residents continued to raise much of the island´s tax revenues, which were payable to both Constantinople and Damascus. Lacking ready access to inter-regional exchange, many of these Cypriots would have pursued subsistence strategies supplemented by local tradein speciality crops or small-scale crafts to meet household needs, and option seen at Kopetri by the mid-7th century.

Recovery, prosperity and shifts of the Middle Byzantine period.

Medieval Byzantine rural settlements, or villages, were agricultural communities with their own land and economic zones. The Byzantines called such settlements choria (a term still common in Greece as a village name) or proastia when they belonged to large landowners—a trend that increased during this period with the gradual shift in the legal and social status of the peasantry.

Their economy relied heavily on agriculture—especially cereals, olives, vines, and animal husbandry in Mediterranean regions. To a great extent, they were self-sufficient and did not require intensive trade contacts with the outside world to prosper. Most inhabitants were related to one another, engaged in agriculture, and led a rather closed way of life, centered on their own community and with limited openness to the outside world.

Villages were also unplanned and grew organically, expanding in response to their needs as they arose. They possessed no public structures other than churches, water systems, and basic street networks. This absence of public buildings may reflect the limited or nonexistent intervention of local or central authorities in the development of rural settlements. Left largely to themselves, villages could enjoy a greater degree of autonomy. Despite the strong centralized administrative system of the Byzantine Empire, villages were theoretically subordinated to a city center and under its control. However, especially after the 7th century, the central authority lost effective control over these centers as well, and many became autonomous. It is likely that the state tolerated this autonomy in exchange for the contributions these communities provided in terms of soldiers and taxes.

Sources.

Angeliki Laiou, “The Byzantine Village (5 th -14 th century).” In Les Villages dans l’Empire Byzantin, edited by Jacques Lefort, Cécile Morisson, and Jean-Pierre Sodini, 31-54. Paris: Lethielleux, 2006.

A. Palamutdüzü, A medieval Byzantine Village Settlement in the Bey Mountains, Adalya XI, 2008.