Islands in a Sea of Change? Continuity and Abandonment in Dark Age Corinth and Thessaloniki

Abstract

In the sixth century after Christ, the Greek cities of Corinth and Thessaloniki were both still centers of imperial Roman and nascent Christian administrations, ancient population centers protected by high fortification walls. But much of scholarship continues to portray Thessaloniki as a veritable island of civilization during the next two "dark" centuries, with cities of southern Greece like Corinth virtually abandoned after earthquakes, plague, and barbarian invasion. Yet recently historians are reading the few literary sources much more critically, and excavation is also slowly beginning to fill in this gap. Thus long-known evidence of urban continuity in Thessaloniki along with the fruits of some of these methodological advances can begin to provide a new model of Dark Age continuity and abandonment for Corinth and other ancient cities of Byzantine Greece.