The advent of Covid-19 in 2020 abruptly halted countless academic projects, including a conference scheduled to be held in Rome in March 2020 entitled 'Perspectives on Byzantine archaeology from Justinian to the Abbasid Age (6th-9th centuries AD)'. The two conference organisers, Angelo Castrorao Barba and Gabriele Castiglia, decided to convert the conference into a book instead as they wished to place their own two projects about the Byzantine period-one on Sicily and one on the Horn of Africain the larger context of Late Antiquity and Early Medieval society.