The Potential of Quantified Surface Data in Understanding the Rural Landscapes of Middle Byzantine Komana

Abstract

The Middle Byzantine period in Anatolia is considered a recovery period after two centuries of instability at the end of the Early Byzantine period. From the late ninth through the twelfth centuries, building small churches became a trend as rural settlements and monastic communities expanded across the countryside. During extensive surveys at Komana, near Tokat in Turkey, a number of churches were identified in rural contexts through scattered architectural fragments, especially brickwork typical of the Middle Byzantine period. These sites were later revisited for intensive collection in an attempt, firstly, to test whether identification of Middle Byzantine churches through qualitative data could be verified and, secondly, to improve our understanding of site types and their extent in the rural landscapes of Middle Byzantine Komana. In this article, the results of the intensive surveys will be discussed in the context of the new trends of the Middle Byzantine period.

Survey Archaeology in the Mediterranean World: Regional Traditions and Contributions to Long-Term History

“…Projects that have applied intensive methods fall broadly into two main groups. The first comprises projects focused on the hinterlands of large sites that have usually been subject to excavation, for example, Aphrodisias, Avkat, Komana, Sagalassos, and Türkmen-Karahöyük (Newhard 2018;Osborne et al 2020;Ratté and De Staebler 2012;Tatbul and Erciyas 2020;Vanhaverbeke and Waelkens 2003). The second includes landscape-oriented surveys in which intensive fieldwalking is applied across a more dispersed study area, with concentrations in the Mediterranean or Black Sea littorals (e.g., 32 Doonan 2004;Koparal 2020;Wilkinson and Slawisch 2017).…”