Liminal Spaces and Spatial Practices in Byzantium offers a novel twist, combining intra-/inter-disciplinary research across the humanities and social sciences by transforming two distinct disciplinary concepts (liminality from social anthropology and space from cultural geography) into methodological devices for historical investigation. The focus has been an investigation of conceptions of spatial liminality in the Byzantine world.
This book showcases alternatives to binary oppositions such as inside/outside, core/periphery, isolation/connectedness, stability/instability, known/unknown, earthly/heavenly, self/other, and good/bad through delineating liminality as an epistemological tool. In this volume, the authors were invited to offer an analysis of Byzantine spatial experiences (attested through material remains or texts) as a sort of working platform from which to assess in due course the presence of a liminal dimension in medieval spatiotemporal situations. They have sought to understand whether certain types of spaces such as rivers, deserts, islands, forests, mountains, houses, thresholds, gates, monasteries, lighthouses, and bridges accommodate – or even create – liminal situations in the eyes of the people experiencing them.
This book will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in Byzantine history and culture.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Liminal Spaces Inside and Beyond the Byzantine World
Myrto Veikou and Buket Kitapçi Bayri
Part I: Natural Space as Liminal
Chapter 1
Encounters in Crocodile Waters: The Nile as a Liminal Riverscape in Monastic Egypt
Darlene Brooks Hedstrom
Chapter 2
Desert Islands: Aspects of the Byzantine Perception of Liminal Space
Charis Messis
Chapter 3
Liminal Insularity or Islandness? Relational and Comparative Perspectives on Big Islands in the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea in the Early Middle Ages (Sixth–Tenth Centuries)
Luca Zavagno, Christoph Kilger and Max Kusserow
Part II: Social Space as Liminal: Public and Private
Chapter 4
Myths Transformed: Perceptions of Ancient Sculpture in Byzantine Liminal Spaces
Livia Bevilacqua
Chapter 5
Liminal Experiences of Byzantine Fortifications
Nikolas Bakirtzis and Myrto Veikou
Chapter 6
Visiting Late Antique Elite Houses: On Rituals, Routes, and Courtyards through the Lens of Liminality
Lale Özgenel
Chapter 7
Crossing Private Liminal Spaces: Thresholds and Passageways in the “Urban Mansion” of Sagalassos and Contemporaneous Urban Elite Houses in Late Antique Western Anatolia
Inge Uytterhoeven
Chapter 8
Existential and Spatial Liminality in Byzantine Monasteries: Insights from the Enclosure Wall and its Gateways
Maréva U
Part III: Liminality through Movement
Chapter 9
Athonite Transhumance Routes between the Ninth and the Sixteenth Centuries: A Network of Liminal Ecosystems, Spaces, and Interactions
Guillaume Bidaut
Chapter 10
Marking the limēn: Lighthouses and Beacons as Spiritual Metaphors
Veronica della Dora
Chapter 11
Perceptions of Bridges as Liminal Spaces in Byzantium
Galina Fingarova
About the Author :
Buket Kitapçı Bayrı is an Associate Professor of late Byzantine and medieval Islamic history (circa 1200–1500). Her previous publication, Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes. Moving Frontiers, Shifting Identities in the Land of Rome (13th–15th Centuries) (2020) examines the late medieval cultural transformation of Asia Minor and the Balkans through Byzantine and Turkish frontier epics and hagiographical texts by applying anthropological and literary theories to perceptions of shared space/shared story-world, place-making processes, and identity formation.
Myrto Veikou is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Archaeology in the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Patras (Greece). Her first PhD thesis in Byzantine Archaeology was published in 2012 (Byzantine Epirus: A topography of transformation. Settlements from the 7th to the 12th centuries in Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania, Greece). Her second PhD thesis in Byzantine Philology and Literary Studies was published as Spatial paths to holiness - Literary ‘Lived Spaces’ in Eleventh-Century Byzantine Saints’ Lives (2023).
Review :
Presents new approaches to the study of Byzantium / Applies two interdisciplinary concepts (liminality from social anthropology and space from cultural geography) to historical investigation / Surveys a wide variety of spaces including Byzantine frontiers, monasteries, public and private spaces, and natural spaces as mountains, rivers and islands.
