The twenty-five papers in this volume cover diverse aspects of the material culture of the late Roman, Byzantine and Medieval periods, with particular emphasis on the metalwork and enamel of these times. Individual papers include major reinterpretations of objects in the British Museum's Byzantine collections as well as essays devoted to the Museum's recent acquisitions in this field. The volume celebrates the retirement of David Buckton, for over twenty years the curator of the British Museum's Early Christian and Byzantine collections and the National Icon Collection.

For almost a millennium, a modest wooden ship lay underwater off the coast of Serçe Limani, Turkey, filled with evidence of trade and objects of daily life. The ship, now excavated by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, trafficked in both the Byzantine and Islamic worlds of its time. Known as "the Glass Wreck," it bore cargo that included three metric tons of glass cullet, including broken Islamic vessels and eighty pieces of intact glassware, along with various artifacts of ship life. This second volume of the discovery’s investigation focuses on the excavation, conservation, and study of the glass found in the wreckage. The extensive catalog will be a valuable tool for archaeologists and scholars of Islamic glass and Islamic trade. Further, the systematic methodology and presentation of such a large undertaking will serve as a model for future study across many disciplines.

Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World is a much-needed teaching anthology that rethinks and broadens the scope of the stale and limiting classifications used for Early Christian-Byzantine visual arts. A comprehensive anthology offering a new approach to the visual arts classified as Early Christian-Byzantine Comprised of essays from experts in the field that integrate the newer, historiographical research into 'the canon' of established scholarship Exposes the historical, geographical and cultural continuities and interactions in the visual arts of the late antique and medieval Mediterranean world Covers an extensive range of topics, including the effect that converging cultures in late antiquity had on art, the cultural identities that can be observed by looking at difference of tradition in visual art, and the variance of illuminations in holy books

This publication brings to a wider audience important new findings in the fields of medieval pottery and archaeometry. The new data that materials analysis provides about Byzantine ceramics and their production at times supports, modifies, and even contradicts conclusions derived from traditional archaeological methods.

The Byzantine Empire dates back to Constantine the Great, the first Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, who, in 330 AD, moved the imperial capital from Rome to a port city in modern-day Turkey, which he then renamed Constantinople in his honor. From its founding, the Byzantine Empire was a major anchor of east-west trade, and culture, art, architecture, and the economy all prospered in the newly Christian empire. As Byzantium moved into the middle and late period, Greek became the official language of both church and state and the Empire's cultural and religious influence extended well beyond its boundaries. In the mid-15th century, the Ottoman Turks put an end to 1,100 years of Byzantine history by capturing Constantinople, but the Empire's legacy in art, culture, and religion endured long after its fall. In this revised and updated second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Byzantium, author John H. Rosser introduces both the general reader and the researcher to the history of the Byzantine Empire. This comprehensive dictionary includes detailed, alphabetical entries on key figures, ideas, places, and themes related to Byzantine art, history, and religion, and the second edition contains numerous additional entries on broad topics such as transportation and gender, which were less prominent in the previous edition. An expanded introduction introduces the reader to Byzantium and a guide to further sources and suggested readings can be found in the extensive bibliography that follows the entries. A basic chronology and various maps and illustrations are also included in the dictionary. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Byzantium.

The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.

"Thecla, a disciple of the apostle Paul, became perhaps the most celebrated female saint and 'martyr' among Christians in late antiquity. In the early church, Thecla's example was associated with the piety of women - in particular, with women's ministry and travel. Devotion to Saint Thecla quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean world: her image was painted on walls of tombs, stamped on clay flasks and oil lamps, engraved on bronze crosses and wooden combs, and even woven into textile curtains. Bringing together literary, artistic, and archaeological evidence, often for the first time, Stephen Davis here reconstructs the cult of Saint Thecla in Asia Minor and Egypt - the social practices, institutions, and artefacts that marked the lives of actual devotees. From this evidence the author shows how the cult of this female saint remained closely linked with communities of women as a source of empowerment and a cause of controversy."--Jacket.

This illustrated catalogue presents 190 objects from the Collection of Palestinian Antiquities in the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Covering the 4th millennium BC to the 8th century AD, the artefacts are presented in ten thematic sections. These cover such subjects as: death and burial in the early Bronze Age; war; the domestic world in the Bronze and Iron Ages; the wider world; religion in the late Bronze and Iron Ages; Hellenistic and Byzantine trade; the villa at Tel Anafa; technology; everyday life in the hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods; and pagans, Jews and Christians. Each section begins with a discussion followed by a full description and discussion of the objects themselves, all of which are illustrated. Many types of object are represented including ceramics and lamps, personal implements and tools, religious figurines and carvings, jewellery, bone items, toilet implements, scarabs, armour and weapons, intaglio gems and ossuaries. The book begins with a brief discussion of changing attitudes and practice in the archaeology of the Holy Hand.