International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Moshe Fischer
Tel Aviv University, Department of Archaeology, Tel Aviv, Israel; 
[e-mail]
Palaestina Byzantina
through Its Column Capitals: Kautzsch 80 Years Later
In 1936 Rudolph Kautzsch published his monumental 
Kapitellstudien
. Already on page 1 he 
noted „Es ist deutlich: eine Geschichte des spätantiken Kapitells kann heute noch nicht geschrieben 
werden.“ It seems that this is true today as well, 80 years after his publication. For the first time 
Kautzsch has put at our disposal a real overview of Late antique capitals from several areas in the 
Eastern Mediterranean. In spite of many regional studies regarding late antique capitals such as Asia 
Minor, Syria, and Greece a revision and updated version of Kautzsch’s opus is lacking. One of the 
main reasons for this situation has been revealed by the first reviewers of the book very soon after 
its apparition; thus, Krautheimer’s remarks (1939) are still relevant claiming that “while the relative 
chronology of these groups [of capitals according to their typology, my remark, M.F.] is quite 
convincing, the transformation of the relative chronology into an absolute chronology supported 
by well-established dates is frequently missing.” And he concludes that “further support could have 
been obtained by linking up the capitals with dated elements of architectural decoration other than 
capitals…” which is still today a real desideratum.
An attempt is made here to fill this gap by presenting a series of capitals of both imported 
marble and local stone emphasizing their typology as well as their archaeological and architectural 
context. Analyzing the relationship between architectural decoration and liturgical furniture (often 
better dated than decoration) occurring in the same ensemble with capitals seems to be one of those 
attempts. We are focusing on several sites of Byzantine Palestine where such decorative elements 
have been accurately examined like Caesarea, Ascalon, Beth Guvrin, Elusa a.o. By doing so we hope 
to use the capitals for reconstructing several aspects of the history of 
Palaestina Byzantina
.

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