International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Archibald Dunn
University of Birmingham, Centre for Byzantine,
Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, Birmingham, United Kingdom; 
[e-mail]
Institutions, Socio-Economic Groups and Urban Change 
in the Sigillographic Assemblage of Middle Byzantine Corinth
The 280 Byzantine seals so far discovered in the American School of Classical Studies’ excavations 
at Corinth (subsuming a few Papal and Eastern Frankish seals, and including some blank commercial 
seals, and some almost illegible but approximately datable seals) now constitute one of the largest 
groups derived from controlled excavations of urban settlements in the Byzantine world.
The epigraphic content, the numbers of seals involved and, to a still-limited extent, the topogra-
phy of lead seals’ findspots, now enable us, I believe, firstly, to identify two or three lost urban archives, 
intramural and extramural; secondly, to bring into focus the problem of the nature of Middle Byzan-
tine urban governance; thirdly, to identify the two rising and mutually competitive groups arguably 
at the core of the development of the Middle Byzantine town or city, namely, a new or re-emergent, 
essentially urban, landowning elite, and the merchants, professionals, and other people of the com-
mercial world, ΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΓΟΡΑΣ / ΟΙ ΑΓΟΡΑΙΟΙ of eleventh- and twelfth-century sources.
The dispersed archives probably include that of a Thematic praitorion, and certainly include 
the traces of the archive (i.e. the deed-box) of a small excavated suburban monastery of Middle 
Byzantine times. The “Thematic” archive illustrates all of the three documented levels of subdivisions 
of a province (tourma, droungos and vandon), as well as arkhonteiai, and the connectedness of such 
an organisation with all parts of the Middle Byzantine empire.
The total assemblage traces the steady rise to numerical dominance of a group which did not define 
itself by public office (if it held such offices) while emphasizing lineage, revealed by, so far, 40 legible 
patronyms of the 11
th
, 12
th
, or 12 – 13
th
centuries. Meanwhile the chronology, numbers, and epigraphic 
content of seals recording neither public office, nor official rank, nor patronyms (misleadingly labelled 
traditionally “private” seals) indicate a growing need among a different urban stratum or group for 
durable metallic seals. This evidence of growing economic “complexity” coincides with rising coin-
circulation and increasing material cultural display at Middle Byzantine Corinth.

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