International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Nikos Tsivikis
Institute of Mediterranean Studies, FORTH, Rethymno, Crete, Greece; 
[e-mail]
Researching the Rural Historical Landscape of Byzantine Amorium
The city of Amorium located in the highlands of Phrygia in Asia Minor challenges the usual 
streamline narrative about the evolution of byzantine cities. Although it was an important Early 
Byzantine settlement, it flourished and became one of the most important cities of Asia Minor after 
the 7
th
c. AD and until its final abandonment in late 11
th
c. AD. Amorium, as the capital city of the 
newly founded 
thema
of Anatolikon, became a crucial base for the military administration and the 
local authorities in central Anatolia.
Amorium has been the subject of systematic excavation for more than two decades, and 
many of its monuments have been uncovered. The main effort so far had been to understand the 
form and function of a medieval Byzantine provincial city. Very little notice has been given to the 
landscape and the immediate surroundings of the city of Amorium until now. Since 2013 a new 
side-project is being conducted focused on analyzing the historical landscape of Amorium with 
the use of excavation data, survey information, satellite and aerial imagery in a consolidated digital 
environment. In this paper we will present newly acquired and processed data on the Byzantine city 
of Amorium and its surroundings in order to discuss the close and often overlapping relationship 
between the city inside the walls and the countryside outside.

---

555
Further on we will be attempting to better understand the form and function of the rural 
space around the city of Amorium and the possible identifiers of agrarian organization during the 
Byzantine period. The main tool will be historical landscape characterization, landscape archaeology 
and analysis of satellite imagery data. The combination of the above can provide a possible model 
of better understanding the evolution of Roman centuriation in medieval Asia Minor and the 
organization of Byzantine rural landscape.