International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Özgü Çömezoğlu Uzbek
Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey; 
[e-mail]
Byzantine Finds from Adramytteion, on the North Aegean Coast of Turkey
The excavations in Adramytteion, which is located on the south shore of the bay of Edremit, 
restarted in 2012. During these new seasons, architectural components and small findings have 
been unearthed in five different sites and related sondages in the city. Adramyttion has been an 
important center from the classical period and during the Roman and late Roman era. The majority 
of the Byzantine findings have been unearthed from the 12-13
th
century layers. This revival may 
be correlated with the restoration of the area from the beginning of 12
th
century. The first results 
indicate that the settlement shrunk towards the central area of the city during the Middle Ages. 
For this period there is evidence that pre Byzantine buildings were modified and reused. The city is 

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important with the middle and late Byzantine findigs that indicate the relations between the Aegean 
sites and Konstantinopolis. The site was abandoned and the settlement moved to the modern 
Burhaniye in the beginning of the 14
th
century.
Storage buildings related with the harbour; residences and church remnants are some of the 
architectural evidences from the Byzantine period. Among the ceramics there are many examples 
of the Aegean type and Zeuxippus group pottery which are common in the area during the 12
th
and 
13
th
centuries. Also many unglazed vessels have been found in the same locations and layers with 
the glazed pottery. The form, clay and technical unity among those unglazed ceramics give clue for 
the ceramic production in the area in this period.
Alex M. Feldman
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom; 
[e-mail]
Some Remarks on the Archaeology of Judaism in Khazaria
It is now relatively common knowledge, for scholars of Byzantium, Kievan Rus’ and the 
early Islamic Caliphate, that a series of rulers in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known as the Khazars, 
converted to Judaism sometime between the 8
th
-10
th
centuries. Often, it has been treated as an 
historical “anomaly” vis-à-vis the conversions of other potentates: a ruler could convert himself 
and his people to Christianity or Islam, but to Judaism? Newer scholarship has recast the event 
with improved contextualization; it was not an anomaly so much as one of many such narratives of 
conversion and polity generation. Though some reject this, most scholars now agree that variegated 
and independent textual evidence confirms the conversion of the Khazarian khağans to Judaism.
While the precise dating is widely disputed due to the sources, which I will discuss, I will focus 
on the social extent of conversion based on archaeological evidence. To what extent might newly 
discovered archaeological indications agree with primary sources for the Judaization of Khazaria?