International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Nilgün Elam
Anadolu University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of History, Eskisehir, Turkey; 
[e-mail]
Preliminary Remarks on Unpublished Molybdobullae 
from Provincial Archaeological Museums in Turkey
Byzantine lead seals (molybdobullae) are considered a significant type of historical evidence, 
because they provide new information about history, prosopography, administration, as well as 
culture of Byzantine Empire.
Despite the contribution of sigillographic data to (the writing of) the administrative and 
ecclesiastical history of all the regions of Byzantine Anatolia from various perspectives, sigillography 
is a new area of interest among historians in Turkey. In fact, the possibility to discover the unknown 
personage of Byzantine Anatolia, through the examination of the seals belonging to the members of 
different ranks of civil, military and ecclesiastical bureaucracy, suffice to underline the importance 
of this discipline.
By using new data offered by lead seals, the historian is able to start filling the gap left by written 
sources, which do not cover all the periods of Byzantine history. The majority of the sigillographic 
material in the provincial museums in Turkey remains unpublished to this day. 
Thanks to the financial support of Anadolu University Scientific Project Unit and a scholarship 
granted by Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) of Koç University I have been 
conducting a research project to identify and locate sigillographic material associated with several 
regions of Anatolia in order to get new data on the transformation of administrative units of 
Byzantine Anatolia. 
The project comprised research at forty-five museums and units across Turkey, which led to 
the documentation and study of previously unpublished seals associated with different regions of 
Byzantine Anatolia. 
This presentation aims to introduce some new material and evaluate their data on Byzantine 
prosopography and history of Byzantine provinces.