‘Dark Age’ Butrint and Athens: Rewriting the history of two Early Byzantine towns

The legacy of Byzantine Christianity in the southern Mani Peninsula, Greece, after imperial collapse

“…Byzantine religious monuments reflects the broader situation in Greece as a whole, where later phases have traditionally received little attention because they were considered less important than older, more "ancient" phases. Byzantine archaeology has only recently expanded beyond its initial focus on churches as archaeologists have begun using field survey and household excavation to investigate other aspects of lived landscapes (e.g.,Athanassopoulos 2016;Cassis et al 2018; Gregory 2013;Papantoniou and Vionis 2017; Vionis 2012;Vroom and Kondyli 2015). Still, the bias against post-Byzantine materials is a continuing problem in Greece and is the main contributing factor to the lack of research on Mani's Ottoman, Early Modern, and Modern religious remains.Church use over timeThe sharp drop-off in new church construction that began in the 14 th century and continued into the First Ottoman period could be read as a sign that the people living in Mani after Byzantine collapse invested fewer resources in their religious landscape.…”