“…What he showed was a world where public building had come to a halt in the seventh century, where substantial areas of the ancient sites were abandoned, where copper coins, the daily loose change of the late antique economy, had all but disappeared, and where the Roman ceramic tradition had ended abruptly. If provincial city sites continued to be occupied in the empire's territories by 750, it seemed to be only as ecclesiastical and military centres that amounted to little more than villages occupying the husks of what had been there before (Foss 1975, 1976, 1977a, 1977b, 1979, 1996). To a greater or lesser extent the same could be said for Athens and Thessalonika too, and, as Cyril Mango argued in the 1980s, for Constantinople itself (Mango 1980, 60–81; 1985, 51–62).…”