Download Statistics
Download StatisticsBlackler, Andrew V. (2020). The medieval landscape of Euboea (Negroponte): a framework for interpreting the Byzantine and Frankish towers of Greece. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.
|
Blackler2020PhD.pdf
Text Available under License All rights reserved. Download (32MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Medieval Negroponte, the capital of the island of Euboea, grew from 1204 to become the preeminent city in the Aegean during the 15th century and the Ottoman capital of Central Greece. This thesis, making extensive use of early cartographic evidence, and satellite imagery and telemetry, provides within a G.I.S. environment the first comprehensive study of the island’s late medieval landscape. Utilising this framework, it has developed new criteria for identifying and distinguishing between Byzantine, Frankish and Ottoman rural towers and fortification systems, which can be applied throughout Greece.
Demonstrating that there was an uninterrupted tradition of tower construction for military, administrative and domestic use in the Eastern Mediterranean extending from the Classical period, it revises all current assumptions about the chronology and functions of the towers of Frankish Greece. These should not be considered as ‘stand-alone’, but as the defensive part of a complex of more ephemeral buildings. Interconnected networks of towers provided not only a strategic protective umbrella and a defence of last resort for the agricultural estate complex, but also an expression of display by the Byzantine elite in regions under their control.
It concludes that the period immediately after 1204 in Central Greece was one of general economic prosperity shared by all the populace and that the Greek ‘medieval tower’ is not a western imported feudal construct. On the contrary, there are intimations that the Norman ‘great tower’ developed from Byzantine roots.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Award Type: | Doctorates > Ph.D. | |||||||||
| Supervisor(s): |
|
|||||||||
| Licence: | All rights reserved | |||||||||
| College/Faculty: | Colleges > College of Arts & Law | |||||||||
| School or Department: | School of History and Cultures, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies | |||||||||
| Funders: | None/not applicable | |||||||||
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World D History General and Old World > DF Greece G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GA Mathematical geography. Cartography |
|||||||||
| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/11048 |
Actions
 |
Request a Correction |
 |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year