Fragkoulis, Kyriakos L. (2023). Late Roman and Early Byzantine pottery from Dion (Macedonia): amphorae, fine wares, lamps. pottery circulation at a northern Greek urban site during Late Antiquity (3rd-7th C. AD). University of Birmingham. Ph.D.
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Fragkoulis2023PhD.pdf
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Abstract
This thesis concerns Late Roman and Early Byzantine pottery finds (3rd-7th c.) from the excavations conducted by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki at the ancient city of Dion in Pieria (Macedonia, Greece), and is based on extensive fieldwork involving typological analysis and fabric characterisation of each ware. The study material comes from three different excavation sectors, the ‘House of Heliodorus’, the ‘Late Antique House’, and the Cemetery Basilica of the city, whose selection was made on both practical factors and research purposes, including the conduct of systematic excavation and documentation and the existence of ample and relatively well-preserved material that is clearly divided into well-stratified and -dated contexts. Moreover, the goal was to build an as representative as possible sample, which would come from different districts of the city, cover more or less the whole period between the last third of the 3rd and the early 7th century AD, and correspond to various uses.
With the exception of the table amphorae / stamnoi, whose examples are considered to be exclusively of local or regional origin, the focus of this study was placed on the long-distance imports, represented at Dion by the functional categories of trade amphorae, fine wares, and lamps. Apart from the need to narrow down the number of selected ceramics for in-depth study, this choice was driven by the abundance of imported material in the Dion pottery record and the extensive bibliography available on the widely distributed ‘international’ vessel types of Late Antiquity. More importantly, though, the study of the imported ceramics serves best the main aim of the thesis, which is to shed some light into the socio-economic profile of Dion in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods by using the pottery evidence as an indicator of the level of urban life, and more specifically: a) by investigating the commercial relations of the city with major production centres of the Eastern Mediterranean, together with its place in the trade networks of the region; b) by outlining the changes that occurred over time in the market share of different suppliers; and c) by exploring the relationship between Dion and its territory regarding the exchange of imported and locally or regionally produced goods. In doing so, I seek to provide answers from the point of view of pottery to questions on life at Dion and its area during Late Antiquity that other sources of archaeological inquiry are perhaps difficult to address, as well as to put Dion on the research map of the field of Late Antique pottery studies, which is of quite some significance given that its wider region, northern Greece, has been largely left outside the scope of modern scholarship on the subject despite the great amount of pertinent excavation material it has to offer.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.) | |||||||||
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| Award Type: | Doctorates > Ph.D. | |||||||||
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| Licence: | All rights reserved | |||||||||
| College/Faculty: | Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Arts & Law | |||||||||
| School or Department: | School of History and Cultures, Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies | |||||||||
| Funders: | Other | |||||||||
| Other Funders: | Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Greek Archaeological Committee in the UK | |||||||||
| Subjects: | C Auxiliary Sciences of History > CC Archaeology D History General and Old World > DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World D History General and Old World > DF Greece |
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| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/13797 |
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