Environment and Society in Byzantium, 650-1150

This book illuminates Byzantines' relationship with woodland between the seventh and twelfth centuries. Using the oak and the olive as objects of study, this work explores shifting economic strategies, environmental change, and the transformation of material culture throughout the middle Byzantine period. Drawing from texts, environmental data, and archaeological surveys, this book demonstrates that woodland's makeup was altered after Byzantium's seventh-century metamorphosis, and that people interacted in new ways with this re-worked ecology. Oak obtained prominence after late antiquity, illustrating the shift from that earlier era's intensive agriculture to a more sylvan middle Byzantine economy. Meanwhile, the olive faded into the background, re-emerging in the eleventh and twelfth centuries thanks to the initiative of people adapting yet again to newly changed political and economic circumstances. This book therefore shows that Byzantines' relationship with their ecology was far from static, and that Byzantines' decisions had environmental impacts.

Auteur
Alexander Olson received a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, USA where he studied Byzantine and environmental history. He now enjoys working as a bureaucrat.

Contenu
1.Introduction
2.Middle Byzantium's Environmental and Economic Antecedents2.1Taxes and Rents, Olives and Vines, Slaves and Cattle2.2A Transformed Economy, Culture, and Environment2.3An Elite-less Landscape?2.4A New Equilibrium?
3.An Evergreen Empire3.1 Woodland Species Around the Aegean3.2 The Expansion of Woodland in the Aegean Littoral3.3 Contexts for Woodland Species' Success3.4 Using Woodland
4.The Decline of the Olive in Middle Byzantium4.1 What the Olive Tree Does and How People Work with it4.2 The Olive in the Ancient and Modern Contexts4.3 The Olive in Retreat4.4 Where did the Olives go?4.5 New Uses for an Old Object
5.Re-arranging Woods and Scrub5.1 Complicating the Landscape 5.2 Contexts for Altering the Landscape5.3 Deciduous Oak's Fortunes5.4 Chestnut's Fortunes5.5 Room to Maneuver
6.The Return of the Olive6.1 Where and When the Olive Returns 6.2 Monastic Assistance6.3 From Peasants to Merchants6.4 Olives from the Scrub
7.The Devil Chops Wood7.1 Social Causes and Outcomes of a Contested Countryside7.2 Hagiography and Conflict in the Landscape7.3 Hagiographical Strategies for a Contested Landscape
8.Conclusion