The BALAA Project: An Introduction

How did the Byzantine peasantry experience and shape their relationship with the agricultural spaces they inhabited? What were the physical and spatial characteristics of the Byzantine fields they cultivated? And crucially, how did the shifting relationships between producers, the state, and the great landlords—the dynatoi—mold the productive landscape?

The Byzantine Agricultural Landscape Across the Aegean (BALAA) project confronts these fundamental questions through a systematic, interdisciplinary, and comparative analysis of two core sites: Messene in the Southeast Peloponnese and Amorium in central Asia Minor. These sites are not merely case studies; they represent the distinct inland features of the two large geographical zones that historically formed the heartland of the medieval Byzantine Empire after the 7th century: the Greek peninsula and the Anatolian plateau.

Their selection is methodologically vital, as the two settlements followed inverse paths of development. After the crises of the 7th century, Messene, a prominent city of Late Antiquity, saw its urban character diminish, evolving into a more ruralized medieval town. Amorium, by contrast, transformed precisely because of these crises from a relatively minor provincial town into a major regional center—the capital of the Thema Anatolikon and a critical military and administrative hub. This stark divergence allows BALAA to shed light on common historical processes of Byzantine society from two unique, contrasting perspectives.

A Holistic Methodology

Spanning the pivotal period between the 7th and the 12th centuries, BALAA employs a holistic approach to collect and process a multitude of elements, reconstructing the rural landscape, agricultural practices, and the vital, often-overlooked links between the countryside (chora) and the city (urbs).

Our methodology synthesizes four primary streams of evidence, integrating innovative methods from historical landscape studies and environmental history with traditional archaeological and historical analysis:

1.  Landscape & Spatial Analysis: We are conducting an intensive study of the rural areas immediately surrounding the settlements. This is not just a survey, but a deep analysis using a suite of advanced geospatial techniques, including Historic Landscape Characterization (HLC), Retrospective Landscape Analysis (RLA), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This allows us- to map diachronic change, field systems, and settlement patterns.

2.  Paleoenvironmental & Climatic Reconstruction: We are gathering and analyzing all available paleoclimatological data for both regions. This is essential for understanding the environmental parameters, constraints, and opportunities (such as drought, soil fertility, and water access) that directly influenced agricultural strategies and settlement viability.

3.  Archaeological & Material Culture Evidence: Drawing directly from relevant excavations at both Messene and Amorium, we are undertaking a focused analysis of the material culture associated with rural life. This includes a specific focus on agricultural tools, fixed installations (such as wine or olive presses and mills), and the architectural forms of rural habitation and storage.

4.  Textual & Historical Sources: We are performing a critical re-examination of literary, hagiographic, and documentary sources (such as the Farmer’s Law or monastic praktika) that refer to rural life, land tenure, and production within the period. This textual evidence is constantly held in dialogue with the archaeological and environmental findings.

Project Aims & Significance

Through the BALAA project, two major categories of results will be produced:

 Scholarly Publications: A series of scientific studies focusing on the comparative analysis of the rural landscape, spatial organization, and material culture of Amorium and Messene. Databases: To ensure the project’s data has a lasting utility for the wider research community, we are building a series of free-access databases that will include: i. Detailed spatial analysis of the rural landscapes of both sites. ii. Diachronic mapping of field distribution, both historic and modern. iii. A comparative typology of material culture (tools, ceramics, structures) related to agricultural production. iv. A queryable repository of historical information on rural life drawn from the textual sources. v. A comprehensive record of the archaeo-environmental and paleoclimatological data.

Our ultimate aim is to move beyond individual site studies to achieve the first comprehensive, systematic comparative archaeological analysis of the Byzantine rural landscape. This analysis will allow us, for the first time, to rigorously identify and define the specific characteristics of the medieval Byzantine field, distinguishing it from its Roman and Hellenistic predecessors. By achieving this, BALAA inserts the Byzantine case firmly into the ongoing academic debate on medieval agricultural landscapes—a discourse that, until today, has been predominantly and disproportionately focused on the phenomena of Western medieval Europe.