Michael Dekker. The Byzantine Dark Ages.

Abstract

This is one of a series of small volumes in the Debates in Archaeology series from this publisher, a very useful production focussing on special foci of scholarship at the present day. As this volume covers the Early Medieval period in the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean, it is a useful complement to the magisterial overview of Italy over the same but also a longer period by Francovich and Hodges, Villa to Village (2003) in the same series. Michael Dekker has already published extensively on Late Antiquity and Byzantium but this slim but rich volume allows him to concentrate on issues and problems of the pathway from the unified Roman Empire to the smaller and weaker successor state of Byzantium which reached its heyday at the end of the 1st millennium AD.