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Liminal Spaces and Spatial Practices in Byzantium offers a novel twist, combining intra-/inter-disciplinary research across the humanities and social sciences by transforming two distinct disciplinary concepts (liminality from social anthropology and space from cultural geography) into methodological devices for historical investigation. The focus has been an investigation of conceptions of spatial liminality in the Byzantine world.
This book showcases alternatives to binary oppositions such as inside/outside, core/periphery, isolation/connectedness, stability/instability, known/unknown, earthly/heavenly, self/other, and good/bad through delineating liminality as an epistemological tool. In this volume, the authors were invited to offer an analysis of Byzantine spatial experiences (attested through material remains or texts) as a sort of working platform from which to assess in due course the presence of a liminal dimension in medieval spatiotemporal situations. They have sought to understand whether certain types of spaces such as rivers, deserts, islands, forests, mountains, houses, thresholds, gates, monasteries, lighthouses, and bridges accommodate - or even create - liminal situations in the eyes of the people experiencing them.
This book will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in Byzantine history and culture.
List of contents
IntroductionLiminal Spaces Inside and Beyond the Byzantine World
Myrto Veikou and Buket Kitapçi BayriPart I: Natural Space as LiminalChapter 1Encounters in Crocodile Waters: The Nile as a Liminal Riverscape in Monastic Egypt
Darlene Brooks HedstromChapter 2Desert Islands: Aspects of the Byzantine Perception of Liminal Space
Charis MessisChapter 3Liminal Insularity or Islandness? Relational and Comparative Perspectives on Big Islands in the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea in the Early Middle Ages (Sixth-Tenth Centuries)
Luca Zavagno, Christoph Kilger and Max KusserowPart II: Social Space as Liminal: Public and PrivateChapter 4Myths Transformed: Perceptions of Ancient Sculpture in Byzantine Liminal Spaces
Livia BevilaquaChapter 5Liminal Experiences of Byzantine Fortifications
Nikolas Bakirtzis and Myrto VeikouChapter 6Visiting Late Antique Elite Houses: On Rituals, Routes, and Courtyards through the Lens of Liminality
Lale ÖzgenelChapter 7Crossing Private Liminal Spaces: Thresholds and Passageways in the "Urban Mansion" of Sagalassos and Contemporaneous Urban Elite Houses in Late Antique Western Anatolia
Inge UytterhoevenChapter 8Existential and Spatial Liminality in Byzantine Monasteries: Insights from the Enclosure Wall and its Gateways
Maréva UPart III: Liminality through MovementChapter 9Athonite Transhumance Routes between the Ninth and the Sixteenth Centuries: A Network of Liminal Ecosystems, Spaces, and Interactions
Guillaume BidautChapter 10Marking the lim¿n: Lighthouses and Beacons as Spiritual Metaphors
Veronica della DoraChapter 11Perceptions of Bridges as Liminal Spaces in Byzantium
Galina Fingarova
About the author
Buket Kitapç¿ Bayr¿ is an Associate Professor of late Byzantine and medieval Islamic history (circa 1200-1500). Her previous publication,
Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes. Moving Frontiers, Shifting Identities in the Land of Rome (13th-
15th Centuries) (2020) examines the late medieval cultural transformation of Asia Minor and the Balkans through Byzantine and Turkish frontier epics and hagiographical texts by applying anthropological and literary theories to perceptions of shared space/shared story-world, place-making processes, and identity formation.
Myrto Veikou is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Archaeology in the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Patras (Greece). Her first PhD thesis in Byzantine Archaeology was published in 2012 (
Byzantine Epirus: A topography of transformation. Settlements from the 7th to the 12th centuries in Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania, Greece). Her second PhD thesis in Byzantine Philology and Literary Studies was published as
Spatial paths to holiness - Literary 'Lived Spaces' in Eleventh-Century Byzantine Saints' Lives (2023).
