ITINERANT PRODUCERS IN THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE
GOING WHERE THE JOB TAKES YOU
A paper delivered in the session "The Imperial Craft: Comparative Perspectives on Production and Society in Empires"
at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeologists (SAAs) in San Francisco on April 19, 2015,
organized and chaired by Dr. Steven Karacic (Bryn Mawr College) and Dr. Bradley Sekedat (UC Davis).
ABSTRACT:
Architectural relationships between the eastern Roman imperial capital at Constantinople and its provinces have traditionally been understood as derivative. In the province of Isauria on the southern coast of Anatolia, however, distinctive remains have led to the conceptualization of a group of native stonemasons known as ‘Isaurian builders,’ who traveled through provinces across Anatolia and northern Syria, leaving in their wake an identifiably Isaurian style of early Christian churches. At the same time, brick masons from the capital were exported to the provincial capital at Seleukeia, whose workshop in turn exported its product even further afield. This paper addresses the movement of craftpersons to, from and within Isauria, questioning traditional understandings of innovations and developments in construction materials and techniques between a province and its capital, as well as relationships between provinces within the same empire. This has ramifications for understanding these workmen as itinerant specialists, matching the quality of the regional limestone in the caliber of its stonemasons, or as seasonal workmen, driven by economic circumstances to ply their skills and labor outside their native province. More broadly, it illuminates our understanding of the inter-provincial movement of productive knowledge and technologies, facilitated by the very fabric of empire.
I am currently in the process of developing this presentation into an article for submission.
