Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The last century of Roman power (c. 500 to c. 620): army, church, and countryside
- 2 Collapse or adaptation? The problem of the urban decline in late antique Greece
- 3 Invasion or inflation? Hoards and barbarians in sixth- and early seventh-century Greece
- 4 Dark-Age Greece (c. 620 to c. 800)
- 5 Revival and expansion (c. 800 to c. 900)
- 6 The beginning of prosperity (c. 900 to c. 1050)
- 7 Early medieval Greece and the Middle Byzantine economy
- 8 Social structures and Byzantine administration in early medieval Greece
- 9 Christianity in early medieval Greece
- 10 Conclusion: the people of early medieval Greece
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Dark-Age Greece (c. 620 to c. 800)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The last century of Roman power (c. 500 to c. 620): army, church, and countryside
- 2 Collapse or adaptation? The problem of the urban decline in late antique Greece
- 3 Invasion or inflation? Hoards and barbarians in sixth- and early seventh-century Greece
- 4 Dark-Age Greece (c. 620 to c. 800)
- 5 Revival and expansion (c. 800 to c. 900)
- 6 The beginning of prosperity (c. 900 to c. 1050)
- 7 Early medieval Greece and the Middle Byzantine economy
- 8 Social structures and Byzantine administration in early medieval Greece
- 9 Christianity in early medieval Greece
- 10 Conclusion: the people of early medieval Greece
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The numismatic, sphragistic, and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that after 620, Greece entered a relatively long period of political instability and sharp demographic decline. For some fifty years between c. 620 and c. 670, Greece disappears from the radar of the written sources, which some have interepreted as the'Dark Ages' separating Antiquity from the Middle Ages, an era of decline and ruin brought by Slavic invaders (Zakythinos 1966: 300, 302, and 316; Avramea 1997: 49). It has indeed been suggested that the significant number of hoards with latest coins struck in the early seventh century are an indication of the Slavic invasions of Greece at the beginning of Herakleios' reign (Metcalf 1962a and 2001: 129–0). Their composition, based almost exclusively on new coins, suggests, however, the presence of the Roman troops. The cluster of their latest coins between 610 and 620 strongly suggests that those small collections of copper were never retrieved because of the general withdrawal of Roman armies from the Balkans. With few exceptions, there are no coins of Herakleios post-dating the withdrawal of troops on any site in Greece. Although in the early seventh century hoards of gold were still buried in Greece, after c. 630 gold finds are very rare in the southern Balkans. Only three hoards, two of gold and one of copper, are so far known for the entire period between c. 630 and c. 900. With just one exception, all stray finds of seventh- and early eighth-century coins are of copper (Fig. 4.1).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050The Early Middle Ages, pp. 97 - 134Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011