Liminal Spaces and Spatial Practices in Byzantium

Buket Kitapçı Bayrı is a scholar 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).

• IntroductionLiminal Spaces Inside and Beyond the Byzantine WorldMyrto Veikou and Buket Kitapçi BayriPart I: Natural Space as LiminalChapter 1Encounters in Crocodile Waters: The Nile as a Liminal Riverscape in Monastic EgyptDarlene Brooks HedstromChapter 2Desert Islands: Aspects of the Byzantine Perception of Liminal SpaceCharis 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 SpacesLivia Bevilacqua Chapter 5Liminal Experiences of Byzantine FortificationsNikolas Bakirtzis and Myrto VeikouChapter 6Visiting Late Antique Elite Houses: On Rituals, Routes, and Courtyards through the Lens of LiminalityLale ÖzgenelChapter 7Crossing Private Liminal Spaces: Thresholds and Passageways in the “Urban Mansion” of Sagalassos and Contemporaneous Urban Elite Houses in Late Antique Western AnatoliaInge UytterhoevenChapter 8Existential and Spatial Liminality in Byzantine Monasteries: Insights from the Enclosure Wall and its GatewaysMaréva UPart III: Liminality through MovementChapter 9Athonite Transhumance Routes between the Ninth and the Sixteenth Centuries: A Network of Liminal Ecosystems, Spaces, and InteractionsGuillaume BidautChapter 10Marking the limēn: Lighthouses and Beacons as Spiritual MetaphorsVeronica della DoraChapter 11Perceptions of Bridges as Liminal Spaces in ByzantiumGalina Fingarova

Presents new approaches to the study of Byzantium / Applies two interdisciplinary concepts (liminality from social anthropology and space from cultural geography) to historical investigation / Surveys a wide variety of spaces including Byzantine frontiers, monasteries, public and private spaces, and natural spaces as mountains, rivers and islands.