Insular Resilience at the Edge of Empire: The Early Medieval Kastra of Kalymnos, Greece

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Studies of the shifts following the Arab defeat of the seventh-century Roman Empire generally pass over the Aegean islands that bear the marks of warfare and societal upheaval in their landscapes. The island of Kalymnos has untapped potential to inform an understanding of Roman-Arab warfare in the periphery. This report discusses the several phases of the investigation to date. The initial stage focused on published literature about three seventh-century Roman kastra on Kalymnos to elucidate the dynamics of the island’s fortification scheme as a component of the Byzantine/Roman Empire’s defensive strategy. GIS analysis of three Roman fortifications elucidated ancient inhabitants’ responses to conflict, including priorities of topographic selection and battlefield dynamics. In 2022, we tested the GIS models against conditions on the ground through field visits to the three sites, plus others from a range of periods. Locals provided vital information about access routes to the remote sites, adding key information and indicating possible future avenues to explore. This study has implications for the maintenance of imperial hegemony through local actions, threat responses in insular settings, the ways in which communities can survive cyclical violence, and the tactical details of a civilian populace’s response to armed incursions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37043.0