1 The Changing Geography of Artefact Production in the Late Antique and Early Byzantine Mediterranean

Abstract

: Archaeology is helping to define the changing geography of artefact production between the 6th and the 8th centuries, a seminal period for the economic development of the later Middle Ages. This paper presents a selection of the evidence for different classes of resources and objects, arguing that the geography of professional artefact production was largely conditioned by a policy of survival of the post-Roman successor states, particularly Byzantium, the élite and the capital cities. It permitted the maintenance or redirection of communication networks and the distribution of many products to government officials, the army and other privileged parties, throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. The bulk of the population, on other hand, with limited access to capital and to marketplaces, had to rely ever increasingly on self-sufficiency in the supply of fundamental items of daily use.