Search results for ""Author Simon Greenslade""

Butrint 6 describes the excavations carried out on the Vrina Plain by the Butrint Foundation from 2002–2007. Lying just to the south of the ancient port city of Butrint, these excavations have revealed a 1,300 year long story of a changing community that began in the 1st century AD, one which not only played its part in shaping the city of Butrint but also in how the city interacted and at times reacted to the changing political, economic and cultural situations occurring across the Mediterranean World over this period. Volume II discusses the finds from the Vrina Plain excavations.This volume provides an insight into how the Vrina Plain community lived, worked and ultimately died and includes chapters on the medieval and post-medieval ceramics from the excavations, analysis of the human and faunal remains, environmental evidence, Roman and Medieval coins, a detailed study of the small finds as well as a discussion of the glass including a report on a number of glass cakes, ingots of raw glass associated with glass working that were found during the excavations.The volume also reports on five lead seals dating from the late 9th to the 10th century, an uncommon find but one which when considered with the contemporary coins suggests that for 100 years the Vrina Plain was Butrint.

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This volume charts the radical transformation of an inner city neighbourhood in late antique Carthage which was excavated over a five-year period by a team from the University of Cambridge. Bordering the main thoroughfare leading from the Brysa Hill to the ports, the neighbourhood remained primarily a residential one from the second century until 530s AD when a substantial basilica was constructed over the eastern half of the insula. Further extensive modifications were made to the basilica half-a-century later when the structures on the western half of the insula were demolished and the basilica greatly enlarged with the addition of a new east-west aisles, a large monumental baptistery and a crypt. By carefully reconstructing the complex architectural plan of this innovative building, this study shows how the re-modelled Bir Messaouda basilica was transformed into a major pilgrimage centre overturning established tradition that located such complexes outside the city walls. The Bir Messaouda basilica provides important insights into the transition between Vandal and Byzantine control of the city, the development of a new Christian inter-mural urban landscape in the sixth century AD, and the significance of the pilgrimage in reinforcing ecclesiastical authority in post-Justinianic North Africa.

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