Myrto Veikou
Uppsala University, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Researcher in Greek and Byzantine Studies
Studied History and Archaeology (BA- University of Athens), and further specialized in Byzantine History and Archaeology (MPhil - University of Birmingham; MA - University of Paris I-Sorbonne; PhD - University of Athens; PhD Uppsala University). My 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, The Medieval Mediterranean 95, Leiden: Brill NV). My second PhD thesis in Byzantine Philology is forthcoming in the SBU series. I have taught Byzantine history and archaeology (University of Cyprus, 2008; University of Crete, 2010-2012; Hellenic Open University, 2010-2012; Open University of Cyprus, 2012-2015; Patras University 2023) as well as Byzantine philology and literary studies (Uppsala University, 2018-2022; Patras University 2023).
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Books by Myrto Veikou
Contributors are Ilias Anagnostakis, Alexander Beihammer, Helena Bodin, Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Béatrice Caseau Chevallier, Paolo Cesaretti, Michael J. Decker, Veronica della Dora, Rico Franses, Sauro Gelichi, Adam J. Goldwyn, Basema Hamarneh, Richard Hodges, Brad Hostetler, Adam Izdebski, Liz James, P. Nick Kardulias, Isabel Kimmelfield, Tonia Kiousopoulou, Johannes Koder, Derek Krueger, Tomasz Labuk, Maria Leontsini, Yulia Mantova, Charis Messis, Konstantinos Moustakas, Margaret Mullett, Ingela Nilsson, Robert G. Ousterhout, Georgios Pallis, Myrto Veikou, Joanita Vroom, David Westberg, and Enrico Zanini.
In the city of Uppsala, located at some 70km-distance from the Stockholm Archipelago, the average wind-speed throughout the year is 10–15 kilometers per hour. These dynamics generate recurring spectacles of ‘turbulent’ skies, as clouds are constantly in motion and they rapidly form, reform and transform the image of the sky. These spectacles make this Byzantinist reflect upon ways in which medieval people—who had never flown a plane, bound to the land—would have been receiving them in their everyday life. How ‘heavenlily-induced’ would they have considered turbulent skies? Would they have understood the image on the cover of this book (a cloud-pattern depicting a long staircase leading from the low parts of the horizon to the celestial hights) as divine invitation? The turbulent skies of Uppsala have nurtured me with ample imagination towards understanding medieval hagiographical texts and writing this book.
This work is a revised version of a doctoral dissertation at Uppsala University (2020), based upon research conducted in the years 2015-2020 under the supervision of Professor Ingela Nilsson and Dr Charis Messis. I express my gratitude to Ingela Nilsson, Charis Messis, Stephanos Efthymiadis, Stratis Papaioannou, Margaret Mullett, Julie Hansen, Helena Bodin and Christian Høgel for their encouragement and support during the process of creation. Special thanks to Ingela for her generous help and advice at every stage of the publication process.
I warmly thank Eric Cullhed for the typesetting and cover design, and Simon Phillips for copyediting this volume. This book has been finalized within the frame of the research programme Retracing Connections, financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (M19-0430:1). The book’s production was supported by publication grants from Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala and Stiftelsen Konung Gustaf VI Adolfs fond för svensk kultur, for which I would like to express my sincere thanks.
This book belongs to my family, Thibault Brink and Kymothoi Brink Veikou, who gazed at the turbulent skies of Uppsala with me.
Uppsala, 15 June 2023
Papers by Myrto Veikou
This entry addresses gender and landscape perspectives in art studies separately, as well as jointly, where the two...
Contributors are Ilias Anagnostakis, Alexander Beihammer, Helena Bodin, Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Béatrice Caseau Chevallier, Paolo Cesaretti, Michael J. Decker, Veronica della Dora, Rico Franses, Sauro Gelichi, Adam J. Goldwyn, Basema Hamarneh, Richard Hodges, Brad Hostetler, Adam Izdebski, Liz James, P. Nick Kardulias, Isabel Kimmelfield, Tonia Kiousopoulou, Johannes Koder, Derek Krueger, Tomasz Labuk, Maria Leontsini, Yulia Mantova, Charis Messis, Konstantinos Moustakas, Margaret Mullett, Ingela Nilsson, Robert G. Ousterhout, Georgios Pallis, Myrto Veikou, Joanita Vroom, David Westberg, and Enrico Zanini.
In the city of Uppsala, located at some 70km-distance from the Stockholm Archipelago, the average wind-speed throughout the year is 10–15 kilometers per hour. These dynamics generate recurring spectacles of ‘turbulent’ skies, as clouds are constantly in motion and they rapidly form, reform and transform the image of the sky. These spectacles make this Byzantinist reflect upon ways in which medieval people—who had never flown a plane, bound to the land—would have been receiving them in their everyday life. How ‘heavenlily-induced’ would they have considered turbulent skies? Would they have understood the image on the cover of this book (a cloud-pattern depicting a long staircase leading from the low parts of the horizon to the celestial hights) as divine invitation? The turbulent skies of Uppsala have nurtured me with ample imagination towards understanding medieval hagiographical texts and writing this book.
This work is a revised version of a doctoral dissertation at Uppsala University (2020), based upon research conducted in the years 2015-2020 under the supervision of Professor Ingela Nilsson and Dr Charis Messis. I express my gratitude to Ingela Nilsson, Charis Messis, Stephanos Efthymiadis, Stratis Papaioannou, Margaret Mullett, Julie Hansen, Helena Bodin and Christian Høgel for their encouragement and support during the process of creation. Special thanks to Ingela for her generous help and advice at every stage of the publication process.
I warmly thank Eric Cullhed for the typesetting and cover design, and Simon Phillips for copyediting this volume. This book has been finalized within the frame of the research programme Retracing Connections, financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (M19-0430:1). The book’s production was supported by publication grants from Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala and Stiftelsen Konung Gustaf VI Adolfs fond för svensk kultur, for which I would like to express my sincere thanks.
This book belongs to my family, Thibault Brink and Kymothoi Brink Veikou, who gazed at the turbulent skies of Uppsala with me.
Uppsala, 15 June 2023
This entry addresses gender and landscape perspectives in art studies separately, as well as jointly, where the two...
This practice involved the precise integration of selected spolia in carefully designated parts of the buildings; similar practices were common among various cultures sharing the same spatiotemporal context (late-medieval East Mediterranean area).
The study begins by presenting the practices employed in the two buildings while commenting on their history, settings, and architecture. Next, it proceeds into a definition of attributes of these practices in the context of the two case studies. Thereafter, it scrutinizes possible audiences that these practices addressed. It delineates the donors’ political objectives, which seem to have been served by the particular architects/workshops and the ways in which they achieved that through planning and spatial arrangements. Finally, the scope and possible meanings of the practices observed at Manisa and Birgi are considered against the cultural background of spolia used in the late-medieval East Mediterranean.
In other words, I firstly hope to show that different settlement patterns and land uses in Byzantium are linked to cultural aspects such as spatial functions and qualities springing from the diverse spatial experiences of its people. Building on H. Lefebvre’s concepts of “perceived, conceived and lived social space”, I will, secondly, discuss that survey archaeology can help reconstruct such cultural aspects and human practices as reflected upon land use and settlement in variant conditions and occasions.
Thirdly, I discuss that what has been considered as a principal weakness of survey archaeology (i.e. specializing in extensive yet surface investigation, as opposed to excavation, the in-depth investigation of a unique site) can in fact turn to an advantage. Namely, I intend to show how surveying archaeological practices are fundamentally based on factual experiences of contemporary lived spaces. These experiences may generate appropriate tools for understanding the historical interaction between space and human agency.
Last but not least, I build on postmodern geographers’ concepts of space as simultaneously a product (or outcome) and a shaping force (or medium) in social life. My purpose is to demonstrate ways in which space stands out as a social thus historical value in the Byzantine culture. In that respect, historical spaces should be reconstructed by archaeological / historical research as much as historical / cultural environments and landscapes. I therefore suggest that alongside with environmental- and landscape archaeology, a new field of archaeology of space seems not only highly relevant but also quite promising within the research of Byzantine settlement.
The main motive behind this project is to find ways in which the historical transformation in the social dimensions of spatiality of everyday life is both reflected in literature and used as part of specific literary strategies. A principal aspiration behind this task is to help filling a substantial gap in Medieval Studies, which particularly refers to the investigation of different dimensions and meanings of spatiality in Byzantine culture.
A combination of academic methodologies and approaches drawn from literary, historical and cultural studies will encourage a comparative investigation of:
− representations of socially-constructed spatial aspects of Byzantine everyday life,
− literary spaces reflecting social reality, and
− ways in which these spaces determine the aesthetics of the texts.
This work will stretch along two main axes: i) an investigation of Byzantine literary spaces as representations of diverse spatial perceptions, conceptions, uses, functions, and experiences as well as their diachronic transformation, through the study of hagiographical texts, and ii) an investigation and reconstruction of diachronic uses of space as narrative device, its function and effects in the texts.
(Belfast, August 2023)
Session: #113
Theme: 3. Heritage Narratives and Representations
Session format: Regular session
Title: Byzantine Heritage in Peril: The Safety of Archaeological Sites (Heritage, Conservation, Preservation, Non-Destructive Methodologies)
For the first time the International Association of Byzantine Studies (AIEB) and its newly created Commission for Byzantine Archaeology (CBA) propose a session for the EAA Meeting. In doing so, our intention is to disseminate recent archaeological work conducted in our field and to build a broader academic and collegial environment.
Byzantine archaeology, the archaeology of the millennial Eastern Roman empire, traditionally covers a huge geographic area incorporating the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeastern Europe and the Black Sea, extending in periods westwards all the way to cover Italy and much of Northern and Eastern Africa. Nowadays, areas governed by different climate regimes, populated by different people, and regulated under different authorities represent a broad spectrum of cultures where sites are treated in various ways. In these areas, since the 19th century, versions of Byzantine archaeologies have flourished at different paces and often with contrasting aims.
In this session we aim to address modern challenges of Byzantine archaeology as a wide-spanning international field. Sites can vary from long-standing excavations initiated in the conditions of late colonialism to state-of-the-art contemporary projects reflecting meta- technological breakthroughs. Nonetheless, everywhere archaeology, including Byzantine archaeology, is confronted by extreme social conditions, sometimes exponent local growth or sudden geometric recession of state or national economies, aggressive touristic and housing development, climatic challenges and extreme weather patterns, problems in archaeological finds’ storage, resources and infrastructures for sites’ management, or even just plain old ravages of war and conflict. We call upon a broad-spanning group of specialists, involved in the excavation, study and management of Byzantine archaeological sites across the Mediterranean, Southeast Europe, the Black Sea and beyond to participate in our session and present key-aspects of these challenges and possible policies of counteracting them. The session besides will be also accepting poster presentations.
Session associated with MERC: yes
Session associated with CIfA: no
Session associated with SAfA: no
Session associated with CAA: no
Session associated with DGUF: no
Session associated with other: Commission of Byzantine Archaeology (CBA) of the International Association of Byzantine Studies (AIEB)
Organisers
Main organiser:
Myrto Veikou (Greece) 1
Co-organisers:
Joanita Vroom (Netherlands) 2
Nikos Tsivikis (Greece) 3
Affiliations:
1. University of Patras
2. University of Leiden
3. Institute of Mediterranean Studies - FORTH
Since its first conception by Arnold van Gennep in 1909 and its development by Victor Turner in 1950s, the anthropological concept of liminality has travelled to endless areas of study helping to articulate human conditions of and responses to change, and hence developed into a master concept in the wider human, social and political sciences. It has allowed demonstrating that changes in human lives occur through breaking boundaries and experiencing transitory situations and transformative events. These experiences generate in-betweenness, ambivalence, uncertainty, fluidity, hybridity and sometimes existential fear, as well as creativity and renewal which end up producing new and different ‘realities.’ The concept of liminality has both temporal and spatial dimensions. On the personal level, moments such as birth, baptism, passage to adolescence, passage to womanhood, moving, traveling, pilgrimage and conversion and on the social level wars, plague, revolution, invasion and natural disasters can be considered as liminal experiences. Sometimes liminality, which is considered to be a transitionary period can become permanent for individuals and groups such as monks, punks, vagabonds, migrants, and artists.
This meeting concentrates on the concept of liminality in the Byzantine world during which the acts of subversion of territorial and linguistic barriers – through political, military, social and cultural interaction as well as technological, artistic and literary exchange – were very common. Instead of choosing predefined liminal moments/periods or liminal persons, the departure point of the meeting is the spatial dimension of liminality. In specific, the meeting seeks to understand whether certain types of spaces accommodate—or even create—liminal situations according to the eyes of the people experiencing them. It aspires to offer an alternative to the binary oppositions such as inside/outside, self/other, and good/bad and delineate liminality as a pertinent, even necessary concept for understanding a whole series of phenomena placed within the medieval world, and to show connections with our contemporary world so variously characterized by constant change, uncertainty, and institutionalized contingency. It also aims to further develop the use of the concept of ‘space’ as a vehicle for research of the medieval societies and cultures and as working platform for interdisciplinary collaboration within Byzantine and medieval studies.
Visit conferences.sia.gr for more information and programme.
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Warmly welcome!
Myrto Veikou, Buket Kitapçı Bayrı, Ingela Nilsson
Session 325 - Byzantium in Context, II: Environment, Economy, and Power. Crisis and Renewal in the Byzantine World
Organiser: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Abteilung Byzanzforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Η επίσκεψη οργανώνεται σε συνεργασία με την Πρεσβεία του Μεξικού στην Ελλάδα και το Γραφείο Διεθνών Σχέσεων του Πανεπιστημίου Πατρών.
Ο Δρ Junco Sánchez θα δώσει διάλεξη με θέμα «UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY OF MEXICO» στην αίθουσα Β10 (1ος όροφος) του Κτηρίου Β, ώρα 18:00-19:30.
Η διάλεξη θα μεταδοθεί και διαδικτυακά μέσω του συνδέσμου: https://upatras-gr.zoom.us/j/96206771106?pwd=aXQ1aVI1dzcrM2t3T2pYZkJ6eFI5Zz09
Ο Αλκιβιάδης Γκινάλης είναι Διδάκτωρ Ενάλιας Αρχαιολογίας (Πανεπιστήμιο της Οξφόρδης, 2014) και Επιμελητής Βυζαντινής Αρχαιολογίας στο Γερμανικό Αρχαιολογικό Ινστιτούτο (Τμήμα Κωνσταντινούπολης) από το 2019. Στα χρόνια 2015-2019 διετέλεσε ερευνητής στο Leibnitz Forschungsinsdtut für Archäologie του Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz, στην Αυστριακή Ακαδημία Επιστημών, καθώς και στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Βρέμης με μεταδιδακτορική υποτροφία Marie Curie της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης. Τα τελευταία 10 χρόνια, διδάσκει Ενάλια Αρχαιολογία με ειδίκευση στην Ύστερη Αρχαιότητα και το Βυζάντιο στα Πανεπιστήμια Βρέμης, Οξφόρδης, και ΑΠΘ.
Ο Axel Frejman είναι Διδάκτωρ Κλασικής Αρχαιολογίας (Uppsala University 2020) και τ. Υποδιευθυντής του Σουηδικού Αρχαιολογικού Ινστιτούτου στην Αθήνα (2022). Πραγματοποιεί μεταδιδακτορική έρευνα με θέμα Water at ancient Greek sanctuaries: medium of divine presence or commodity for mortal visitors? και διδάσκει την χρήση των Γεωγραφικών Συστημάτων Πληροφοριών στην Αρχαιολογία, στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Ουψάλα. Από το 2021 και εξής εργάζεται ως επιστημονικός συνεργάτης στο ερευνητικό πρόγραμμα Medieval Smyrna/İzmir, Transformation of its Hinterland from Byzantine to Ottoman Times (MESMY) της Αυστριακής Ακαδημίας Επιστημών.