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Butrint in the mid-Byzantine period: a new interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Solinda Kamani
Solinda Kamani*
Affiliation:
Butrint Foundation
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Abstract

Butrint, on the southwest coast of Albania, has been subject to excavation since 1928, initiated and carried out by the Italian Archaeological Mission until 1940, and then from the late 1950s by the Albanian Institute of Archaeology. In the last fifteen years, under the direction of the Butrint Foundation, the Albanian Institute of Archaeology and the University of East Anglia, extensive excavations have taken place in the site. Recent excavations in the western stretch of the circuit wall in the Lower City of Butrint, known as the Western Defences, have revealed new and important evidence especially for early–mid Byzantine Butrint. These excavations are the focus of this paper which aims to cast more light on the chronology and history of the Western Defences in particular and that of Butrint in general. The first part of the paper discusses the evidence concerning the Western Defences’ late antique construction and its occupation up to the seventh century. The second part deals in turn with succeeding phases of occupation (from eighth to fifteenth century) and offers a new interpretation related to mid Byzantine Butrint.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , 2011 , pp. 115 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2011

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References

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