GACUK 60th Lecture by Dr Olga Karagiorgou & Dr Nikos Tsivikis

Excavating the Cradle of an Imperial Dynasty: The Material Culture and Prosopography of Byzantine Amorion by Dr Olga Karagiorgou (Associate Researcher at the Research Centre for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art of the Academy of Athens) and Dr Nikos Tsivikis (Research fellow at
the Institute of Mediterranean Studies, Rethymnon, Crete).

Amorion (modern Hisarköy, some 110 miles SW of Ankara, Turkey) occupies a special place in the history of the Byzantine Empire as the capital of one of the most important of its provinces, the thema of the Anatolikoi, and the birthplace of the homonymous short-lived dynasty of Byzantine emperors, the Amorian dynasty (820-867). The archaeological discovery of a consistent destruction level across the city that can be securely connected to the siege and sack of Amorion in AD 838 by the Abbasids, stands out as a unique discovery. The lecture presents some of the most important excavated monuments at Amorion, some new finds, as well as an inventory of individuals, attested on its archaeological record (inscriptions, molybdoboulla) in an effort to offer, for the first time, a livelier overview of Byzantine Amorion, based on its material remains as well as its people.

The lecture, dedicated to the memory of Matti Egon (GACUK's founder who passed away earlier this month), was given online through the ZOOM platform courtesy of the British School at Athens, on Thursday 3rd December.