Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to the Impact of Warfare on Local Communities in the Byzantine Empire, 7th–8th c.

The historical sources on Byzantine warfare tend to focus on the great successes or failures of Byzantine armies during military campaigns or in battles, or on the course of military invasions by the neighbours of the empire. But with the exception of stock in trade statements concerning the great destruction caused and the multitudes killed or carried off into captivity, they rarely provide any detail on the effects of warfare on local communities or how those surviving managed to endure and come to terms with the traumatic and violent events to which they were exposed. With the use of modern theories concerning resilience and the impact of warfare, developed in the social sciences and by psychologists, we can now say more about societal, communal, and individual coping strategies. In particular, we have good material, artistic, and textual evidence for responses to warfare in borderland areas distant from Constantinople. These include inscriptions and memorials devoted to relatives lost in wars, the celebration of sites of memory through building works, the development of martial material cultures best seen in weapon burials, and the celebration of the apotropaic power of local saints in Hagiographic texts and iconography.