The Early Middle-Byzantine Construction Industry: The Constantinopolitan Origin of Standardized Construction Practices and their Organized Dissemination for New Building Projects in the Byzantine Provinces

After the building boom of the sixth century, Byzantine Constantinople experienced a period of several centuries of comparatively few new major ecclesiastical building projects. Beginning in the late ninth century, however, Constantinople saw a veritable explosion of new building activity that ultimately fueled the construction during the Middle Byzantine period of a multitude of new church and monastic edifices, not only in the capital but throughout the empire. While the dissemination of building plans, such as the cross-in-square church, is well documented during this period, less attention has been given to new construction techniques and workshop practices that were developed and initially centralized in Constantinople but which were soon exported to other regions far from the capital. This paper identifies several of these techniques and practices beginning with late ninth- and tenth-century construction at sites in and outside Constantinople. Further, the paper argues for the emergence of a well-organized system of standardized construction practices that, while initially employed in Constantinople, was quickly and systematically disseminated to provincial regions throughout the empire for building projects there. The aim was to facilitate the efficient realization of the kinds of compact vaulted spaces associated with the new architectural designs that emerged across the empire during the Middle Byzantine period.