Continuities and Discontinuities in the Material Culture Along the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier (7th–13th c.)

The Islamic-Byzantine frontier, dividing Anatolia and Syria, changed hands from Byzantine to Islamic c. 638 (covering four dynasties: Rashidun, Umayyad, ‘Abbasid, then Shi‘a Hamdanid), and back to Byzantine c. 969, where it remained until c. 1085 before falling under brief Saljuq rule for 14 years, then longer Crusader occupation until 1268. Despite the dating precision owed to conquests and political/administrative shifts known from texts, the material culture reflects a different story. Material culture, namely ceramics, shows a lag of about 50-100 years where we can detect discernable change, if at all. This may be explained away by the inexact nature of post-seventh century ceramics, which are dated stratigraphically and stylistically, at best, to within fifty year segments. However, in the case of the frontier, we may trace continuities and discontinuities in local pottery production on the level of specific families. This paper will use the evidence from Antioch, in particular the courtyard house of a potter family in sector 17-O, excavated by Princeton in the 1930s, alongside material culture from excavations in Tarsus. This family of potters were likely Greek Byzantines who made Islamic-style ceramics for local distribution, and for export to Islamic lands or the Byzantine Aegean during the politically unstable periods of Byzantine, Islamic, and Crusader rule. This paper will argue that material culture responds to a complexity of vectors – taste and consumption, imitation, and tradition and technology as handed down from potter to potter. Further, both pottery and potter, have little to do with any marker of ethnic or religious identity or political authority such as “Islamic/Muslim/Arab,” “Byzantine/Orthodox Christian/Greek,” “Crusader/Latin” and do not respond to administrative change and disruptions, including ‘destructions’ of cities. Rather, the evidence shows that the opposite may be true and continuities in material culture and its production, bridge periods and people.