Modern research methods are undergoing extremely rapid changes along with the world around us. This also applies to the study of war and warfare in a broad social, historical, and cultural context. John Keegan’s proposal of a new military history coincided with the revolution of sensory history and emotionology and the introduction of new research methods into traditional historical studies. This research—and much else besides, from critical approaches to narrative structure, gender studies, and global history—has not escaped Byzantine Studies either, and is being applied with excellent results by numerous scholars. The aim of the panel, entitled New Directions in Byzantine Military History, is to look anew at Byzantine military history using new research methods, whether this comes from employing novel methodological approaches to war and warfare or offering new interpretations of well-established research hypotheses, or through the use of new pieces of evidence or looking more closely at understudied topics.
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…
Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt provide us with a significant body of papyri that illuminate a range of aspects of the often-complex relationship between soldiers and civilians in the late antique world. With the publication of the final volume of the Petra papyri close to a decade ago, we now have material that covers all…
In recent years, natural history and animal studies have gained remarkable traction among Byzantinists, opening new avenues for interpreting Byzantine scientific, philosophical, artistic, and political thought, among others. At the same time, these approaches have significantly enriched our understanding of how the Byzantines perceived the natural world and its symbolic meanings. However, such perspectives have…
Stratagems have always been integral to warfare: from Sun Tzu’s Art of War to modern military practice, ruses involving manipulation of information and deception of the senses have remained a strategic constant. Byzantium – and in particular the works of the so-called early Byzantine classicising historians – is no exception. This paper examines the representation…
The sensory history of Late Antiquity remains an emerging but increasingly dynamic field of study, with recent publications offering promising evidence of its rapid development. This paper seeks to investigate the soundscape of sieges during Late Antiquity and the Early Byzantine period, focusing on how sound and silence shaped both the experience and conduct of…