ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to a new narrative regarding Byzantine cities as built environments and as spaces of social and political interaction. It expands the scholarly literature on Byzantine neighbourhoods as spatial and social units, and (by extension) to relate Byzantine neighbourhoods to better-studied neighbourhoods in other pre-industrial polities. Some approach neighbourhoods primarily on the basis of textual sources, and others primarily on the basis of archaeology, whereby all draw to some degree on both literary and material evidence. Some explicitly engage in comparisons with other places and times, while others remain firmly focused on the Byzantine evidence. Leonora Neville considers the lack of Byzantine-era theorization of neighbourhoods alongside the ample evidence for the importance of neighbourhoods in Byzantine society. She argues that the apparent tension between these two bodies of evidence reveals the distinct configuration of Byzantine politics. Neighbourhoods both facilitated and impeded the formation of collectivities in Byzantine cities.
