ABSTRACT
Byzantine Attica, the hinterland of Athens, has been little studied as a whole. Our understanding of it has mostly relied on excavation results from numerous Early Christian basilicas, and on architectural and art-historical studies of Middle Byzantine churches and monasteries, which show a high level of craftsmanship and execution. After many decades of intensive excavation and surface archaeological research, Attica is now emerging as a region whose Byzantine settlement patterns, road networks, administration, economy, and defences can be described thoroughly. The present chapter attempts to define the civic/urban (civitates), non-civic/urban (komai), and non-civic/non-urban (komai, choria) settlements of Early Byzantine and ‘Dark Age’ Attica. Our basis is the organisation of all relevant published archaeological data in geographic areas and units of habitation and activity. Historical sources, mainly the Synekdemos of Hierocles and the third (so-called ‘Iconoclastic‘) episcopal Notitia, as well as epigraphic, sigillographic, and numismatic sources, were also used. Early Byzantine Attica can now be shown to have been a region where numerous urban sites were active at important nodes of land and sea routes, while rural settlements were situated both in fertile regions and at the fringes of mountainous areas. The scant archaeological evidence of the ‘Dark Age’ period is corroborated by the third Notitia, which, despite awaiting historical confirmation, allows interesting hypotheses about administrative and military organisation during this period.
