ABSTRACT
Among Europe's medieval civilisations, Byzantium poses most pressingly the historical problem of travel and communications. Byzantium succeeded at the daunting challenge of integrating politically, economically and culturally lands and peoples that comprise some dozen independent states. The search for Byzantium on the move must not stop at the explicit descriptions of travel, real or imagined, and literary conceits. As the curtain closed on the late antique economy, few other microregions enjoyed the special wealth that allowed Byzantine Judaea to produce local finewares when foreign imports slackened. The same basic structure that occurs in Judaea recurs here: two microzones of differentiated density of diffusion separate at about 15 km from the production site. One study shows how early Byzantine ceramics were manufactured, probably in the Judaean countryside, and marketed at Jerusalem. The Judaean hill country defines the main diffusion area, which looks like a distinct economic region.
