Ancient World Seminar: Mark Jackson (Newcastle University), "Filling the Gaps; New Evidence for Old Questions?"

Abstract

The impact of invasions pervades the narratives about the transformation of society during late antiquity. In the frontier region of Isauria in the Taurus Mountains and on the island of Naxos in the Cyclades emerging archaeological evidence of the kind traditionally neglected by archaeologists reveals the experience not of elites but of people often less studied in the archaeological record. These data help us to reshape the traditional narratives for the period between the 6th and 9th centuries AD and to ask different questions to tell new stories about people’s lives. Such work seeks to refine existing narratives and to set new agendas for the future that include a closer study of the more humble subjects of empire who made up the majority of the population.

About the speaker

Dr Mark Jackson is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Head of Archaeology at Newcastle University, UK. His main research interests are the archaeology of Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods in the Eastern Mediterranean. He has extensive field experience from projects in Turkey, Cyprus and Greece. He was Co-director for the Byzantine on the Kilise Tepe Archaeological Project and has worked on excavated material from elsewhere in Turkey including at Alahan and Çatalhöyük and on several surveys. In recent years has been leading a team working on the artefacts from the Apalirou Environs Project, Naxos. He also has a research interest in the history of archaeology and early archaeologists – especially Gertrude Bell – and is responsible for 8,000 photographs in the Gertrude Bell Archive which was recently made a UNESCO International Memory of the World.