Rural Communities in Late Byzantium

'Kondyli offers an alternative to the prevailing narrative of late Byzantium as a period of decline and stagnation. While candid about the limitations of her approach in detecting abrupt changes in the historical landscape, she reinterprets villages previously considered abandoned or deserted as dynamic and wisely managed communities … Kondyli's book offers a model for studying ordinary people's coping strategies and site-specific responses to political and economic disasters; throughout, she showcases the potential of small-scale archaeological projects. It is time to apply this paradigm to other locations.' Georgios Makris, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies