Where do we even start?

I tried to start this post about two months ago and here we are now. I am sipping my coffee and trying to figure out what the f@k I should write. Well, for starters, it should be my thesis which is being written at a snail’s pace. My thesis topic is a hard and complex subject to write about (Aren’t all thesis topics?) and I am hoping my little blog rant will help me move forward with some ideas. So, what am I writing about?

Byzantine Identity.

More specifically, I am writing about eastern Roman settlement identity. Even more specifically, medieval eastern Roman höyük settlement identity on the central and eastern Anatolian plateau from the ninth through to the end of the eleventh centuries. I am asking how did medieval eastern Romans (or Byzantines, ugh), perceive and understand a settlement’s identity?

I should first explain what I mean by settlement identity. Honestly, what I understand up to this point is, it means…f@k I don’t know. All I can really say is: It is f@k’n complicated. So maybe I should ask myself why do I want to write about this subject?

1) I find the subject fascinating.

2) Medieval höyük settlements are grossly overlooked by Byzantine scholarship. And what I mean by that is, Byzantinists (but not all Byzantinists), just don’t care about these often remote settlements.

3) However, I think they were integral to the day-to-day operations of the empire. Therefore, WE NEED TO STUDY THESE SETTLEMENTS.

4) And, in order to understand Eastern Roman Medieval society, we need to understand how many of its citizens lived and where they lived.

5) Höyüks, a Turkish word, are man-made artificial mounds where the inhabitants of settlements have built on top of each other for millennia. For example, at Çadır Höyük, the habitation of the site (with some breaks in occupation), dates back to the 4th to 5th millennium BCE! This means:

6) But why build keep building on top of abandoned settlements, or keep building on top of continuously occupied settlements?

7) Höyüks are sites of MEMORY! People knew they were building on top of other settlements. Therefore, there was meaning and memory embedded into the site’s location.

So where do I start when it comes to tackling what settlement identity is when it could mean so many things to so many people who live in diverse regional environments? Well, as I have discussed before, and we need to clear the air one more time, as I believe this drastically affects how scholarship perceives and studies the medieval past of central and eastern Anatolia:

There are no f@k’n Byzantines.

They are Romans, or eastern Romans if you prefer. However, they are also, Bulgars, Avars, Armenians, Slavs, Pechenegs, Jews, Christians, Arabs, Muslims, Syriac Christians, Sassanians, Persian…get the picture. Populations moved, were enslaved, re-located, were settled on the other end of the empire’s borders. Basically, it was a diverse and very multiethnic society. Then we come to the term identity. Gender, ethnicity, religious, political, cultural, regional, familial and on and on it goes. Identity encompasses a lot and when you mix that with a diverse population, like that of the Eastern Roman state, then identity becomes very, very individualized. So, knowing this, how do we classify or categorize/label a settlement?

Polis (Πόλις:city), Chorion (Χωριον: village), Κome (Χωμη: village), Kastron (Καστρων: City, or Fortified city, or Fortified town, or Fortified village, or just fortification), just to name a few technical categories. Then you have city names: Constantinople, Ephesus, Ancyra, Caesarea, Thessaloniki, Athens, Antioch, Saniana, Nikomedeia, and on, and on it goes.

And then there is URBAN & RURAL.

This is probably the biggest obstacle I have come across. Why? Because it is a very modern concept that is applied to the ancient world. This not to say the ancient and medieval world did not differentiate between larger and smaller settlements, nor that they did not have these concepts. What I am saying is Byzantinists do not generally explicitly define what they mean by urban and rural when they use these terms. That is to say, when Byzantinists categorize a settlement as urban or rural, they usually don’t explain why they have done so? Settlements are either urban or rural. But what makes a settlement an “urban settlement” or a “rural settlement”? Well, most would probably agree that a city, polis or πόλις, is urban. For example, Constantinople or Antioch are classified as urban because they had large populations, major religious and political figures/institutions residing within their boundaries. They had fortifications, kastron, or big ass walls, to protect the city. While settlements like Çadır Höyük are classified as rural because it is viewed as a small agrarian village in the middle of bum-F@k nowhere.

But urban or rural is a DICHOTOMY and dichotomies are poor analytical tools. They are combative. They are hierarchical and make one label more important than the other. Oh, and did I mention that Çadır Höyük has a fortification as well.

Çadır Höyük Fortification Wall. Not very aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Kerkenes Fortification Wall. Approx 10km NW of Çadır Höyük. Now this is a wall…but is it more important to study?

It is this very plain contrast of fortifications that one of many other reasons that had led early Byzantinists to study the so-called urban sites and ask where did they go? It created the hierarchy that placed well-built, grand architecture over sites like Çadır Höyük. Questions were asked: What happened to Roman urbanism? Where did it go? Well, if you ask me, it didn’t really go anywhere, it just changed. Transformed. Priorities shifted. And it all happened over the longue durée. A very long time. But I am getting off-topic as per usual.

Back to settlement identity and how I am going to conquer this topic?

If Çadır Höyük has a fortification at the summit of the mound, what the f@k does that tell us about the settlement’s identity. I mean, surely it is of significance and forms part of the settlement’s identity. But how was it perceived by those who lived there and by outsiders? Was it administered by an imperial institution or was it a locally administered settlement that perceived the empire that it resided in as a threat? Did specific people reside in the fortification and others outside? Or did they all live outside and the fortification was meant more like a large storage facility? What then did it store and for who? How did these people view each other? Were they a community that cooperated in their day-to-day lives or was one group dominating another? That is assuming that there were only two communal groups. Maybe there were three, four, or even five communal groups/families living in this region? Does the wall at Çadır Höyük make it urban? I mean if we associate fortified structures with urban settlements, then Çadır Höyük should be urban, right?

No, of course not. Because there are plenty of villages that have fortifications. This is not an uncommon feature that you come across on the Anatolian plateau. But if a group put the effort into making this fortification, which means they needed money, resources (both material and human) then there has to be some special significance to this particular settlement compared to those that surround Çadır Höyük and are not fortified? What does all this mean?

“AAAAARRRGGHHHH, Good Grief.”

-Charlie Brown. Humanist, and shitty football placekicker.

Gate Structure at Çadır Höyük facing S-SW: Late Roman/Early-Middle Byz Period. Yea its a stratigraphic mess.

What do I do with this bullshit? Take the gate structure for example. There is a late Roman context, Early to Middle Byz context. The structure was narrowed at some point. Most likely 10th-11th century, then blocked. Why? What threat did these people know of? Who would attack a “rural” agrarian settlement in the middle of north-central Anatolia? Why were there kids inside?

PS: They were killed. Along with everyone else. It was not a good scene.

WHAT! KIDS! INSIDE?

Yea! I know. Crazy shit eh? So it just gets more complex. The inhabitants knew of a threat, hid in the fortification, but this thing was not built to withstand any type of siege. There is no cistern that we can find, thus far. (Only the future knows if we will uncover one). Oh, in case you don’t know, a cistern is for storing water. A fortification with no capability for repelling a long-term assault or capacity to live within its walls without access to water. Yet, people fled into it, blocked the gate and said: “F@k it, better in here than out there. Kids bring the cows too, and you only get the water we bring with us.”

Who are these people and how did they understand their settlement’s identity? What was it called? More importantly, how did it function?

As you may be able to infer, I have no sweet clue how to attribute any forms of identity to Çadır Höyük, but I do have my suspicions. I will argue that Çadır Höyük is neither urban nor is it rural. Rather, I think you need to view the settlement as a node of intersectionality. That is to say, the site had many identities and operated within a web of influences that were negotiated on a day-to-day basis over both a local and regional, possibly even imperial, scale. The settlement adapted, transformed and continued to exist until its eventual destruction. The inhabitants lived within a sphere of memory, traditions, and knowledge of the landscape and negotiated with each other within this context. Make sense?

Well, in my brain it is only starting to make sense but I have a long f@k’n way to go before my thesis is finished. So, I bid you adieu. Thank you for reading my rant and as always, leave a note. Do you have any thoughts about settlement identity in the medieval world? Let me know. Write a comment.

“Byzantine” Settlement Identity: