Fragments from Ottoman Zagori: Continuity and change in a montane landscape through a local perspective

New paper! Drs. Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou (ICAC) and Elias Kolovos (University of Crete) publish a new paper in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies:

Moudopoulos-Athanasiou, F., & Kolovos, E. (2023). Fragments from Ottoman Zagori: Continuity and change in a montane landscape through a local perspective. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1-17. doi: 10.1017/byz.2023.24

Abstract

This article discusses elite continuity and settlement pattern change in Zagori (NW Greece) from the late fourteenth to the nineteenth century. The peaceful assimilation of the regional and local elites into the Ottoman Empire (1430) led to adaptations in the montane landscape. Imperial and local archival research, ethnography, and landscape archaeology reveal that the Ottoman administration divided large decentralized settlements into smaller villages to accommodate local elites and new timariots. This topography of division (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries) gave way to a topography of adaptation (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) when local elites influenced settlement patterns in forming the administrative unit the Zagorisian League.


Dr. Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou is a postdoctoral fellow with the project Heritage under young forests: recording and interpreting the cultureal heritage underneath the afforested Zagori (NW Greece). Juan de la Cierva (FJC2021-047943-I), funded by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.

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