Handelsgüter und Verkehrswege

For many centuries Byzantium dominated large parts of the Balkan Peninsula and the Eastern Mediterranean. The empire’s regions produced both ordinary products and luxury goods which were intended for internal use as well as for international trade. The eighteen contributions of the present volume discuss different aspects of medieval traffic network and means of transport as basis for any trade. Some papers bring reconstruction models of occupation of historical landscapes closer to a wider reading public, or apply modern settlement theories to mediaeval times and landscapes. It turns out that trading routes in general remained almost constant over the centuries, but intensity of trade was strongly influenced by political factors. The presence of the Italian trading powers Venice and Genoa in Byzantium from the eleventh century onwards meant not only competition and rivalry for the local merchants. Especially in the last centuries of Byzantium many forms of cooperation existed, and the Byzantine part made a large profit of the higher standards of the western part.