Marcus Rautman, University of Missouri-Columbia

Professor and Department Chair
Late Antique and Byzantine Art and Archaeology
Ph.D., Indiana University

mailing address:
Department of Art History and Archaeology
109 Pickard Hall
Columbia, MO 65211-1420

phone: 573-882-9531
fax: 573-884-5269
email:RautmanM@missouri.edu"

Research

The interplay of society and visual culture underlies my study of the early Middle Ages, especially during periods of political transition. The dynamics of cultural adaptation are of particular interest in understanding the east Mediterranean region on both urban and rural scales. Later Byzantine Macedonia presents one such artistic environment that survives in churches, monumental decoration, and manuscripts. Contemporary documents allow us to explore the role played by individual patrons and social groups in sponsoring an architectural revival in Thessaloniki (see below) in the early 14th century. Located in western Asia Minor, Lydian Sardis (see below) offers a contrasting view of urban life in late antiquity. Recent excavations by the Harvard-Cornell expedition include a residential quarter, whose remains preserve the evolution of local lifeways down to the early 7th century. Farther removed from the late Roman mainstream is Cyprus, where excavations at the village site of Kalavasos-Kopetra (see below) have revealed a poorly understood level of settled life during the 6th and 7th centuries. Laboratory analysis (see below) of ceramics used at these places provides special insight into the character of local routines and the interconnections of their residents. In all these research settings I have tried to combine disciplinary methods?history, archaeology, and art history?to provide a fuller background for understanding the monuments and peoples of the past.

Recent articles:

• Handmade pottery and social change: The view from late Roman Cyprus, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 12 (1998) 81-104
• The busy countryside of late Roman Cyprus, Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 2000
• Rural society and economy in late Roman Cyprus, in Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, eds. J. W. Eadie and T. S. Burns (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001) 241-62
• The context of rural innovation: An early monastery at Kalavasos-Sirmata, Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 2001, 307-18
• Valley and village in late Roman Cyprus, in Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, eds. W. Bowden, L. Lavan, and C. Machado (Leiden: Brill 2004) 189-218
• The villages of Byzantine Cyprus, in Les villages dans l?empire byzantin, eds. J. Lefort, C. Morrisson, and J.-P. Sodini, Paris: P. Lethielleux
• A Cypriot Village of Late Antiquity. Kalavasos-Kopetra in the Vasilikos Valley, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 52, 2003