The project The “Greek-speaking” Merchants of Constantinople, the Southern Balkans, Asia Minor, and the Islands aims to record and utilize information concerning the activities of “Greek-speaking” merchants within this geographical area.

The digital database contains information on the Peloponnese concerning raw materials (soil, subsoil), natural resources (forest products, fishery products, rocks), and agricultural produce (farming, livestock) from Late Antiquity to the Late Byzantine period, that is, from the 4th to the 15th century.

The database includes iconographic material focusing on depictions of the codex in mosaics, frescoes, panel paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and works of minor arts. Its purpose is to document and analyze the iconographic conventions used in portraying the codex — which, in most cases, represents the Gospel Book.

The churches built during the Byzantine period are the ones still standing today in the historic center of Athens and beyond. Many of these churches are featured on the website “Byzantine Monuments of Attica”. Alongside the churches, a selection of frescoes, sculptures, mosaics, inscriptions, as well as rare and unpublished material from the British School at Athens (drawings and photographs by 19th-century British architects) are presented here to encourage on-site visits.

The project highlights the imported categories of pottery found in sites in the Peloponnese and in Crete and the fluctuations in the distribution and circulation of ceramic products depending to each period, from the 4th to the 15th or 16th c., respectively. The database contains more than 5800 records and is accompanied by a digital map.

In the ever-growing scholarly interest in studying aspects of the material culture of past societies, research on ceramics has experienced remarkable growth. The study of glazed vessels immured in churches of various areas of Greece offers an important tool for gaining deeper insight into this rich facet of material culture found throughout the Greek world, as the material itself forms a kind of open-air museum for medieval and post-medieval glazed pottery.