Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2011)
These stones still speak: the progress of research on late Roman and early Byzantine mosaic pavements in the Eastern Mediterranean
Abstract
The perennial discovery of the archaeological remains of mosaic floors in the eastern Mediterranean has long made them a subject of investigation by archaeologists, art historians, and historians. From the beginning of the study of Byzantine art as a discrete area within art history in the late nineteenth century, the means employed for the investigation of late antique and early Byzantine mosaics have been as varied as the appearance of the mosaics themselves. An examination of the history of scholarship on mosaics shows them to be a microcosm of trends in the study of art history from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. This critical survey of the progress of research on the mosaics of the eastern Mediterranean culminates in an evaluation of the ways in which contemporary scholars have, or have not, contended with earlier approaches and methods as they seek answers to similar and different questions concerning these pavements.
