The Landscape of Medieval Greece 335
lines, Benjamin Arbel has suggested that after the middle of the 14th century
there was no longer a clear-cut separation between the Latin elite and the
Greek local population on Cyprus but rather a division between the urban and
rural population regardless of ethnic origin.22 In Crete, instances of interaction
and blurring of boundaries between the westerners and the locals continued
to evolve through the 16th and 17th century in civic ceremonies, cultural pro-
duction (especially literature and theatre), and everyday life.23
Another set of significant studies has produced extraordinary findings in
material culture that will surely change the ways in which we appreciate the
landscape of medieval and early modern Greece. Regional archaeological field
surveys have yielded new information on settlement patterns in rural areas
whereas excavations have clarified chronologies, productions, exchanges,
and even changing eating habits.24 These studies can now enhance older
22 Benjamin Arbel, “The Cypriot Nobility from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century:
A New Interpretation,” in Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204, ed.
Benjamin Arbel, Bernard Hamilton, and David Jacoby, [=Mediterranean Historical Review
4.1 (1989)], pp. 175–97, esp. 176–77 and 188–90, repr. in Arbel, Cyprus, the Franks and Venice,
13th–16th Centuries (Aldershot, 2000), vi.
23 Nikolaos Panagiotakis, “Iταλικές Ακαδημίες καί θέατρo: Οι Stravaganti τoυ Χάvδακα”
[“Italian Academies and Theater: The Stravaganti of Candia”], Θέατρο 27–28 (1966), 39–53;
idem, “Μαρτυρίες για τη μoυσική στηv Κρήτη στη βεvετoκρατία” [“Evidence for Music in
Crete during Venetian Rule”], Thesaurismata 20 (1990), 7–169; and idem, “The Italian
Background of Early Cretan Literature,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), 281–323.
24 Effie F. Athanassopoulos, “Landscape Archaeology of Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece:
The Case of Nemea,” in Aegean Strategies, ed. Paul Nick Kardulias and Mark T. Shutes
(Lanham, 1997), pp. 79–105; John F. Cherry, Jack C. Davis and Eleni Mantzourani, eds.,
Landscape Archaeology as Long-Term History (Los Angeles, 1991); Frederick A. Cooper,
Houses of the Morea: Vernacular Architecture of the Northwest Peloponnesos (1205–1955)
(Athens, 2002); Jack Davis and John Bennett, “The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project,”
in Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece, ed. John Bintliff and Hanna Stöger (Oxford, 2009),
pp. 89–91; Jeannette and Björn Forsén, The Asea Valley Survey: An Arcadian Mountain Valley
from the Palaeolithic period until Modern Times (Sävedalen, 2003); Sharon E.J. Gerstel,
Mark Munn, Heather E. Grossman, Ethne Barnes, Arthur H. Rohm, Machiel Kiel, “A Late
Medieval Settlement at Panakton,” Hesperia 72 (2003), 147–234; Paul Nick Kardulias,
“Reconstructing Medieval Site Locations in Corinthia, Greece,” in Aegean Strategies,
ed. Paul Nick Kardulias and Mark T. Shutes (Lanham, 1997), pp. 107–22; Kostantinos
Kourelis, “Monuments of Rural Archaeology: Medieval Settlements in the North-
western Peloponnese” (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2003);
Athanasios K. Vionis, “The Meaning of Domestic Cubic Forms: Interpreting Cycladic
Housing and Settlements of the Period of Foreign Domination (ca. 1207–1821 ad),” Pharos
9 (2001), 111–31; Joanita Vroom, “Pots and Pans: New Perspectives on the Medieval Ceramics
of Greece,” in Material Culture in Medieval Europe: Papers of the “Medieval Europe Brugge