The impact of Riverscapes on human mobility and the shaping of economies in Late Antiquity

Thursday, December 18, 2025 - 17:00

Location: Boğaziçi University, South Campus, Perkins Hall (The Faculty of Engineering/Mühendislik), Room 1100

Boğaziçi University Byzantine Studies Research Center cordially invites you to a lecture by Alkiviadis Ginalis , entitled "Τα Πάντα ῥεῖ - The impact of Riverscapes on human mobility and the shaping of economies in Late Antiquity".

The lecture will be held at Boğaziçi University, South Campus, Perkins Hall (The Faculty of Engineering/Mühendislik), Room 1100 on December 18, 2025 at 5:00 pm.

To register, if you are not affiliated with Boğaziçi University, please contact byzantinestudies@bogazici.edu.tr

Τα Πάντα ῥεῖ - The impact of Riverscapes on human mobility and the shaping of economies in Late Antiquity

Alkiviadis Ginalis

Abstract

Riverscapes represent one of the central lifelines for the interaction between humans and the natural environment and thus the basis for the development of agriculture, industrial exploitation and economic systems in the wider sense. Unlike other fields of research, however, the Byzantine scholarship does not associate Byzantium with rivers. Hence, river courses and valleys have long been ignored as vital platforms and carriers of connectivity. Along with the major rivers that define the territory of the Byzantine Empire, it is primarily the small rivers and streams that dominate the landscape and thus influence not only communication and daily life, but also economic exchange. The current lecture therefore aims to illuminate the role of riverine waterways as essential factor for the Economy of the Eastern Mediterranean by providing a general analysis of written sources, art historical evidence and archaeological data.

Brief Biography:

Alkiviadis Ginalis is a Byzantine Maritime Archaeologist specialised in Seafaring and Harbour Studies of the late antique and medieval periods. His research interests range from different aspects of seafaring and shipwreck archaeology to harbour architecture and maritime network studies, coastal topography and environmental studies as well as maritime economy and socio-cultural exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Alkiviadis Ginalis did his Magister Philosophicum in Byzantine Studies and Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna in 2008 and his D.Phil. at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology of Oxford University in 2014. In 2015, he received a Marie-Curie Fellowship with a European Union funded research project on “Aegean Port networks of the Roman to Byzantine periods” and in 2016 he was elected Associated Junior Fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study). After his Research Fellowship at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz for the DFG-Research Programme “Harbours from the Roman Period to the Middle Ages” and Visiting Research Fellowship at the Department of Byzantine Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences between 2017 and 2019, Alkiviadis Ginalis moved to Istanbul, where he is currently working at the Istanbul Department of the German Archaeological Institute as Research Lecturer for Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and Head of the Archives. In 2025 he was appointed to the Professorship of Maritime Archaeology at the University of the Peloponnese.

Alkiviadis Ginalis published widely on many aspects of Byzantine seafaring, harbour studies and maritime economic networks – among them his latest monograph on “Harbours of the Aegean in Late Antiquity and the Medieval Period. Thessaly, Maritime Connectivity, and the Eastern Mediterranean Seascape” at Archaeopress (Oxford) or his (for this lecture series relevant) forthcoming publications “Insular Episcopates. Church, Maritime Environment and Economic Life in the Southern Aegean Islands (AD 300-800)” by De Gruyter and “The Western Black Sea Coast. Networks and Connectivity” by Brepols.

Alkiviadis Ginalis shows an equally wide range of research activities and fieldwork experience, having worked in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy and Austria. He has directed a series of research programmes and field projects, which since 2019 centre primarily around the Eastern Aegean Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, such as his archaeological excavations in the Küçükçekmece Lagoon or his involvement in “The BRIA Project – The Landscape and rock-cut Architecture of Medieval Thrace”.