Butrint 6: Excavations on the Vrina Plain

The Finds

Simon Greenslade

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789252187
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Butrint 6 describes the excavations carried out on the Vrina Plain by the Butrint Foundation from 2002–2007. Lying just to the south of the ancient port city of Butrint, these excavations have revealed a 1, 300 year long story of a changing community that began in the 1st century AD, one which not only played its part in shaping the city of Butrint but also in how the city interacted and at times reacted to the changing political, economic and cultural situations occurring across the Mediterranean World over this period. Volume II discusses the finds from the Vrina Plain excavations. This volume provides an insight into how the Vrina Plain community lived, worked and ultimately died and includes chapters on the medieval and post-medieval ceramics from the excavations, analysis of the human and faunal remains, environmental evidence, Roman and Medieval coins, a detailed study of the small finds as well as a discussion of the glass including a report on a number of glass cakes, ingots of raw glass associated with glass working that were found during the excavations. The volume also reports on five lead seals dating from the late 9th to the 10th century, an uncommon find but one which when considered with the contemporary coins suggests that for 100 years the Vrina Plain was Butrint.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Background to the site and excavations
• 1. The medieval and post-medieval pottery finds from the Vrina Plain excavations
• 2. The ancient and early Byzantine coins from Vrina Plain
• 3. Byzantine and early modern coins (9th–17th century)
• 4. Lead seals
• 5. The human skeletons from the Vrina Plain
• 6. Small Finds
• 7. The vessel glass of the Vrina Plain
• 8. Glass cakes and glass tesserae from the Vrina Plain
• 9. Diet and economy: The faunal evidence
• 10. Aquatic resource exploitation at the Vrina Plain from the 1st to the 13th century AD
• 11. Hand-collected shell
• 12. The archaeobotanical evidence of the Vrina Plain settlement
• Bibliography
• Plate section