Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

976 conclusion
a.d. to perhaps the early seventh century, and with a culture or cultures covering,
as well as the Mediterranean area, also the bordering regions from
Britain and northern Europe all the way to Mesopotamia and the hinterland
of Iran. The Christian kingdoms of Georgia, Armenia, Ethiopia and
Axum and the civilization of south Yemen have also been seen as falling
within this orbit, particularly in view of the influence upon them of
Byzantine imperial culture and religion; indeed, one of the more intriguing
features of the period is the extent to which Christian influences were felt
in pre-Islamic Arabia. The particular advantages of this way of defining
and approaching the period lie in the very avoidance of potentially inappropriate
categories and subjective and moral terms, and the possibility of
an expansive and multiform mode of description equal to the pluriformity
of the evidence. It is an approach particularly suited to cultural history, but
perhaps less so to structures of government, or economic and military
history. Nevertheless, it offers a powerful model within which to encompass
historical diversity, and a way of looking at the period which is appealing
and recognizable to many modern readers for its multiculturalism and
stress on variety.
Questions of interpretation are especially urgent in relation to certain
kinds of contemporary evidence, including visual art. In this field, traditional
analysis based on the perceived aesthetics of style is particularly apt
to lead to subjective judgements about the differences between classical and
medieval or Byzantine art, and the reasons for the supposed transition
from one to the other. Study of this material needs to be underpinned by
a concern for issues of patronage and production and by a greater willingness
to take late antique art on its own terms for what it is, rather than for
what the modern interpreter thinks it should be. In art history, too, therefore,
new models of interpretation are evolving, while historians of late
antiquity in turn are today working with a heightened consciousness of the
importance of visual and material evidence. It is possible to cite, for
example, the lively and varied architectural developments of the period,
and the way in which images, especially religious images, were coming to
carry an increasing charge of meaning for contemporaries, a precursor to
the intense quarrels over their status during the succeeding centuries. 14 If
some late antique art looks crude by comparison with the art of classical
antiquity, 15 in other cases new artistic forms took shape, indicative of great
variety and local skill. Continued contact across the Mediterranean and
between Byzantium and the east meant that images in the Byzantine style
were to be found in Rome in the sixth and seventh century, that fine
exmples of silver dishes and utensils, one of the most impressive legacies
of late antiquity, have places of origin as far apart as Britain, Syria and
14 Cormack (1997). 15 But see ch. 30 (Cormack), pp. 884,917 above.
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