Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art & Culture

Georgios Makris, University of British Columbia, explores issues of taste in the East Roman Empire.

Valued for its beauty, intricate production processes, and often the precious raw materials it contained, jewelry had a ubiquitous presence in the East Roman Empire. As the quintessential accessory, jewelry was an essential element of official (and sometimes non-official) attire throughout the Middle Ages. Though the medium still sits at the margins of the history of medieval art, especially in comparison to other forms of portable material culture, recent specialist scholarship has stepped outside the world’s museum galleries to consider how jewelry items were treated in the global medieval world as objects of sale, trade, and diplomatic exchange. Due to jewellery’s historical affiliation with luxury and elite culture, the question of whether and how jewelry mattered for the people of underprivileged socioeconomic backgrounds across the empire remains open. 

In this talk, Dr Makris intends to examine the reasons behind jewelry’s identification as an elite category of artefact and discuss jewelry made for and used by non-elites far from the metropolis of the empire. In doing this, Dr Makris draws on finds from excavated cemeteries in mainland Greece. Ultimately, the aim is to initiate a discussion about taste and access to trade routes by the ordinary people, who formed the majority of the population.

This lecture will take place live on Zoom, followed by a question and answer period.

Register here.

About the speaker

Georgios Makris is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in Byzantine art and archaeology, placing particular emphasis on monastic landscapes and material culture. An active archaeologist, he has participated in several projects and currently directs the Maroneia Archaeological Project, supported by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. This project studies the archaeological remains and ceramics from the city of Maroneia in Thrace (Greece) from the ninth to the fifteenth century. Makris has written on Byzantine donor portraits, the relationship between lay and monastic communities, and, lately, on jewelry and body ornaments. He recently co-convened, with Maroula Perisanidi, the fall colloquium on Disability in Middle and Late Byzantium at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.