Dunn project description
Archie Dunn writes:
The medieval inscribed lead seals found in the American School’s excavations in and around the forum of ancient Corinth between 1920 and 1990 include nearly 200 that are sufficiently well preserved to be edited epigraphically. The vast majority are Byzantine, of the 8th to 12th centuries inclusive. Many (almost all legible) were presented in Corinth XII, but their re-edition in the light of advances in Byzantine sigillography and historical studies, and their integration with legible seals discovered since World War II, create an opportunity, not hitherto exploited, to trace the presence in Corinth, throughout the Middle Byzantine period, of the administration, the Church, and an emergent provincial elite, the evidence for which I am assessing in a broad comparative framework. In addition I propose a new kind of non-epigraphic study of these and of the numerous illegible but approximately dateable seals found around the ancient forum and to the south of it (but still within the urban area) between 1920 and the present. The focus would be upon their distribution and material cultural associations. The mode of presentation, and indeed representation, of illegible seals needs to be agreed.