Across 18 individually authored chapters, this volume offers fresh insight into how Italy was crucial to the East Roman world across the early and cenral Middle Ages.

An interdiscplinary approach, incorporating historiography, archaeology, social, political, and economic history, this study provides a vast array of perspectives on the themes of empire, cities, and elites.

With contributions from established and early career scholars, elucidating particular issues of scholarship as well as general historical developments, the volume provides both immediate contributions and opens space for a new generation of readers and scholars to a growing field.