Le bourg byzantin de Redina : contribution a la topographie historique de Mygdonie

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N. C. Moutsopoulos

Abstract

On the top of a hill with a special strategical importance which commands
a narrow passage that serves as the only way of communication
between the district of Mygdonia (of the lakes of Langada and Volvi)
and East Macedonia and Thrace, there survived certain remnants from
* an agglomeration with visible traces of the last phase of the byzantine
historic period. By this point there passes also the well known via Egnatia.
It was because of the many advantages of the site which offers
abundant means of survival — as there are numerous springs at the
foot of the hill where also the river Richios flows quietly — and also
because of the natural fortification of the hill that this place has been
chosen even since the neolithic era (as we have ascertained from the
finds PI... ) for the foundation of some town that later was given probably
the name of Bromiscus. Later on, during the years of Justinian,
at that very place there was founded the castle Artemission on the
ruins of ancient Bromiscus. This castle was also destroyed, probably
during the period of the Slavic Invasions, to reappear in the 9th century
together with the removal of the bishopric of Lete to this new place
under the title of «Λήτης καί Ρεντίνης». In this period an intense activity
is being indicated such as new buildings, fortification of the top,
restoration of the Basilica at the residence now of the Bishop. The
flourishing, however, of the agglomeration can be defined in the 13th
and 14th centuries when we identify a lot of finds and also all the elements
that make it possible for someone to study very closely the
forms of social life in a fortified byzantine agglomeration, the economic,
social and other activities of which are known not only from the discoveries
that came into light during excavation but also due to a good
deal of material in manuscripts preserved in the records of M. Athos.

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