In the end, why does any of what I have written above matter? As I write this book, I glance at the news. We are living in trying times. Increasingly we live in societies where people are not tolerant of difference, whether in our own countries or abroad, and people struggle to find common ground. Violence based in identity (religious and social) and dominance is, I think, depressing to any historian or archaeologist—we have seen it all before. Further, the medieval world has been used at times to justify violence and bigotry. Most notable, of course, is the lack of understanding of the crusades, which are generally presented as a Muslim versus Christian debacle. Little is understood about the contextual situation with al-Hakim in Egypt which led to the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; only that it was done. Little is understood about the social situation in Europe that allowed the pope to use what was, in essence, a political matter between Egypt and the Levant to send hordes of bored young men to the Middle East under the pretence of returning Jerusalem to the Christians. Rather, historical and modern conflicts are still understood in stark black and white terms in the modern world.

As historians, archaeologists, and students of the East Roman world, we understand that the history of the regions covered by the East Roman Empire was in fact never this simple, and that different religious, ethnic, and social populations existed alongside one another for centuries. They borrowed from one another, learned from one another, and, of course, they fought with one another. But their lived reality was a far cry from the stark historical divisions that we sometimes assume. We need to present this material in more nuanced ways, both to create more realistic narratives of the past and to do our part to combat modern perceptions of the past that are based on false narratives.