Early Byzantine Stobi in Context: A Study of the Episcopal Basilica and the Jewish Synagogue

In 2016, I spent two weeks working on the archaeological site of Stobi, located in the Republic of Northern Macedonia. Approximately one third of the site has been excavated since its discovery in the 1920’s. This thesis focuses on two buildings from the site, the Episcopal Basilica and the Jewish Synagogue. I ask whether archaeology alone can give an accurate representation of a site when literary sources are not available; as is the case with Stobi. These two buildings can be compared, both in structure and decoration, to various sites across the Mediterranean, such as the church at Um er-Rasas and the synagogues at Dura Europos and throughout Jordan. The Jewish Synagogue sheds light on the late Roman/Early Byzantine period, and the Episcopal Basilica on the slightly later Early Byzantine Empire. This thesis studies the correlation between the material culture and the political or economic stability of a city. Finally, I examine the tumultuous modern history of the Macedonian region to determine how the archaeology might have been affected by the region’s political history