A conversation with Fotini Kondyli (University of Virginia) about our changing picture of rural communities in late Byzantium, based on her book Rural Communities in Late Byzantium: Resilience and Vulnerability in the Northern Aegean (Cambridge University Press 2022). We talk about resilience in times of crisis -- the fourteenth century was not an easy one! -- and about how we can reimagine and restore the power and agency of these rural non-elites. We also talk about survey archaeology, one of our main tools for accessing these communities.