Archaeology

This course examines the fate of the later Roman empire from the fall of Rome through the establishment of the barbarian kingdoms in the west and the rise of Constantinople in the East to the eve of the Arab conquests (AD400-700), interrogating models of decline, catastrophe, and transformation through the most recent archaeology. There is, however, much more to the study of the late antique world than the problem of how and why the Roman empire collapsed. The course explores key themes such as decline and fall, barbarians and ethnicity, urbanism, rural settlement, Christianization, the army and the economy and compare the different trajectories of Europe, Northern Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean in this period.