Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology

440 Pages·2005·4.11 MB·English

by  Luke Lavan

THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LATE ANTIQUE ARCHAEOLOGY
LATE ANTIQUE
ARCHAEOLOGY
Editorial Board
MANAGING EDITOR
LUKE LAVAN
EDITORS
Averil Cameron
James Cron
Simon Ellis
Jean-Pierre Sodini
Bryan Ward-Perkins
VOLUME 1 (2003)
THEORY AND PRACTICE
IN LATE ANTIQUE
ARCHAEOLOGY
EDITED BY
LUKE LAVAN and WILLIAM BOWDEN
BRILL
LEIDEN •BOSTON
2003
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Theory and practice in late antique archaeology / edited by Luke Lavan -
Leiden ; Boston :
Brill, 2003
(Late Antique Archaeology ; Vol. 1)
ISBN 90-04-12567-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available
ISSN 1570-6893
ISBN 90 04 12567 1
© Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written
permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal
use is granted by Brill provided that
the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright
Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910
Danvers MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
printed in the netherlands
contents v
CONTENTS
Late Antique Archaeology: An Introduction ................................. vii
Luke Lavan
Part One: Ideologies and Agendas
Ideologies and Agendas in Late Antique Studies........................... 3
Averil Cameron
Part Two: Social Life
Archaeology and Late Antique Social Structures.......................... 25
Jean-Pierre Sodini
The Construction of Identities in post-Roman Albania................ 57
William Bowden
Some Aspects of the Transformation of the Roman Domus
between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages...................... 79
Barbara Polci
Part Three: The Economy
Late Antique Trade: Research Methodologies & Field Practices 113
Sean A. Kingsley
Coins and the Late Roman Economy............................................ 139
Richard Reece
Part Four: Topography
Late Antique Urban Topography: From Architecture to Human
Space ........................................................................................... 171
Luke Lavan
The Urban Ideal and Urban Planning in Byzantine New Cities
of the Sixth Century A.D. .......................................................... 196
Enrico Zanini
Christian Topography in the Late Antique Town: Recent
Results and Open Questions ...................................................... 224
Gisella Cantino Wataghin
Topographies of Production in North African Cities during
the Vandal and Byzantine Periods.............................................. 257
Anna Leone
vi contents
Archaeological Survey and Visualisation: The View from
Byzantium ................................................................................... 288
Richard Bayliss
The Political Topography of the Late Antique City: Activity
Spaces in Practice........................................................................ 314
Luke Lavan
Part Five: Spolia
Attitudes to Spolia in some Late Antique Texts .............................. 341
Robert Coates-Stephens
Valenza Del Reimpiego: Il Caso di Efeso....................................... 359
Ida Leggio
Part Six: Decline and Fall? Studying Long-term Change
Studying Long-term Change in the West, A.D. 400-800............... 385
Chris Wickham
Decline and Fall? Studying Long-term Change in the East.......... 404
Mark Whittow
Index................................................................................................ 425
contents vii
LATE ANTIQUE ARCHAEOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION
LUKE LAVAN
The Justification of a Specialism
Late Antique Archaeology has been slow to emerge. Although Late
Antiquity has been a legitimate period of study for the past thirty
years, archaeologists have generally preferred to remain as Roman,
Early Medieval, Byzantine or ‘Christian’. This partly reflects the long-
term perspectives common in archaeology. It also reflects the fact
that Late Antiquity was a period of profound change, causing some
people to look in one direction, others in another. That said, there
are strong reasons for distinguishing a late antique archaeology. Most
important of these is the now broad acceptance that in territories
that later made up the Middle Byzantine empire, the 7th c. saw a
rupture in economic life, urban development and rural settlement.1
By these same criteria the Mediterranean of the 3rd-6th c. A.D. looks
very Roman; in contrast the miserable world of middle Byzantium
offers only forms of continuity, not continuity of scale. It is the overall
scale of society that seems to many archaeologists to be the most
straightforward way of organising history. In these terms, Late An-
tiquity, in both East and West, essentially belongs to the ancient
world; only in Egypt and the Levant is it difficult to identify pro-
found changes in scale by the later 7th c. Late antique archaeology
sits most comfortably as a sub-period within Roman archaeology,
not as part of Western or Byzantine Medieval studies.2
Nevertheless, there are some arguments for distinguishing late an-
tique from Roman archaeology as a whole. This cannot be done in
terms of rural settlement, production, trade or technology, except
1 For a recent view of the ‘rupture’, within later Byzantine territories, see M.
Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium (606-1025) (London 1996) 53-68, 89-
95.
2 This is not to deny that ruptures happened in different regions at different
times during the 5th to 7th c. but it is intended to describe broad patterns of change
in the period as they relate to the Mediterranean.
viii introduction
in peripheral regions where change comes early. It does however
seem possible in terms of urban, religious or military archaeology.
Here, long-term changes within Roman society and external pres-
sures create a recognisably distinct late antique situation. For urban
history this means dealing not just with new political and religious
structures, but also with new problems in the types of evidence we
have, with the re-use of old architectural structures, a decline in
clearly ideological planning and the use of less well-defined build-
ing types. Some of this ground has of course been covered by Chris-
tian archaeology, but the specificity of this sub-discipline does not
satisfy archaeologists who wish to study society holistically in terms
of broad structures; tracing specific cultural traits across radically
different periods holds little appeal. There does therefore seem some
justification for an archaeology of Late Antiquity. The idea of this
series of books is essentially to support this development, through
bringing together new and established scholars to address general
themes, such as rural settlement, social structure, and the economy.
As such, it does not intend to exclude historians: indeed historians
frequently show themselves better at synthesising archaeological in-
formation than their archaeological colleagues.
Archaeological Theory in Late Antique Archaeology
This volume is based on two conferences held in 2001 under the
banner of “Late Antique Archaeology”, at the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford and the Swedish Institute in Rome: examining respectively
“New Research, Method and Practice” and “Topographical Stud-
ies in Late Antiquity”. Both were intended to provide a strong foun-
dation for the series by examining a range of topics from theoreti-
cal and methodological viewpoints. This was something of a gamble
as late antique archaeology tends to be extremely empirical; we did
not even dare put the word “theory” in the conference title. The
volume that has resulted will not be easily recognisable to anyone
familiar with theoretical archaeology as being part of this genre. This
is the result of deliberate choice. Theoretical archaeology is a high-
ly developed area of thought, especially in Scandinavia, the UK and
the US. Nevertheless, it is widely recognised that there is something
of a gulf between those literate in theory and the rest of the archae-
ological community. This is less strong in prehistory, but for much
introduction ix
of historical archaeology, especially classical archaeology, it is strik-
ing; one frequently gets the impression that many classical archae-
ologists have never even heard of theoretical archaeology. There have
been heroic efforts made by the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Confer-
ence, based in the UK, to bridge this gap, through a series of annual
conferences. However, this work inevitably tends to reflect the pre-
dominantly British interests of the researchers active in the group
and their attachment to theoretical ideas developed by pre-histori-
ans. Some topics do engage with the Mediterranean, but these tend
to relate to the early Roman period. Those that have been written
on Late Antiquity are sadly not widely read in the mainstream of
Mediterranean empirical scholarship.3
The lack of penetration of archaeological theory into mainstream
Roman and late antique archaeology is, intellectually, to be regret-
ted. A healthy awareness of the shape of our ideas and the prob-
lems of our evidence cannot but bring benefits. Nonetheless, it is fair
to say that the widespread feeling of caution about applying theo-
retical archaeology to the historical archaeology of the Mediterra-
nean is probably justified. It is very difficult to transpose the inter-
pretative tools developed primarily in prehistory to a cultural zone
rich in texts. Here interpretation is largely bounded by information
from written sources and many approaches widely accepted elsewhere
in archaeology can seem inappropriate in their terminology and pre-
suppositions. Before the wider scholarly community that is Late
Antique Studies, one cannot talk about the ‘elite’ without talking
about curiales and senators, one cannot talk about ‘social life’ with-
out slaves or humiliores, or cannot talk about economics without the
annona, or identity without reference to Romanitas or Christianity.
Work that does not do this is just not taken seriously.
Thus, if archaeological theory is to make a strong contribution
to late antique archaeology, it will be necessary to work out the use-
fulness of different approaches in terms of very specific issues—to try
out new ideas and intellectual frameworks whilst engaging fully with
the possibilities of rich Mediterranean evidence, both archaeologi-
cal and textual. The rationale behind this volume was to encourage
work of this kind, by examining theory and methodology relating
to specific topics with which scholars are currently engaged. Con-
3 For a review of the volumes from this series see R. Laurence, “Theoretical
Roman Archaeology”, in Britannia 30 (1999) 387-90.