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In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in Late Antiquity and especially in observing — and trying to account for — the changes and evolutions which separate the Roman world from the early medieval successor states in the West, and the Byzantine Empire in the East. Most historians, once mistrustful of archaeology's potential role, now accept that this relatively new discipline can contribute substantially to the study of the ancient past. However, archaeology, like history, is constrained by its own limitations: excavation can provide no answers to questions not rooted in the data it extracts from the ground. This chapter, and the chapters which follow, cover a wide spectrum of issues, going beyond the problem of continuity or collapse on the lower Danube. Modern research programmes operating within the region and further afield, both in the northern Balkans and in Asia Minor, are analyzed. Cities and urbanism in the Roman Empire are discussed.

Survey evidence gathered in the city of Sagalassos (Pisidia, southwestern Turkey), its suburbs, and its countryside has led to new insights into developments in the region in Late Antiquity. Coupled with the results from archaeological excavations, soundings and interdisciplinary research, a reconstruction can be made of what happened during the last centuries of the city's existence. Framing the observed changes in a larger chronological perspective, another view emerges on the fate of the city and its countryside in Late Antiquity. Terms such as ‘decline’, ‘fall’ and ‘transformation’ relate to cities and do not adequately describe contemporary evolution in the countryside. An urgent call for rural surveys is advocated to avoid the perpetuation of the intellectual trap created by this urban-centred approach.

The seven years of excavation on Dichin (Bulgaria) have made a significant contribution to our understanding of the fifth century AD, a period that is still regarded as a ‘dark age’. The fort of Iatrus was situated in the province of Moesia Secunda, where Dichin is also located. Founded at the beginning of the fourth century, the fort was several times destroyed and then rebuilt over the 300 years of its existence until it was finally abandoned c.AD 600. What is not clear is whether Iatrus' role as a part of the Roman frontier (limes) on the lower Danube belongs to the final period in the history of the Roman Empire or whether it belongs to the early development of the Byzantine State. This chapter examines whether the archaeological discoveries at Iatrus, combined with the fragmentary literary sources for the fort, suggest a gradual transition or a radical break between Late Antiquity and the early Byzantine period.

Greek and Latin inscriptions are now fully embraced within the study of Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Era. At Constantinople, inscriptions of the Byzantine era were displayed along with ancient texts imported from elsewhere in the Empire, symbolising the welding of Hellenism and Romanitas. While the number and variety of texts do not match those of earlier eras, they can furnish evidence for several aspects of society. Personal names recorded on inscriptions reveal the impact of the Latin West and of Christianity on the Greek East, in the choice of names and the styles of nomenclature. The survival of names of local origin, from Thrace, Anatolia and Syria, areas where Greek was later imposed on an earlier substrate not always written, reveals the vigour of local traditions.

One of the key aims of the ‘Transition to Late Antiquity’ research programme has been to collect a systematic data sample in order to examine local patterns and disparities at a regional level. In this project, an understanding of inter- and intra-settlement patterns of occupation is primarily acquired by calculating total density distributions of surface material, but for the examination of individual architectural units and the relationships between them, a geophysical survey has been used because of its particular ability to provide detailed information about subsurface features over a large area without excavation. This chapter describes the approach and methodology employed in the geophysical surveys carried out to assess rural settlement patterns in Bulgaria (lower Danube) as part of the ‘Transition to Late Antiquity’ research programme. Examples of particular surveys — which in general have proved remarkably successful — are used to illustrate the results.

After excavations carried out on the site of Nicopolis ad Istrum in Bulgaria, the results were used to reconstruct the city's physical and economic character from its foundation under Trajan down to the end of the sixth century. The incentive for the subsequent programme, ‘The Transition to Late Antiquity’, was the discovery that the city was replaced by a very different Nicopolis, both in layout and economy, during the fifth century. A site-specific survey method was developed to explore the countryside. The survey discovered that the Roman villa economy collapsed late in the fourth century. The excavations on the site of the late Roman fort at Dichin provided an unexpected but invaluable insight into the regional economy and military situation on the lower Danube in the fifth and sixth centuries. The results of both these two research projects are summarized and an explanation proposed as to how and why there was such a radical break between the Roman Empire and its early Byzantine successor on the lower Danube.

The archaeological excavations carried out on late Roman and early Byzantine sites in the Balkans has revolutionized our knowledge of this part of the world in Late Antiquity. How these sites are dated is obviously important as, without accurate and reliable dating, it is difficult to understand how they fit into the wider historical narrative. This chapter takes the coins excavated at Dichin as its starting point and, by careful analysis, proposes a general dating scheme for the two phases of occupation at the settlement. The lack of coins struck during the years 474–518 is a notable feature of the assemblage from Dichin, a pattern that is repeated at most sites in the region where coins of the emperor Zeno are particularly rare. By looking at both site finds and hoards from the region, however, these explanations need to be revised as they are based on a numismatic mirage rather than archaeological fact.

The fall of the Roman Empire remains a mystery. Archaeological and historical concerns today are less metaphysical and more intellectually challenging at the level of reconstructing the processes at work before, during and long after the official sack of Rome, and are as much focused on the succeeding transition to the medieval world as on the build-up to imperial decay and collapse. This chapter presents a grassroots case-study examination of the transformation of society in town and country in central Greece, founded on a regional survey project that has been running for 25 years. From the arrival of Roman control, through Late Antiquity and into the resurgence of strong state control emanating out of Byzantium in the eighth-nineth centuries AD, this chapter tries to set the patterns, provisional interpretations and questions which have arisen from the sequence in this region into wider debates around the Mediterranean concerning the contribution of regional archaeological surveys to the late antique-early medieval transition.

This chapter scrutinizes Late Roman childhood and the expectations placed on children by their nearest relatives. As source material letters and homilies of the late fourth-and early fifth-century ce ecclesiastical writers are used. Three aspects of the connection between children and familial memory are examined: children as carriers of the name and family traditions, children as tokens for memory by their very existence, and children as guarantors of after-death commemoration through patrimony and burial arrangements. As a result, the traditional practices of the non-Christianized (elite) families of the earlier Roman Empire appear to have been largely maintained: memory, carried on by one's progeny, was still a central way of understanding one's immortality after death, even among the Christians.

The reign of Augustus was the golden age of Latin poetry, and it continued to flourish throughout the first century (Ovid, Lucan, Persius, Seneca, Statius, Martial, and Juvenal). But by the middle of the second it was in even steeper decline than Greek poetry. There is little of any sort that can be dated to the second half of the second or the third century. Yet by Late Antiquity poetry had made a remarkable comeback. Indeed the resurgence of poetry after centuries of hibernation is one of the most intriguing features of the literary culture of Late Antiquity. Historically, Latin literature was heavily influenced by classical and Hellenistic Greek literature. The influence of Latin poetry on Greek is more problematic, as is the postulate of mutual influence with knowledge of Greek declining sharply in the West. Despite important differences between the two poetic revivals, this chapter suggests a common or at any rate similar explanation.

In Late Antiquity, the Balkans were transformed from a relatively prosperous region to one of great insecurity, with emperors increasingly inclined to ignore problems as long as they did not threaten the security of Constantinople itself; the Roman troops in the Balkans might appear inadequate in both quality and quantity for dealing with the challenges from beyond the Danube, particularly those posed by the great federations of Huns and Avars. Huns and Avars both shattered the Roman Empire's defences, but the process took time. Overall, the performance of the Roman army in the defence of the Balkans might seem mixed for such a significant area, although periods of considerable success should be recognized. Logistics as well as strategic and tactical thinking were powerful advantages for the Romans, and were exploited right through until the early seventh century.

The story of Nicopolis ad Istrum and its citizens exemplifies much that is common to the urban history of the whole Roman Empire. This chapter reviews the history of Nicopolis and its transition into the small fortified site of the fifth to seventh centuries and compares it with the evidence from the Near East and Asia Minor. It argues that Nicopolis may not have experienced a cataclysm as has been suggested, and that, as in the fifth and sixth century west, where landowning elites showed a striking ability to adapt and survive, there was an important element of continuity on the lower Danube, which in turn may account for the distinctive ‘Roman’ element in the early medieval Bulgar state. It also suggests that the term ‘transition to Late Antiquity’ should be applied to what happened at Nicopolis in the third century: what happened there in the fifth was the transition to the middle ages. This chapter also describes late antique urbanism in the Balkans by focusing on the Justiniana Prima site.

This chapter explores the category of ‘late antique art’. It considers some of the changes in visual production — which fall basically in the 4th century — and examines how some of the characteristic elements of late antique art that emerged then were developed by the 6th century into a last spectacular synthesis, which was truly antique but nonetheless new by contrast with earlier production.

A field survey was undertaken to understand the date and character of villas and villages within the territory of the ancient town of Nicopolis ad Istrum in Bulgaria. The principal aim was to discover whether there had been a major dislocation in the traditional Roman settlement pattern which might explain the radical changes that affected the layout, function and economy of the city during the late fifth and sixth centuries AD. The work was principally directed towards villas because, as in other provinces, it was the villa-owning class which supported the city financially and, as the ruling elite, was responsible for urban administration; numerous second- to third-century tombstones from the city's territory, evidently set up on villa estates, record the role played by the landed class in the organization of Nicopolis, either as members of the assembly (bouleutes), or as magistrates. This chapter describes the survey methodology, developed for the Transition to Late Antiquity. It originated in a surprisingly successful survey which discovered a new early Byzantine ‘city’ in north-eastern Greece.