As the year draws to a close and thoughts turn to endings and new beginnings, Late Antiquity came to mind as a theme for exploration. As a period of shifting fortunes and blurred transitions, the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity has long divided scholars into two camps, those who view the period as a time of flourishing, dynamic transition and those taking the opposing view, that it was a time of disaster and upheaval. Such binaries are increasingly being contested, however. Humphries (2017) has called for a new perspective on Late Antique studies, arguing that taking a world historical perspective can help to challenge conventional approaches and establish globally informed narratives of the period. This NBC considers the degree to which this potential paradigm shift might be reflected in a sample of the current scholarship on Late Antiquity. In addition to their shared chronological scope, these books are further united by the common theme of contesting established perceptions. From challenging what an archaeological survey should look like to exploding the myth of islands as insular and isolated, all of these books ask us to look again at what we think we know about Late Antiquity.
Publication of the Boeotia project represents the culmination of 40 years of fieldwork and research. While a series of interim publications have detailed the various stages of the project, the substantial monographs presenting the fully analysed data have been much anticipated, Volume II detailing the city of Thespiai especially. Rather than privileging known sites or regions fêted by classical authors, the survey adopted a systematic approach to document the widest cross-section of ancient society and a multi-period strategy to facilitate the broadest possible understanding of changing landscape use. Innovative from its inception in 1978, the project's longevity has allowed it to take advantage of developing technologies and revised methodologies to maximise both its spatial coverage and its interpretation of data.
Between 1979 and 1984, intensive field survey was undertaken of the rural area surrounding Mavrommati—located between the substantial ancient cities of Thespiai and Haliartos. The survey covered the area to the south and north-west of Mavrommati, as far as the environs of Haliartos and Thespiai. Although it began as a rural landscape survey, by the mid 1980s, the project had developed a strategy for surveying ancient urban sites, as well as their rural hinterlands, including the ancient settlement of Thespiai. The survey of the southern hinterland of Thespiai is the subject of the first volume of the project monographs (Bintliff et al. 2007); the city itself is the focus of Volume II, under review here. This volume presents data and analysis from the 1985–1986 surface survey of the city of Thespiai along with a catalogue and interpretation of the architectural pieces studied between 1985 and 2009. The volume includes individual specialist reports detailing ceramic and numismatic finds; alongside these data are thoughtful considerations of documentary sources that complement the fieldwork and synthetic chapters on the later history of Thespiai.
The data chapters begin with a discussion of the earliest evidence for the archaeological discovery of Thespiai. Antiquarian sources are silent on the site until the mid seventeenth century; after this date, it became a popular destination, with the location finally identified as the actual site of Thespiai in the later eighteenth century by Edward Dodwell and William Martin Leake. Its fame, however, led ultimately to its destruction. Proving more attractive for epigraphers than archaeologists, the site came to be viewed as a rich source of inscriptions that could be usefully mined. The destruction of the kastro in the late nineteenth century in the search for spolia bearing inscriptions, among other damage, led the volume's authors to conclude that the site would be better understood by ground survey than by archaeological excavation. (Kastra being contracted, nucleated settlements, often with defensive walls, that replaced classical cities in Late Antiquity.)
Chapter 3a–c details the methodology, analysis and period-by-period maps of the survey results. Here, the justification for the methodology of the Thespiai city survey is outlined, and the geology, geomorphology and topography of the survey area are described, supported by geological maps, aerial photographs and archival images. Identifying the circuit of the now destroyed kastro gave the survey an urban focal point. From here, the area was gridded, with survey extending in all directions; work proceeded in each direction until typical off-site sherd densities suggested that the rural hinterland had been reached.
The extensive architectural survey is presented in Chapter 4. The data gathered for this analysis include architectural fragments discovered during the 1985–1986 project survey and those recorded during subsequent survey by a team from University of Rome Tor Vergata in 2002–2003. Further observations were made in 1996 by Anthony Snodgrass and, in 1995–1996, by John Bintliff; these were compiled in 2001 and complete the catalogue. The survey data are presented in three parts: part I catalogues the architecturally diagnostic pieces; part II the material evidence for the city's defences; and part III the discoveries made by a team from the University of Ljubljana, and additional data from archaeological work in advance of construction in the vicinity during 2012–2014 provided by the 9th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities.
A particularly interesting aspect of this chapter is Uroš Kirn's study of the Thespian theatre. Known only from references in Pausanias’ second-century AD description of Thespiai and evidenced purely by a nineteenth-century reference to the discovery of fragments of theatre seating, the location of which is no longer known, the theatre is something of a mystery. One of the Ljubljana team's objectives was to attempt to locate the theatre. This involved dense topographical survey, the creation of digital terrain models and a three-dimensional digital model of a Greek theatre to attempt to find a natural geographical fit for such a building in the landscape. In total, five possible locations were identified and modelled before three were ruled out. The remaining two potential sites are very close together and differ largely in orientation rather than spatial location. The team's conclusion is that one or other of these two sites is the most probable location of the theatre, with the disappearance of the structure's fabric most probably due to its reuse in the construction of the kastro walls.
Chapter 5 offers a historical analysis of Thespiai, charting the city's fortunes in the Archaic period, during the Persian Wars and under the period of the Theban and Hellenistic Leagues. In the following chapter, Robin Osborne decodes the epigraphy of the city by asking questions of the corpus such as: what is thought significant enough to be recorded? Which languages are being used? And what can it tell us about Thespians’ identities? He finds that Thespiai was a city “held together not by doing business together, but by playing together—playing soldiers, and watching festival plays” (p. 229).
The volume brings together an enormous amount of data and expertise to present a thorough account of the history and identity of an ancient city from its Neolithic origins through seven millennia of occupation. Using a methodology that has stood the test of time, the survey reveals that systematic analysis of an ancient city can provide an unexpected depth of understanding and represent a microcosm of the wider history of the period.
Continuing the theme of change over the longue durée, Change and resilience: the occupation of Mediterranean islands in Late Antiquity focuses on island archaeology to explore resilience of island communities and how their historical narratives are affected by the privileged place of islands in the modern psyche. Often mythologised because of their apparent isolation or ‘otherness’, islands have been regarded as magical or mystical or associated with concepts such as paradise or exile. The editors, who approach the volume from the unique perspective and actual position of islanders, set out to challenge these perceptions, considering that islands can be “a concept beyond their physical barriers” (p. xxiii). The chapters are organised so that they reflect a west–east journey across the Mediterranean, beginning with Mallorca (with a chapter by Mas Florit and Cau Ontiveros) and ending in Cyprus (Vionis & Papantoniou), by way of Corsica (Castiglia and Pergola), Sardinia (Spanu), Sicily (Molinari), the Adriatic Islands (Jurković), Crete (Zanini; Tsigonaki), the Cyclades (Sweetman; Turner & Crow) and the southern Aegean Islands (Poulou).
One chapter taking the long view of change and resilience is Alessandra Molinari's study of Sicily from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. She considers the links between socio-political structure and a transformation or persistence of exchange networks, settlements and systems of agriculture in Late Antique Sicily. Focusing on the area of Castronovo di Sicilia, the ‘Sicily in Transition’ project aims to investigate the sites that appear to have been significant from the sixth to thirteenth centuries to understand their resilience and success. Molinari considers the goods traded between Africa and Sicily, such as sulphur from Agrigento, which was exported to North Africa, and North African ceramics received in Sicily. Her findings suggest that despite a decline in the seventh century, African imports still made up the majority of the ceramic assemblage of that period on the south coast of Sicily as well as in the north-west of the island. Change came in the eighth century; it is difficult to recognise any imports from North Africa in this period. The same pattern is reflected in coinage, with gold coins diminishing significantly in Sicily in the later eighth century. In contrast to these changes, settlement patterns show that some of the major agro-towns, such as Sofiana and Casale San Pietro, remained in existence and prospered right up to the twelfth century. Eastern Sicily seems to have been particularly resilient in terms of settlement systems. While the survival of the rural settlements is in part bound up with the transference of large Sicilian estates from private ownership to religious institutions or imperial possession, the resilience of these sites is attributed to the strong social cohesion among the communities working the land.
In her chapter on the processes of Christianisation in the Cyclades, Rebecca Sweetman challenges the preconceived ideas of islands as insular and isolated, recognising the significant communication networks centred on islands. It appears that it is not only modern thinking that can misunderstand the psyche of islanders; literary evidence from Late Antiquity suggests island life was conservative, isolated and even bleak. The archaeological evidence, by contrast, suggests that island life was dynamic and resilient. In fact, far from being peripheral and marginalised, islands in the Cyclades hosted some of the earliest monumental Christian architecture. Sweetman argues that the resilience of islands, and by extension islanders, meant that significant social changes, such as Christianisation, had a lesser impact on daily life. Fundamental to this was “the successful co-existence of sets of dichotomies” (p. 212), aided by being part of networks of communication.
The final chapter by David Abulafia serves as a summary of the issues that hamper our understanding of island life, concluding that the fate of islands must be understood in the context of the broader economic, social and political developments around the Mediterranean. Together the contributors make a persuasive case that far from being insular backwaters, islands in Late Antiquity were diverse, dynamic and embedded in networks of connectivity.
From mythologised islands to mythologised deserts, our next volume focuses on another landscape that has lent itself to fantasy and myth. The monastic landscape of Late Antique Egypt: an archaeological reconstruction seeks to combine archaeology with history, art history and papyrology to break down the traditional methodological divisions between these disciplines and to understand more fully the monastic landscape of Egypt in Late Antiquity.
Taking a phenomenological approach to the Late Antique monastic built environment, this volume illustrates the diversity of monastic sites and buildings in the desert landscape and aims to provide a heuristic rubric for determining monastic settlements—as opposed to other domestic settlements. Finding that early accounts of Egyptian monasticism, such as those of nineteenth-century missionaries, travellers and antiquarians, did much to shape perceptions of monastic sites as isolated, wild and hostile, Brooks Hedstrom revisits the results of early twentieth-century archaeological excavations, such as those at Bawit, Saqqara, Thebes and Wadi Sarga, to demonstrate that these negative perceptions are unfounded.
The archaeology of monastic built environments in Egypt has undoubtedly been a victim of the privileging of the Pharaonic landscape, both in terms of its underrepresentation in studies of the region and physically as Christian remains were stripped from the landscape in the nineteenth century to enhance the experience of tourists visiting the Ptolemaic and Roman sites. Brooks Hedstrom argues that while monastic buildings have been reduced to “a simple evolutionary model of occupation” (p. 2), there is a significant diversity in the forms of buildings adopted by Late Antique monastic communities in Egypt. Some demonstrated an ability to transform the natural landscape and to live comfortably in it, others show that communities reclaimed land that was underused. Often the monastic communities lived in places that were visible and accessible to the wider population, meaning that they would have been less removed and mysterious than often thought. There is no evident blueprint for monastic dwellings, and no obvious architectural division between monastic traditions such as anchoritic and coenobitic.
The author applies a refreshing theoretically informed approach to a subject that has suffered from what she terms a “mindscape of monasticism” (p. xvi). This latter envisions a harsh and isolated landscape, but is not informed by physical realities. In fact, the Late Antique desert was a well-populated landscape, occupied by a diverse community. Brooks Hedstrom terms it a “desertscape of monasticism” (p. xvi), to reflect better the reality of monastic communities and their role within wider society.
Our final two volumes bring together a range of disciplinary methodologies to examine the substantial changes in society during Late Antiquity. Jason Moralee's study of the Capitoline Hill is as broad-ranging in its use of evidence and its chronological scope as it is narrow in its geographic focus. The book is in two parts, the first offers a diachronic treatment of the Capitoline Hill as a physical location that saw centuries of ceremonies, orations and ritual procession. In contrast, Part II considers the idea of the Capitol as a “dreamed-of reality” (p. 24). Here, Moralee focuses on the role of the hill in Late Antique Rome and examines the shifting attitudes to its importance for the eternity of Empire and legitimation of imperial authority. The subsequent association of the Capitol with religious persecution led to its negative appraisal by Christian writers. The mythologised idea of the Capitoline Hill is investigated alongside its role as a physical space that shaped the cityscape of Rome.
Moralee charts the declining importance of the Capitol in Roman life. This stretches from the age of Augustus when triumphs were no longer considered appropriate, through to the third-century AD decentralisation of symbolic topography with the regular absence of the emperor from Rome and the founding of other imperial capitals. It was not until the early fifth century, however, that St Peter's basilica replaced the Capitol as a symbolic ‘station’ in the ritual imperial routes around the city. This was tied into the Christianisation of the topography of Rome. It also reflected a societal shift which dictated that emperors should be engaged with the people—or at least imagined to be—rather than aloof and removed in the elevated Capitol.
Despite the shift in emphasis on locations and accessibility of the imperial person, “the act of remembering the Capitol was to collect scattered memories of the Roman Empire into a location that signified the eternity of the empire and the populus Romanus” (p. 113). So ingrained in the public psyche was the idea of the Capitoline and its synonymity with ‘Rome’ that when Rome was threatened by incursions, doctrinal disputes and civil unrest in the late fourth century, Constantine was retrospectively blamed for having abandoned the Capitol and thereby brought about the collapse of Roman civilisation.
This engaging volume charts the ways in which the Capitol was disentangled from public rituals and eventually from its associations with Rome's past. Considering the role of the Capitol in Christian imagery, in which the power of the saints was thought to be draining the pagan power of the Capitol, Moralee explores the ‘idea’ of the Capitol in the popular Christian imagination as a proxy for the demons of paganism.
Ine Jacob and Hugh Elton's Asia Minor in the long sixth century presents a collection of papers that are diverse in their approaches and in the topics that they discuss, ranging from rural prosperity (Elton) to frontier management (Intagliata), and considering cities as disparate as Assos (Böhlendorf-Arslan), a provincial city, and Constantinople (Crow), the imperial capital. What unites them is their attempt to understand life in sixth-century Asia Minor, which emerges as more vibrant than previously thought.
Kristina Terpoy outlines the problems with chronologically focused studies in her chapter considering methodologies for economic analyses in Asia Minor. She considers the issues that hinder economic assessments such as changes in investment where resources are channelled outside of urban centres or spent on projects other than monumental construction, and thereby prove a poor fit for existing models for measuring prosperity. Imprecision in chronological dating is a further hindrance, especially where buildings are dated by architectural style to a very broad period. Differences in excavation methods and data collection and processing can also prove difficult to integrate into comparative studies. Terpoy cites three regions as case studies to demonstrate the difficulties inherent in producing overarching narratives. She also uses these studies to encourage continued attempts to compare geographically disparate economic developments, suggesting that by considering the small-scale nuances in settlement change, it is possible to understand the broader economy of regions.
Angela Commito considers the transformation of cityscapes in her chapter on the cities of sixth-century Asia Minor, looking in particular at how political and social change is manifested in the building of churches, fortifications and civic amenities, and how the association of cemeteries with churches dissolved existing boundaries between the living and the dead and contributed to the ‘ruralisation’ of cities. She concludes that the vibrancy of cities can be seen to decline in sixth-century Asia Minor and links this with the increasing prosperity of the countryside at the same time, a theme addressed by Hugh Jeffery in his chapter considering urbanism in western Asia Minor. After examining the fabric of Hierapolis, Priene, Miletus and Sardis, Jeffery concludes that while traditional venues for civic assembly were being abandoned from the later fifth century, congregation was still a feature of urban life, but was now focused in the basilicas. While it is clear that the fabric of the cities changed substantially in the sixth century, it was the result of only a partial abandonment and should be seen as counterbalanced by new rural developments. This concept is further debated by Hugh Elton in his chapter examining rural sites. Taken together the papers in the volume offer new insights into the archaeology of sixth-century Asia Minor, revealing its vibrancy, reflecting the most current research and highlighting lacunae in our knowledge that provide opportunities for future research.
Collectively, these volumes ask us to re-evaluate our understanding of Late Antiquity, to revisit the evidence and challenge conventional wisdom. They demonstrate the connectivity of events, of societies and places and encourage us to question continually our perception of Late Antiquity and the past more generally.
This list includes all books received between 1 July 2019 and 31 August 2019. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle have, however, not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book in this chronicle does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
