This book promotes the study of material spatiality in late antiquity: not just the study of buildings, but of the people, dress and objects used within them, drawing on all available source material. It seeks to explore the material world as it was lived in late antiquity, in an interpretative inquiry, rather than simply describing the evidence that has survived until today. The volume presents a series of comprehensive bibliographic essays which provide an overview of relevant literature, along with discussions of the nature of the sources, of relevant approaches and field methods. The main section of the book explores domestic space, vessels in context, dress, shops and workshops, religious space, and military space. Synthetic papers drawing on a wide range of archaeological, art-historical and textual sources are complemented by case-studies of context-rich late antique sites in the East Mediterranean and elsewhere, including Pella, Dura-Europos, Scythopolis, and Sagalassos.

The Roman economy was operated significantly above subsistence level, with production being stimulated by both taxation and trade. Some regions became wealthy on the basis of exporting low-value agricultural products across the Mediterranean. In contrast, it has usually been assumed that the high costs of land transport kept inland regions relatively poor. This volume challenges these assumptions by presenting new research on production and exchange within inland regions. The papers, supported by detailed bibliographic essays, range from Britain to Jordan. They reveal robust agricultural economies in many interior regions. Here, some wealth did come from high value products, which could defy transport costs. However, ceramics also indicate local exchange systems, capable of generating wealth without being integrated into inter-regional trading networks. The role of the State in generating production and exchange is visible, but often co-existed with local market systems. Contributors are Alyssa A. Bandow, Fanny Bessard, Michel Bonifay, Kim Bowes, Stefano Costa, Jeremy Evans, Elizabeth Fentress, Piroska Hárshegyi, Adam Izdebski, Luke Lavan, Tamara Lewit, Phil Mills, Katalin Ottományi, Peter Sarris, Emanuele Vaccaro, Agnès Vokaer, Mark Whittow and Andrea Zerbini.

Fifteen papers focus on the active and dynamic uses of images during the first millennium AD. They bring together an international group of scholars who situate the period’s visual practices within their political, religious, and social contexts. The contributors present a diverse range of evidence, including mosaics, sculpture, and architecture from all parts of the Mediterranean, from Spain in the west to Jordan in the east. Contributions span from the depiction of individuals on funerary monuments through monumental epigraphy, Constantine’s expropriation and symbolic re-use of earlier monuments, late antique collections of Classical statuary, and city personifications in mosaics to the topic of civic prosperity during the Theodosian period and dynastic representation during the Umayyad dynasty. Together they provide new insights into the central role of visual culture in the constitution of late antique societies.

Late Antique artefacts, and the images they carry, attest to a highly connected visual culture from ca. 300 to 800 C.E. On the one hand, the same decorative motifs and iconographies are found across various genres of visual and material culture, irrespective of social and economic differences among their users – for instance in mosaics, architectural decoration, and luxury arts (silver plate, textiles, ivories), as well as in everyday objects such as tableware, lamps, and pilgrim vessels. On the other hand, they are also spread in geographically distant regions, mingled with local elements, far beyond the traditional borders of the classical world. At the same time, foreign motifs, especially of Germanic and Sasanian origin, are attested in Roman territories. This volume aims at investigating the reasons behind this seemingly globalised visual culture spread across the Late Antique world, both within the borders of the (former) Roman and (later) Byzantine Empire and beyond, bringing together diverse approaches characteristic of different national and disciplinary traditions. The presentation of a wide range of relevant case studies chosen from different geographical and cultural contexts exemplifies the vast scale of the phenomenon and demonstrates the benefit of addressing such a complex historical question with a combination of different theoretical approaches.

Honorius explores the personal life and tumultuous times of one of the last emperors of the Roman West. From his accession to the throne aged ten to his death at thirty-eight, Honorius’ reign was blighted by a myriad of crises: military rebellions, political conspiracies, barbarian invasions, and sectarian controversies. The notorious sack of the city of Rome occurred on Honorius’ watch, and much of the western empire was given over to anarchy and violence. This book should interest undergraduates, research students, and professional scholars. Given the enduring appeal of the fall of Rome and the collapse of western Roman civilization, the wider public should also find much of interest.

In this volume, nine contributions deal with the ways in which imperial power was exercised in the fourth century AD, paying particular attention to how it was articulated and manipulated by means of literary strategies and iconographic programmes.