The topic of the end of the Roman villa system and the subsequent transformations and afterlives of villa sites began to interest archaeologists in the late 20th c. Until this point in time, it was routinely assumed that elite villa residences had been destroyed or simply abandoned due to military and economic disasters in the late 3rd c. CE. The latest phases of use at the sites were generally ignored or dismissed as insignificant traces of ephemeral “squatter” occupation. Two seminal publications set the scene for a change in understanding: John Hayes’s work on late Roman pottery, which enabled more accurate and precise dating of villa occupation phases in the 4th to 5th c. CE; and the discussion of villa survival beyond the 4th c. CE and reuse of villa sites in John Percival’s Reference Percival1976 study.Footnote ¹ It is only since the 1990s, however, that scholars have begun to thoroughly examine and distinguish the different patterns of productive, habitational, cultic, and funerary “afterlives” of villas, based on more recently excavated evidence.Footnote ² The forms of site transformation that are now familiar topics of discussion include the installation of functional activities such as metalworking or agricultural storage; the construction of small hamlets built of ephemeral materials; the building of churches or baptisteries; and/or the use of spaces for burials.Footnote ³ During the past decade, scholars have explored plant, animal, and human remains at such sites,Footnote ⁴ increasing our potential understanding of land use, population, and ecological or socio-political change after the end of the villas.

Beth Munro’s volume Recycling the Roman Villa investigates one form of villa afterlife: the reuse of former villa residences across the western provinces for specific types of industrial activities. Munro identifies and explores in detail the systematic stripping, for reuse and recycling, of elements of villa architecture and contents including glass, lead pipes, bronze decorative elements and objects, iron parts, marble, and tiles. These are identified by material stockpiles; hearths, ovens, kilns, and furnaces for processing materials; and remains of craft workshops. The book is illustrated with more than 30 photos, line drawings, and floor plans of the relevant archaeological sites. The subtitle frames the work within a medieval, rather than a Roman or Late Antique viewpoint, and Munro makes comparisons with evidence from the 8th to 11th c. CE, arguing that the recycling and reuse of villa material continued over 1,000 years. This offers an enlarged perspective, although the book is focused on the 4th to 7th c. CE.

In chapter 1, a prefatory section defines the topic, methods, and definitions in the context of modern discussions of the circular economy. The author identifies recycling as an activity that occurred at certain villas over a relatively short span of time, after the conclusion of their use for elite habitation but prior to other, later forms of transformation such as their use as burial places (11). She also reflects on earlier Roman recycling practices, including the recycling of glass and scrap metal, and the use of broken ceramics in building (4). A brief comparison is made with evidence for urban recycling, for example, at Crypta Balbi in Rome (17).

This chapter introduces the 39 villa sites selected as case studies, set out in Table 1.1.Footnote ⁵ Thirteen of Munro’s sample sites are located in Italy, nine in France, five in Portugal or Spain, and eleven in northern Europe, including England, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Germany. The book is based on an Oxford University doctoral thesis, completed in 2010, but some more recent villa excavations have been added to the sample. It thus expands on Munro’s previous publications on this topicFootnote ⁶ with more sites, especially in the northwest. These villa sites all offer evidence of systematic removal of materials for either reuse or recycling, such as the gathering and stockpiling of glass tesserae or marble elements, or installations for metal working or lime production. Some are much older excavations, such as those of Montmaurin, San Giovanni di Ruoti, and San Vincenzo al Volturno, excavated between the 1950s and 80s, while others have been excavated and published within the last 20 years, including Castellets and Aiano.

The chronological span of these activities (indicated in Table 1.1) reaches from the 3rd–4th c. CE (mostly in the northern regions) to the 6th–7th c. CE (in southern France, Spain/Portugal, and mostly southern Italy), reflecting the early onset of villa transformation in the north, and the greater longevity of luxury villa architecture in southern Europe. A map showing the locations of the case study sites would have been a useful addition. Munro states that “firm evidence for material recycling at villas … exists at about 5–10 percent of known villa sites across Italy and the northern and western Roman provinces” (14), a strong claim, for which some enlargement and an appendix listing the sites would also have been welcome.

In chapter 2 (“Valuable villa architecture”), Munro discusses different concepts of “value” – monetary, material, cultural, and historical. Value can consist of financial considerations such as costs of sourcing, or other considerations such as art-value (as in the case of marble) or historical-value (as seen in the reused reliefs on the Arch of Constantine). She then details the many different kinds of materials that were used to construct Roman-period villas, including both local and therefore economical materials (such as bricks and tiles) and more expensive ones including marbles, glass, lead, and bronze. This chapter includes a case study of San Giovanni di Ruoti that provides an impressive calculation of the quantities of materials a mid-size villa such as this would have required. Munro shows that these would have constituted in the region of one hundred kilograms of glass, several hundred kilograms of lead pipes, tens of thousands of kilograms of marble and roof tiles, and hundreds of thousands of kilograms of timber, all of which would have required hundreds of carts to transport (45–56).

In chapter 3 (“Villa decline and material salvage”), the author first briefly reviews the overall patterns of the “afterlife” of villas, then sets out evidence for deliberate demolition and removal of material at specific sites. She highlights the presence of what are interpreted as ritual deposits marking cultic practices associated with rebuildings, closure, or demolition of a building (89–96). These deposits contain coins, pottery or glass, food remains, and sometimes jewelry or even human bones, with evidence of burning, and provide a rare and valuable insight into this aspect of working life at the site. Munro links such ritual deposits to recycling workers, but she only establishes a clear connection between a ritual deposit and recycling (a glass reprocessing kiln) at one site, the villa of Orbe-Boscéaz. An interesting comparison could be made with Robin Fleming’s survey of more than 40 late 4th- or early 5th-c. well-closure deposits in Britain that, rather than being associated with productive recycling, include valuable Roman building materials such as window glass, sculptures, or stone architectural pieces as part of the ritually deposited materials.Footnote ⁷

The relatively short chapter 4 (“Materials organization and stockpiling for recycling”) examines the collection of materials such as glass tesserae or marble paving in pots, pits, or piles. Munro emphasizes how such neat arrangements can reveal the deliberate and systematic way that a villa was stripped of its valuable materials, as well as the intention of reusing or recycling them.

In chapter 5 (“Material reprocessing at villas”), the longest and most important chapter, Munro explains the different forms of production processes that relate to the reuse and recycling of material at the sample villas. She defines criteria for identifying such activities, and meticulously details the quantities involved and the skills and equipment required, including types of kilns and ovens. She also examines the layout of different recycling activities in relation to each other and to the walls of the former habitation. She makes the interesting observation that these activities were often located in spaces that provided easy access to both the decorated rooms with materials for recycling and a route for their removal (164–65).

Of particular significance is Munro’s demonstration that recycling activity was not casual, opportunistic scavenging carried out by impoverished “squatters.” Rather, she shows that it was a carefully organized program, carried out by skilled and specialized craftspeople. Munro makes the important point that even the demolition stage required good knowledge of construction techniques and the processes for which materials were being salvaged (89). Recycling used specific equipment such as large kilns and furnaces that could be heated to high temperatures and would have involved large quantities of materials. It also required knowledge of market demand and access to transport routes and vehicles. Munro explains how separate zones with appropriate equipment were set up for gold, silver, lead, bronze, or glass working. The question of the identity and character of the skilled workforce required is an interesting one, about which we unfortunately have very little evidence (89). Munro notes the difficulties in even identifying any clear on-site living quarters associated with recycling. At Faragola, an outbuilding with some rooms that were not used for processing may possibly have constituted a workers’ housing area (125–26). The 18 post holes in Room II at Saint-Émilion could represent a habitational structure but might alternatively relate to a shelter constructed for metalworking (149).

Munro notes that until the early 21st c., this particular form of site transformation was “often overlooked” by excavators and other scholars (11, 14), and recycling installations such as hearths and kilns could be conflated with other forms of occupational or productive reuse of the sites. For example, she reinterprets as a blacksmithing hearth a feature at Pieve di Manerba that was classified in 1982 as a cooking hearth (126). In contrast, “systematic and continuous salvaging, compatible with the activity of a qualified workforce”Footnote ⁸ was clearly identified at the Aiano villa in Tuscany, excavated under the supervision of Marco Cavalieri from 2007. Here, after a period of abandonment in the later 5th c. CE, the previously rich monumental residence was converted at the start of the 6th c. CE into a series of different workshop spaces for the large-scale recycling of its glass, copper, gold, lead, and building materials.Footnote ⁹

In chapter 6 (“Economics of villa recycling”), the potential costs, routes, and markets for the sale of recycled materials are explored. Munro points to the location of most of the sample villas close to Roman roads and rivers, arguing that transport by water of materials salvaged and/or recycled would have been more economical, particularly since potential markets were situated downstream. Table 6.2 sets out the proximity to roads or navigable waterways for only of 19 of her 39 sample sites, but this was in any case characteristic of rich Roman villas. In the 1st c. BCE, Varro notes the need for “roads on which carts can easily be driven, or navigable rivers nearby. We know that transportation to and from many farms is carried on by both these methods,”Footnote ¹⁰ while a century later Columella also recommends a site “not far from the sea or a navigable stream, by which its products may be carried off and supplies brought in” and states that “a handy road contributes much to the worth of land … its convenience for bringing in and carrying out the necessaries – a factor which increases the value of stored crops.”Footnote ¹¹ Archaeological excavation confirms that rich villas were indeed almost invariably well situated in relation to road and river networks, since they depended on market access to sell their produce for profits. This was in fact the main function of rural villas, which served as elite residences only during landowners’ short (and sometimes rare) visits.Footnote ¹²

Chapter 7 (“Post-Roman ownership and legacy of villas in the western provinces”) is mostly focused on the relationship between villas and churches. Munro places great importance on the process of both rural and urban church construction and concludes that this was the destination of much recycled and reused villa material (200–9). Referring to the churches built at five of the 39 sample sites (195), she argues that the construction of churches on sites with recycling activity was “not a coincidence.” According to Munro’s suggestion, these buildings could have reused and recycled villa materials from the same location or a nearby site. She explains this as “a new method for the aristocracy to display wealth and piety,” through making donations to the building of churches or possibly because the landowners themselves had become part of the clergy (197–200).

However, although Munro argues that “there was at least some temporal overlap in late Roman villa and rural church construction” (200), the latest construction phases of luxury villas date to the late 4th to early 5th c. CE, whereas the building of rural churches only began to develop from the late 5th c. CE at the earliest. The large-scale transfer of rural land to the Church through donations was a phenomenon that developed mainly from the 6th c. CE onwards, as a result of the evolution of beliefs in the remission of sins through benefactions to the Church.Footnote ¹³ Where churches were established at villa sites, it has been convincingly argued that, in most cases, the residences had already been long abandoned.Footnote ¹⁴ Munro herself admits that the use of salvaged 4th- to 5th-c. CE glass from San Vincenzo al Volturno in the 8th- to 9th-c. CE monastery would have required it to be stored for 400 years before being reused – a “problematic” supposition (201–2).

In the preface, Munro reveals that her motivation for exploring recycling was to highlight what we might learn from the past to fit our modern context: “In 2022, … a battle against plastics was being fought … While in this book I focus only on the practice of recycling Roman villa materials, my hope is that … we might even reconsider our own attitude … in our contemporary world” (xiii–iv). In line with this motivation, a central thesis of the book is the “cultural consistency of recycling” between the Imperial period and Late Antiquity. The author cites, for example, the reuse of older reliefs in the Arch of Constantine and of broken pieces of marble in Pompeiian countertops (6, 219). In her conclusions about the post-villa phases of recycling, she emphasizes that “the archaeology of this phase highlights material and cultural continuity in the way Romans behaved in relation to disused architecture” and that recycling activity was “culturally normal” (218, 221). Munro argues that “we should assume that recycled materials were also used in new construction throughout antiquity, even in earlier periods” (176). While she states that reused building materials are “frequently mentioned” (177) in relation to earlier Roman villas, further citations and discussion would have been appropriate to support this quite important point.

Munro acknowledges, however, that the crucial difference between earlier recycling and the process that occurred in the early medieval (or Late Antique) period was that owners were exploiting the value of building components because “villas were no longer needed” (97). In her conclusions, she admits that this constituted “cultural transformation” (220) or a “shift in mindset” (223) and even – on the final page – “a significant transformation in the use of architectural space” (224). I argued similarly in 2003 that “the villa was a cultural artefact” that vanished in the west “as the result of political, socio-cultural and conceptual shifts.”Footnote ¹⁵ Since then, it has become increasingly evident that elites themselves certainly no longer inhabited the transformed villas, which I had set forth as a possibility at that point.Footnote ¹⁶ It is surprising to see no reference in Munro’s volume to Angelo Castrorao Barba’s very relevant 2017 article on metalworking in former villa sites in Italy,Footnote ¹⁷ nor to his more recent statistical study of nearly 2,000 sites in Italy,Footnote ¹⁸ since he also discusses recycling of villa materials. While arguing similarly that recycling could be systematic, in contrast to Munro, Castroraro Barba emphasizes the discontinuity caused by the formation of new elites, changes in landownership, and a new socio-economic system from the 6th c. CE.Footnote ¹⁹ Munro touches only briefly on the question of land ownership, mentioning the possibility that some recycling at villa sites may have been carried out by “Germanic tribes” (208), or by Lombard and Visigothic elites (213). This is, however, a key issue in relation to her claims regarding the “cultural consistency” of reuse and recycling from the Roman to the early medieval period. The Roman villa system had developed in the context of specific economic and socio-political systems, including the existence of an integrated Mediterranean market; infrastructure and communication networks; legal and social frameworks around property, tenancy, and labor; and cultural ideals of aristocratic landed wealth and of rural otium to be enjoyed in villa buildings of distinctive architectural style. Virtually all elements of this context dissolved during the 5th to 6th c. CE, a fundamental change that underlies the end of the villas and hence the recycling of materials from which they were built.

Munro’s major contribution in this book is to demonstrate how Late Antique recycling of villa materials was systematic, planned, and skilled. She convincingly shows that groups of specialist craftspeople must have been employed to strip and process the materials, arguing that this must have been deliberately organized by whoever owned the land at the time, whether or not this was the former inhabitant of the elite residence. The book is valuable, as is Munro’s previous work on this topic, in throwing light on a significant aspect of villa afterlives.