This volume sprung from a workshop session at the 2016 Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference on abandonment in the Roman Empire, but, as implied by the title, has broadened the scope both thematically and chronologically. It is published in Archaeopress's Access Archaeology series (open access with free pdf download), and it contains an introduction and seven short chapters of about ten pages of text each.
The introduction gives a brief background to theoretical developments in abandonment research in archaeology and anthropology, and presents the case for the need of updated approaches to this theme in Roman archaeology. The contributions highlight promising work in this direction and are tied together by a focus on the causes of abandonment and re-use both on a site and on a regional scale (p. v). As a collection of short conference papers, this volume is not the place for presenting and developing new ideas and data, and, subsequently, most papers are concise summaries of earlier work by the authors. This makes it an approachable and easy read, introducing the reader to a variety of perspectives and challenges throughout the Roman and late antique world. While the very broad temporal, spatial and thematic range of the presented case studies make direct comparisons difficult, the volume offers the opportunity to discuss overarching theoretical and methodological ideas related to the archaeology of abandonment. The editors may thus be forgiven for adopting an overly wide definition of ‘Mediterranean’, stretching from the Red Sea to the North Sea.
There are some shortcomings in layout and design. Several figures contain illustrations with too low resolution or too small text for print (e.g. pp. 13, 30, 43, 73, 91), and some illustrations have inaccurate source credits (e.g. crediting coinarchives.com rather than the actual rights holder for the coin photographs, p. 29). Other illustrations, however, take full advantage of the high-quality colour print offered by the Archaeopress series, and the figures are generally a useful and relevant complement to the text.
The first two papers both deal with interpretative issues relating to the ‘Third Century Crisis’ narrative, confronting what the authors see as a one-sided and simplistic model driven by a scholarly ‘vicious circle’ (p. l) of adjusting archaeological interpretations to fit the expected model and thus reinforcing the prevailing picture of crisis and abandonment.
J. Oller Guzmán (Chapter 1) argues that the traditional view of catastrophic destruction in the third century cannot be upheld in light of archaeological evidence published over the last several decades. Rather, the period is a time of societal transformation, which plays out differently across settlement types and population groups, and these changes lay the fundament for renewed stability and prosperity in the fourth century. This point is exemplified with the region of Layetania Interior, an inland area north of modern-day Barcelona, where Oller Guzmán shows that even within this small geographical area it is difficult to create a unified narrative of the developments in the third century. Layetania Interior is held by the author to be an ideal example of a Romanised society on the Iberian Peninsula due to its connectedness, agricultural economic fundament and temporal development (pp. 2, 12). This case study is doubtless a valuable addition to understanding the diversity of transformations between the Roman Empire and late antiquity, but the paper is not entirely convincing in showing how a small, rural, inland area is representative of Roman Spain at large.
D. Nappo's contribution (Chapter 2) takes us to the other end of the empire. He discusses the underlying reasons for an observed decline of Myos Hormos on the Red Sea. While the abandonment has traditionally been seen as a result of the empire-wide third-century crisis, Nappo shows a marked decline in the archaeological evidence already in the second century and suggests a connection with changes in local environmental conditions and trade networks.
Back in the Western Empire, T.V. Franconi (Chapter 3) focuses on environmental conditions as a potential contributing factor for settlement abandonment in the Rhine River Valley in the late Roman period. High-resolution environmental data based on dendrochronology, combined with the geomorphological traces of alluvial changes, provide a detailed picture of the river's fertile flood plains. A marked decline both in the number of settlements and in estimates of settled area during the third century or in the later third and fourth centuries (p. 40) is shown to coincide with a wetter, colder climate, increased flooding and channel movement. Franconi is careful not to present this correlation as an opposing explanation to the turbulent political and societal situation of the northern limes in the third and fourth centuries, but rather argues for a dialectic relationship of human-environment interactions.
The highly dynamic flood plains of the Rhine river create a specific environmental setting distinctly different from large parts of the Mediterranean. However, given the density of settlements on flood plains of other major drainage basins in the Empire, the relevance of Franconi's approach goes far beyond the Lower Rhine. Also his successful balancing between anthropocentric explanatory models and environmental determinism in understanding change is an important take-away from the paper.
In Chapter 4 A. Esposito discusses religious ceremonial apparel deposited at polytheistic religious and sacred sites in south-eastern England between the second and the fourth centuries ce. The intentional depositions, she argues, are not ordinary votive offerings, but mark the abandonment or changed use of their associated sites. Esposito shows that these structural deposits indicate the end of (a phase of) use of a religious site, but also that there is not any single explanation for this change (such as the spread of Christianity). Again, the take-away is the need for close study of the ‘local context’.
The religious backdrop is carried over into the next section. The two papers by G. Papantoniou and by A. Vionis are both based on survey data from the Settled and Sacred Landscapes of Cyprus Project (SeSaLaC) run by the University of Cyprus.
Where Esposito considers specific find contexts, Papantoniou (Chapter 5) is looking at the longue durée abandonment and reuse of extra-urban sanctuaries between the Hellenistic and the late Roman periods. He sees the trend of abandonment and reduced activity in rural shrines and sanctuaries primarily as a result of political and economic structures such as the administrative unification of the island, with following centralisation and a contraction of rural settlements in the Roman period. Papantoniou presents interesting ideas, but the paper would benefit if they were exemplified with more data and in-depth cases.
Vionis (Chapter 6) questions established views of the Byzantine Early Middle Ages of the seventh to the ninth centuries – another tumultuous period of the first millennium ce Mediterranean connected with narratives of crisis and abandonment. He brings together evidence from Cyprus with data from Boeotia, Naxos and Sagalassos – all areas he has first-hand knowledge of from field work and finds studies. The pervasive transformations taking place in the eastern Mediterranean in these centuries have left an impression of a dearth of evidence in material culture and historical sources. Vionis shows, however, that a better understanding of the changes in settlement structure and production adjusts the picture of uniform abandonment and decline. In part, sites of this period have been difficult to recognise in the archaeological record, and in part there has been a lack of interest in looking for them (‘digging through the Byz’ in search of the favoured Classical layers).
The final chapter takes the form of a diachronic close study of a late Roman villa complex in Tuscany and its early medieval occupation, abandonment and reuse between the late third and the mid-seventh centuries. M. Cavalieri provides a detailed description of the site and its chronological phases with special attention given to the post-occupational activities of the villa, and its period as ruinarum loca turned into craft-centre. The outlined site lifecycle is well argued and highly convincing, and the diachronic approach is praiseworthy – all too often the focus is solely on the original or main use of a structure, ignoring later reuse as intrusive material.
Showing that varied, medium-to-large scale production and economic activity over several centuries can be born out of an abandoned villa complex has value in itself. However, the paper rarely goes beyond a basic interpretation of the finds and phasing, losing out on the opportunity to use this well-documented excavation as a case study for post-Roman period use of villa complexes more generally. Only the final page of the conclusion (pp. 105–6) brings in the human agents, leaving insufficient room to argue the case for an allochthonous, Goth re-occupation of the site in detail.
The volume succeeds in its stated aim of collecting ‘precise analysis of specific case studies’ (p. vi) and is an important reminder that close study of the available data is key to understanding the causes of change, both on local and on regional scales.
A recurring theme through the contributions is the interplay between local conditions and broad systemic changes as explanatory models for site abandonment and reuse. In line with recent methodological trends, the volume argues for a shift in focus from over-arching, all-encompassing models towards close material study and a need to evaluate cases individually. The articles display a large variety of reasons for site abandonment – changing physical environments, trade networks, religious culture, political instability – and highlight that apparent abandonment is often followed by transformation and reuse.
However, the contextualisation and theoretical discussion of causes and processes related to abandonment and reuse can never develop fully within the length of the individual papers, and with a scope this wide, combined with the low number of contributions, the volume does not feel like a coherent collection. A final chapter tying up the loose ends by discussing the theoretical and methodological points raised in the individual case studies is sorely missed. For instance, the circular arguments for the third-century crisis encountered in Spain (Oller Guzmán) and Egypt (Nappo) find parallels in the interpretation of the seventh to the ninth centuries contexts in the eastern Mediterranean (Vionis). The rural sacred landscapes of Britain (Esposito) and Cyprus (Papantoniou) are both shown to have gone through changes in the Roman period – could the authors’ ideas contribute to each other's studies? Interaction between the environment and human agency brought up by Franconi and Nappo or outcomes of single-site studies like Cavalieri's versus regional overviews like those of Oller Guzmán and Papantoniou are other possible themes.
