The End of Antiquity

This masterly study provides a fresh analysis of the transition from the classical world to medieval Europe - a theme that has exercised historians since Edward Gibbon. It is the first book to make available in English much of the new data from recent excavations in France, Spain and elsewhere in western Europe. Drawing on material from Ireland to the eastern Mediterranean, the author uses new evidence from coins and inscriptions and provides re-assessments of the rich literary sources. The author sees the economic and military problems of the third century more as a 'mid-life crisis' than as 'decline and fall'. The nature of the empire changed. With the loss of the western provinces in the early fifth century, the social structures of the Christian church replaced those of the emperors, first in the cities and then in the countryside - a transition that is reflected in architecture, townscape, literary sources and archaeology. The process of change is completed by bishops and landowners building rural churches to serve villa estates and small towns, which was to lead ultimately to the medieval parish. This long-overdue survey places, for the first time, the archaeology of later Roman and early medieval Britain firmly in its wider European context.