Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside

The cities of late antiquity get most of the attention today, as no doubt they did in their own time, so archaeologists and historians mostly from Europe, but also the US and Israel, beyond and between the walls, first grappling with the task of defining and identifying countryside. Among their concerns are economic and social life, sacred landscapes, villas, rural monasteries, change from Gaul to the Balkans, and a recent rural survey in Turkey and adjacent regions. The 16 studies are from two conference, in Oxford and Paris, during 2002. Distributed by Aspen. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Luke A. Lavan, Ph.D. (2001) in Archaeology, University of Nottingham is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.William Bowden, Ph.D. (2000) in Archaeology, University of East Anglia, is Packard Research Fellow in the School of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia and a co-director of excavations at Butrint, Albania.Carlos Machado is a doctoral student in Ancient History, Linacre College at Oxford University, funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Science (CNPQ). He is working on the political use of space in late antique Rome, and the appropriation of urban space by the aristocracy, the church and the imperial court.