Urban Transformations in the Late Antique West: Materials, Agents, and Models

André Carneiro · Neil Christie · Pilar Diarte Blasco

Jan 2020 · Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra / Coimbra University Press

About this ebook

This volume is the fruit of a highly productive international research gathering academic and professional (field- and museum) colleagues to discuss new results and approaches, recent finds and alternative theoretical assessments of the period of transition and transformation of classical towns in Late Antiquity. Experts from an array of modern countries attended and presented to help compare and contrast critically archaeologies of diverse regions and to debate the qualities of the archaeology and the current modes of study. While a number of papers inevitably focused on evidence available for both Spain and Portugal, we were delighted to have a spread of contributions that extended the picture to other territories in the Late Roman West and Mediterranean. The emphasis was very much on the images presented by archaeology (rescue and research works, recent and past), but textual data were also brought into play by various contributors.

About the author

André Carneiro is an assistant professor at the History Department of the University of Évora and an integrated researcher at CHAIA - Centre for Art History and Artistic Research of the University of Évora. He has worked on the themes of rural settlement and road network in Roman times in Alentejo and on the phenomena of transition to Antiquity Late. 

Neil Christie is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Leicester in England. He is closely engaged with the Society for Medieval Archaeology (SMA) and is reviews editor for two Uk-based journal. His research focus is on towns and rural development from late Roman to medieval times, especially in Italy, but within Britain also.

Pilar Diarte Blasco completed her European PhD in 2011 at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain) and then held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (Italy), before joining the School of Archaeology & Ancient History at the University of Leicester (United Kingdom) following the award of a prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship (2015-2017), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Since 2017, she is developing her research, thanks to prestigious research contracts such as the Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación (MICINN, Gobierno de España) and the Programa de Atracción de Talento (Comunidad de Madrid), in the Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid, Spain). Her main research interests are the late antique and early medieval transformations of landscapes and townscapes of the Western Mediterranean basin and their evidence in the archaeological record.