Recherches sur la transition de Rome à Byzance dans la région du Bas-Danube

Abstract

Extensive excavations carried out within the late Roman cites in the Balkans provide a substantial quantity of archaeological evidence which, suggests, as do epigraphic finds that most cities in the region were already in decline by the early 4th century. There were exceptions but, where cities do show signs of growth or prosperity, they appear to be only those which became centres of imperial administration and this does not prove any revival in the prosperity or civic functions by the urban Elite. Even so, this argument relies precariously on the attribution of functions to particular building types and generalisations based on often limited excavation and a sequence which invariably rests upon an insecure chronology. It is argued that it is more effective to develop regional programmes, involving the study of urban centres, based upon palaeoeconomic data, and to chart changes in the economic basis of urbanism form the Roman to early Byzantine periods. The results of the British excavations at Nicopolis ad Istrum in Bulgaria are used to illustrate the method. Here there would seem to have been a profound change in the agricultural economy during the early Byzantine period when the physical character and the function of the city changed no less dramatically: it became a strongly fortified military and ecclesiastical centre with apparently no civilian population permanently resident within its defences. Although the physical layout of an early Byzantine city was established for Nicopolis and work suggests that geophysical survey could produce similar results at such sites as Philippi, this brings us no nearer to providing an explanation for physical or economic changes. One possible solution is to extend the scope of research to the countryside and to apply new techniques of intensive survey which have proved successful in a pilot study in northern Greece at Louloudies, near the city of ancient Pydna. Now under way, a new research programme in northern Bulgaria is investigating village settlement and particularly the economic character of typesites (cf Gradishte) across a 2,0000 square kilometre region. The aim here is, by excavation and applying the intensive survey techniques (in combination with geophysics) developed in Greece, to ascertain whether the economic changes identified for the city were equally true of the countryside. It should be possible to determine whether the fate of early Byzantine Nicopolis was a product of economic changes in its hinterland or whether the character of urbanism was determined by factors unrelated to its regional context: an approach to the past which, in the future, should result in more fundamental advances in our understanding of Late antiquity than our present state of knowledge permits.