From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology rif Italy. AD 300-800. By Neil Christie. 16X24 cm. xvii +586 pp.

, IOI b&wand '5 colour pIs., 39 figs. and pIs. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. ISBN 1-85928-421-3. Price: 55.00 hb. Not so many years ago, particularly in the Mediterranean, it was easy to lament a lack of interest in the transition between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Things are now so radically changed that in the space of just one year scholars have to contend with the appearance of three major monographs in English that analyse the period. The Fall rif Rome and the Fnd I"!f Civilisation by Bryan Ward-Perkins was followed closely on the shelves by Chris Wickham's Framing the Eal[Y Middle Ages. Now space must be found for Neil Christie's latest book. In the difficult task of writing a solid work of synthesis, each study has its own merits. Christie's approach is to divide the argument into four major themes, preceded by an introduction, which outlines a history of the study of the period concerned, followed by a chapter on "Sources and Contexts'. The latter, based on the ancient texts, presents an historical framework, 'dominated with military and political change', used to balance with the archaeological evidence presented in subsequent chapters. The chosen themes for illustrating the period of transition are, respectively, 'Church and Society', 'Urban Evolutions', 'Defence and Power' and 'Rural Settlement and Patterns of Change'. Each is the subject of a chapter of about 100 pages, further subdivided into topics and exemplars. Scenes are set with backdrop quotations drawn from historical sources. Indeed, Christie continuously makes use of sources throughout his

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text, translating relevant passages, and adopting a question and answer approach to highlight particular issues. In Italy, as Christie shows, the archaeology of the early Church is vivacious, largely through the long-established tradition of 'archeologia palfocristiana'. However, whilst monasticism was a major player in evangelisation, the archaeology of its earliest phases is sadly lacking. To this discussion we may add the monastic church excavated at Le Centoporte (dfdicatt'd to SS. Cosmas and Damian), providing a case of a major foundation near Otranto, as well as the abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri, hoth apparently dating to Ostrogothic times. It should be worth searching for other early examples, particularly of villa-monasteries, amongst the villa sites that were equipped with chapels in southern Italy (e.g. Belmonte). The analysis of 'Urban Evolutions' can now be based on archaeological data from many of the major Italian cities (Milan, Ravenna-Classe, Rome, Naples) and a number of lesser ones, though we still lack substantial information from significant centres such as Capua, Reggio Calabria, Taranto or Syracuse. Drawing from recent studies, Christie not only examines traditional topics (urban layout, monuments, the games), but also those relating to the mcchanics of urban life, such as residential architecture, water supply, waste disposal, communications- to name a few - illustrating the adaptation of nucleated populations to new conditions. 'Defence and Power' illustrates the increasing militarisation of Italy in responsc to internal and external menace and attrition, from late Roman town walls to apparently less formalised Byzantine and Lombard hilltop forts. There is little on supposedly private defences, though a late antique ditched site at Anguillara, north of Rome, appears in the chapter on rural settlement. Indeed, rural settlement has attracted grcat interest recently, with extensive field surveys and excavation of major settlements from the Ostrogothic site of Monte Barro in Lombardy to southern villas such as San Giusto in northern Apulia, or S. Giovanni di Ruoti and Mass. Cicotti in Lucania. The ongoing excavations at Faragola (near Foggia) are not dealt with, though are revealing one of the most luxurious rural residences to have ever come to light, with a richly decorated (enatio. Rural expressions of wealth were not lacking in late antique Italy, though most disappeared during the course of the 6th century, through a series of dynamics that are still not clearly understood, though often linked to the Byzantine-Gothic wars. Christie presents two separate flow diagrams of urban and of rural change through the 1St to 9th centuries (pp. 269 and ,192), which could usefully be combined and where villages should be assigned a greater role as a major settlement type spreading throughout Italy from the 7th/8th century, with demographic shifts from both town and country. Linked to this new settlement force were probably re arrangements in boundaries representing catchment areas, landholdings and, eventually, parish and municipal borders. Indeed, in the Salento area of southern Apulia we are now seeing how municipal and parish boundary networks reflect medieval village settlement distributions, being even conditioned, at times, by early Roman centuriation. Unfortunately, little work has been carried out on the conditions of the land arouno settlements and on the physical (as opposed to legal) aspects of landholoing. Christie's conclusions are significant and suggest that sanitised visions of tht: past underestimate the faint though telling evidence for con11ict, plague, and natural disasters. Man cleans up traces of de\'astation as quickly as possible, making the archaeologists' task difficult, though challenging; although direct evidence for trauma rarely survives, we have indirect evidence for its effects on economy and society. He further concludes that the increasingly rich material data available to scholarship tends to show the n,ew Italy that began to rise out of the ashes of the Roman Empire was less

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heterogeneous than the ethnic-oriented archaeologies tcnd to suggest. All this is well worth reading. The: book concentrates on northern and central Italy. Far from being the author's oversight, this is, regrettably, a reflection of the lesser quantity (and quality) of work being conducted on Late Antiquity and the Yliddle Ages in the Mezzogiorno. Such uneven archaeology tends to obscure great regional difkrenccs. Nonetheless, this volume harnesses a greal amount of up-lo-date evidence and discussion, with a rich bibliography, in an essay that weaves together both historical and archaeological evidence. It thus provides a solid base for further study and abundant food for thought, to be strongly recommended to students and scholars alike.
PAUL ARTHUR