Paolo Squatriti reviews, for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review:
- Neil Christie (ed.), Landscapes of Change. Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Aldershot, Hants: 2004. ISBN 1-84014-617-6.
Squatriti writes:
This volume assembles ten papers which ... deal with ... rural settlement and land use, mostly in the western empire, from the fourth through seventh centuries. ... overall there is a wonderful coherence to this book, especially considering that in geographical terms it ranges widely, from the Balkans to Iberia, and from Northumbria to Libya. ... Landscapes of Change is a book of rare excellence. Without inflicting the sense of disorientation that collective books usually inspire when read cover-to-cover, it teaches a vast amount about postclassical economies and societies. It offers up-to-date syntheses of fresh archaeological data, much of it hard for non-specialists to reach at all. It sheds considerable light on vital and neglected matters of rural land use and settlement, becoming thereby a precious point of reference. This rich collection confirms how marvelously complex, and how regionally diverse, was the transition form classical to medieval times.
You can read the entire review online.
Other places and regions treated in this book (as identified by Squatriti) include:
