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Ward-Perkins’s book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization is a book that looks at, rewriting the history books. His main focus is the transitioning period between the rule of Rome and the rule of the Germanic tribes and their culture. The rule of Rome has fallen and fallen hard in the west, but just Rome’s rule, not their culture: that has assimilated into the Germanic tribes creating late Antiquity.
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2011
Originally written as a seminar paper at UC Berkeley in 2007; only lightly revised since.
2017, Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate
2007, The Church Confronts Slavery, Race and Gender
This thesis examines the sixth-century CE Byzantine historian Procopius’ notion of men’s heroic conduct. It argues that, despite Procopius’ reputation as the last great Classical historian, he created heroes that were firmly rooted in the sixth-century CE Christian Byzantine world. Procopius’ writing reveals that sixth-century Eastern Roman society was abandoning Classical constructions of heroism based on an individual’s worldly achievements and military prowess and adopting Christian notions of courage dependant on piety, humility, and divine intervention. In order to understand the innovative aspects of the new Christian heroic ideal as Procopius presented it, the thesis traces the origins and development of both Classical and Christian notions of valor. It focuses on Greek writers from the heroic age of Homer, to the sixth-century CE ecclesiastical and pagan historians. It then examines the similar and different ways these writers defined ideal and non-ideal men. The thesis explores how the new Christian heroic ideal influenced Procopius’ description of foreign peoples. It suggests that Procopius’ descriptions of “barbarians” represented a new Christian vision of ethnicity. People were no longer described as Romans and barbarians, but increasingly, were designated as Christians and pagans. The thesis concludes by comparing and contrasting Procopius’ descriptions of holy men and secular men. It asserts that understanding the new heroic ideal helps explain why secular warrior-heroes like Belisarius and Totila, so familiar from Classical literature, gradually disappeared from literature in the ensuing centuries and were replaced by these “holy heroes of Christ.” """""""
Networks and Neighbours
N&N Publication 2016
in L. Lipps, P. von Rummell, C. Machado, eds., 410 - The Sack of Rome (Rome, 2013), 83-98.
2010
Societies sometimes expand through population growth, military conquests and migrations. Why does this happen and in what way are expanding societies different from others? Examples of such episodes are many in European history and include Archaich Greece, the Germanic barbarians and modernizing Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries, to name but a few. This work is an attempt to construct a model that explains these expansions and others.
2011, Belgrade Historical Review / Beogradski istorijski glasnik 2
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of the West. The Death of the Roman Superpower, Orion Books LTD, London, 2010, pp. X+531; Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, XVI+576; Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, pp. VI+239 (Review).
An invited contribution for the GVSU Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies conference, “President Obama and the Lessons of Antiquity,” held at the Gerald R. Ford Museum and GVSU’s Loosemore Auditorium in Grand Rapids in April 2009. The event was broadcast by C-SPAN <http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4546953/pazdernik-lessons-late-antiquity> and has been disseminated electronically by the Hauenstein Center via YouTube: <youtu.be/p6UxaANFjQE>.
2016, Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology
Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology Vol. 3, No. 3 (2016) pp. 73-78.
2017, Cogent Arts and Humanities (2017) 4
Abstract: A feature of neo-conservative critiques during the course of this century, concerning public issues such as immigration and multicultural policy and Islamic terrorism, has been the use of a rhetoric based on historical imagery as a means to generate affective reactions to matters of debate. This article examines one example of such rhetoric, the claim by the economic historian Niall Ferguson that the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 represented a close parallel to the " Fall of the Roman empire " in antiquity which highlighted failures of France's immigration policies. Interactions between media debate, ancient world scholarship, and popular history are explored.
Inspired by Eileen Power's 1924 essay, "The Peasant Bodo," about a serf on an ecclesiastical estate near Paris in the early ninth century, this paper draws on more recent research to explore the world in which a hypothetical ancestor of Bodo would have lived and worked three centuries earlier.
2002, International Studies Quarterly
2013
2018, The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity
‘Alaric II’, ‘Astigi’, ‘Balearic Islands’, ‘Basques’, ‘Braulio’, ‘charters, Spanish’, ‘Chindasuinth’, ‘Conimbriga and Aeminium’, ‘Corunna (La Coruña; Roman Brigantium)’, ‘Didymus and Verinianus’, ‘Els Munts’, ‘Euric’, ‘formulae (formularies)’, ‘Gallaecia’, ‘Gerontius’, ‘Gerunda’, ‘Goiswinth’, ‘Hispaniae’, ‘Hydatius’, ‘Ildefonsus of Toledo’, ‘Isidore of Seville (life and times)’, ‘Leander of Seville’, ‘Leovigild’, ‘literacy’, ‘Lusitania’, ‘Musa b. Nusayr’, ‘Pelayo (Pelagius)’, ‘Roderic’, ‘Seville’, ‘Spain’, ‘Tariq b. Ziyad’, ‘Tarraconensis’, ‘Theoderic I the Visigoth’, ‘Theoderic II’, ‘Toledo’, ‘Visigothic slates’, ‘Visigoths’, ‘Wallia’.
Graduate seminar taught at Brown University, Fall 2013. This seminar examines the Mediterranean from the fall of Rome to the Arab conquests (AD400-700), interrogating models of decline, catastrophe and transformation through the most recent archaeology of the region. It covers key themes such as decline and fall, post-Roman state-formation, urbanism, rural settlement, Christianisation and ethnic, social and religious identities, and compares the different trajectories of Europe, Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean in this period.
A CRITIQUE OF THE HISTORICAL IDEA OF FR JOHN ROMANIDES ON ROMANITY AND THE FALL OF OLD ROME
Changing circumstances during Late Antiquity and the Early Byzantine Period (4th-9th centuries A.D.) required Byzantine communities to make deliberate adjustments in order to survive, endure, and ultimately flourish again during the Middle Byzantine Period (10th-12th centuries). The role these communities had in decision-making can easily be overlooked, leaving instead hapless victims of insurmountable external pressures such as imperial manipulation, economic recession, Christian acculturation, or a general sense of inexorable decline. Although factors such as these played a role as each community deliberated on a complex and unique set of local concerns, the ultimate decisions each community made should not be assumed but rather investigated on the basis of both textual and archaeological evidence. The stoa is particularly well-suited for the study of reuse and therefore valuable for understanding the adaptive strategies implemented by Byzantine individuals and communities during the transition period from antiquity to the medieval period. The stoa was one of the most ubiquitous buildings of the Greco-Roman city and was highly adaptable for reuse, whether by incorporation into large structures such as churches or fortifications, or by subdivision into smaller units for uses such as housing, storage, or commercial activities. The stoa was commonly found not only in urban contexts, particularly in agorai and fora, but also at many extraurban sanctuaries. By compiling data on the reuse of stoas throughout the Byzantine Empire during the 4th - 10th centuries, four patterns of reuse can be identified: residential, economic, ecclesiastical, and defensive. Abandonment, or a lack of reuse, is a fifth pattern. These patterns of reuse provide insight into the lives of Byzantines outside of the imperial and ecclesiastic elites and inform the excavation of post-classical phases of stoas.
2017, Rethinking Comparison in Archaeology
An object out of its context: how to deal with it? How to study an artefact that is no longer connected to all other constituent elements of the specific “scenario” that it was part of? These were central interrogations in the research we’ve been developing around early middle age burial sites in the Portuguese territory. Some of these sites were excavated several decades ago, applying methodologies that would be considered inappropriate today, especially by their inability to answer all the questions that these interventions could have raised. Furthermore, other sites were meanwhile destroyed or are no longer findable. In this sense, we were repeatedly confronted with isolated objects, mainly metallic and ceramic items. The systematization of artefact’s features and the comparison with other objects - especially if recovered in preserved and dated contexts - were defined as a starting point for our study. However, if on one hand this approach provided us valid and relevant indication, on the other proved unadjusted to respond to all the interrogations raised by the development of our research. For instance, to what extent is it valauble to consider that identical pottery jars perform a similar social (or religious) role, whether they are deposited in an isolated grave located in a rural area or, instead, in one of the tombs of a cemetery that has grown due to a pre-existing place of worship? Promote reflection on this and other issues (that we believe to be important to discuss) is the aim of this text.
Especially during the Theodosian dynasty some remarkable ladies of the Roman imperial houses played prominent roles. Most of these women were very intelligent and ambitious. Some of them were independent from the Imperial policy, others were used to strengthen the bond between East and West or the courts and the Church, and still others devoted their life and works to the Church, the way the Church Fathers wanted. The prominence of women in the Byzantine Empire (until 1453) found its roots in the Theodosian dynasty, especially with the powerful trio Galla Placidia, her niece Pulcheria and Pulcheria’s sister-in-law Aelia Eudocia. Although limited by their sex, Galla and Eudocia received authority from childbearing. Lacking magisterial powers, Pulcheria especially had to develop other resources that had nothing to do with traditional female functions, power acquired instead through spectacular piety, exalted humility, works of construction and philanthropy, and potent alliances with saints (the cult of the relics) . The Augusti and Augustae of the Theodosion dynasty fully supported the Christianization of the public life and full elaboration of Christian art and left us an amazing legacy of religious art (the so-called "Theodosian Renaissance). Furthermore, Byzantium was not a hereditary state. Emperors generally tried to arrange the succession for their kin. A father’s premature death created an opportunity for his female relatives, for in such circumstances it was generally recognized that the young co-emperor’s mother was most likely to keep his interests at heart and to protect his rights. Widowed mothers therefore were likely to participate in the regency council set up to administer the empire for the child, until he reached his majority. This tradition had been established by examples dating from Late Antiquity, notably the power exercised by Pulcheria, older sister of Emperor Theodosios II in the fifth century. This fact would start the continuous influence of strong women at the center of the Byzantine Empire for the next 1,100 years such as Theodora (527-548), Irene (797-802), Theodora (830-842), Zoë Porphyrogenita (1028-1050), Eudokia Makrembolitissa (1059– 78) and Euphrosyne Doukaina (1195-1203).
Written in undergrad for HIST 395, the research and historiography workshop for history majors. My first major research work. Presented at the MARCUS conference at Sweet Briar College in the Fall of 2013.
This thesis addresses evidence which suggests that those barbarians identified as Sclavenes in the sources never became fully integrated into the Roman system of alliances or its cultural orbit in the sixth and seventh centuries. The written and archaeological evidence available is examined to compare it with previous Roman-barbarian relationships to draw reasonable conclusions about the Sclavene relationship with the Eastern Roman Empire and to some extent, the nature of Sclavene society before it transformed into the recognisable Slavic polities of the Early Middle Ages. The question is conceptualised within the overall framework of the Late Antique Roman frontiers along the Danube and its hinterland on either side (the Balkans and Pontic-Danubian region). This is the point at which the Sclavenes become visible in the written sources and where the cause and effect of Roman barbarian policy can be seen over time and across various (mainly Germanic) barbarian groups in both the written and archaeological material. It will be argued that the Sclavenes were never Roman allies due to a confluence of historical circumstances, the nature of Sclavene society itself, and the availability and operation of alternative imperial orbits in Central Eastern Europe, namely the First Avar Khaganate.
1992, Journal of Folklore Research
The "Omen of the Wolves" recorded during the Visigoth invasion (AD 402) has much in common with an urban legend that circulated in the United States in the 1980s.
2017, Tim Cunningham & Jan Driessen (eds), Crisis to Collapse. The Archaeology of Social Breakdown (Aegis 11), LLN 2017. 2017 ISBN: 978-2-87558-526-4
Few past civilisations have had such a central notion of government as the Roman Empire, with the possible exception of the Han Empire in China. One person, the Roman emperor, at the helm of a single city, Rome, was meant to rule the world. The city of Rome made up ca. 1.8 % of the estimated total population of 50-55 million within the whole Roman Empire, while approximately 13.2 %, or ca. 6.6- 7.26 million, lived in other urban areas. In AD 300, the city of Rome counted one million people. It was the largest city in the world. In AD 550 the population had dwindled to a mere 30-50,000 people . No longer a coherent urban unit, Rome had fragmented into separate villages and fortified compounds on seven different hills with fenced-off vegetable gardens and grazing livestock in the valleys. No other city in the world would reach the 4th century population igure of Rome until some 1,300 years later, when Beijing, China, assumed the position as the world’s largest urban agglomeration. This suggests that something was quite wrong with Rome as an urban political phenomenon.