The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Lower Danube: An Interim Report (1996–8)

Abstract

A total of 268 sites within a region of c 2,000 square kilometres in northern Bulgaria, extending north from the Stara Planina (Haemus) to the Danube, offers a unique opportunity to study the character and extent of economic and social change which separates the Roman Empire from Late Antiquity. The method involves excavations within the Roman city of Nicopolis, along the course of a remarkable Roman aqueduct, and at the ‘type site’ of Gradishte, a Late Roman and early Byzantine fort where one of the primary goals is to reconstruct its palaeoenvironmental history. This is accompanied by site-specific field survey, using geophysics and intensive surface collection, to date and identify different categories of nucleated settlements. Running concurrently, the collection and dating of pottery samples from other sites should help to establish whether there was continuity or dislocation of settlement on the lower Danube in the period of transition between the second and the sixth centuries AD.