Late antiquity and Byzantium: an identity problem

Abstract

1975 seems light years away. In parts of the field of Byzantine studies, at any rate, the world has shifted, and perhaps most of all in that contested territory of early Byzantium, otherwise known as late antiquity. The first issue ofByzantine and Modern Greek Studieswas published only four years after Peter Brown’sThe World of Late Antiquity,1and before the ‘explosion’ of late antiquity.2This was also the start of another explosion: the emergence of late antique archaeology as a discipline, leading to its vast expansion and the enormous and ever-growing amount of material available today. For the first time, John Hayes'sLate Roman Pottery(1972) enabled reliable dating criteria for the ceramic evidence that became the foundation of a new understanding of trade and economic life.3The UNESCO Save Carthage campaign, a landmark in the reliable recording of excavations of the late antique period, began in the following year, and since then the growth in data has been exponential.