Barbarian Trespassers? The Transformation of the Countryside in Post-Roman Italy

The dramatic “Fall of Rome” narrative remains the most appealing story about the end Western Roman Empire, even though scholars have often insisted that it oversimplifies the events of the fifth century, as well as its consequences in the sixth and seventh centuries. The complexity of scholarly accounts leaves the ordinary observer bewildered and eager to reach for the trusty decline-and-fall narrative. Perhaps part of the problem is that picture emerging from archeology has not been given the attention it deserves. The traditional model continues to color the way we understand rural society in Italy, but a closer examination of Roman villas after antiquity challenges the notion that Barbarian incursions devastated the Italian countryside. This talk considers what the life—and afterlife—of a specific villa reveals about the shifting landscape of Late Antique Italy following the Gothic Wars and the Lombard conquest.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Kathryn Jasper is Associate Professor of History and Director of European Studies at Illinois State University. She is also a co-director of the Valle Gianni Archaeological Project. She earned a BA in archaeology and an MA in medieval history from the University of Arizona, and holds a doctoral degree from the University of California at Berkeley in history and medieval studies. Her first monograph, entitled Bounded Wilderness: Landscape and Land Management within the Congregation of Fonte Avellana, 1035-1393, studies monastic communities and how individuals relied on Late Antique models to build new institutions – relating to one another and to their physical environment in new ways – to pursue both ideological and political ends.

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