The evidence from settlement patterns and health history points to economic deterioration, but it also turns up very differing regional trends. Two case studies of Roman craft production will clarify the transformations of critical areas of the late Roman economy. The extraction and production of metals is universally recognized as an indicator of economic development. The second case comes from one of the best-studied “industries” of the ancient world, the production of pottery. But this time we will view ceramics not as a diagnostic tool, but as an economic enterprise in itself.

Metal extraction and production

A heavily militarized late Roman state grappled with almost permanent warfare on several fronts. Perhaps more than a half million men strong in the fourth and fifth centuries, the army devoured iron, bronze, and gold. The bureaucracy and the barbarians also clamored for their share. Mining and metal production were therefore all the more crucial to the Roman economy. Mineral resources and the installations they attracted existed around the empire, and the simple answer to the fate of metallurgy might appear to be that the loss of territory diminished Roman metal production, even if metal making continued unabated in the barbarian kingdoms.

Military defeat did in fact preempt production in several key areas between the third and the seventh centuries, but the story turns out to be more complicated. In mineral resources, Britain and Spain were the richest western provinces and they are well studied.