The Sardis excavation sector known as MMS was a center of habitation for over a millennium. Archaic houses built near the great mudbrick fortification were succeeded by scattered Hellenistic and Roman dwellings, to be followed in late antiquity by imposing residences of complex plan and ambitious decoration. Like other parts of the city, these houses saw extensive structural damage in the early A.D. 600s. Raised floors, flimsy partitions and makeshift hearths are among the few signs of lingering occupation.1

Roman-style bathhouses are often used as markers to study processes of ‘Romanisation’, or, more generally, the spread of a Roman way of life throughout newly conquered regions. The building type, with its characteristic hypocaust system and pools, was a foreign element in regions unacquainted with communal bathing. However, to assume that these buildings were introduced and spread as a ‘package’, with the standard sequence of rooms and accompanying technology, would be oversimplifying a complex phenomenon of acceptance, rejection and adaptation. Since Roman baths are too often perceived as a mainly urban phenomenon, regions on the fringes of the empire with low levels of urbanisation, including the northern provinces, have been excluded from most seminal works.1 The present paper aims to examine a corpus of baths in NW Gaul from between the 1st and early 4th c. (i.e., the period between the first villa constructions and their abandonment following Germanic invasions) in order to challenge idées fixes2 that their plans were rigid and standardised and that most were in urban settings.

The Balearic Islands lie not far off the E coast of the Iberian Peninsula in a strategic position for navigation and trade routes (fig. 1 below). Classical writers considered them two groups of islands: Mallorca and Menorca (with adjacent islands and islets), forming the Baliarides, and Ibiza and Formentera (with other islets), considered the Pityussae.1 In 123 B.C., the Balearides were conquered by the Romans and included first in Hispania Citerior and in Tarraconensis later. The unified archipelago became an independent province at the end of the 4th c., probably due to the re-organization by Theodosius.2 In A.D. 455, the Balearics were conquered by the Vandals, while in 534, Apollinarius, sent by Belisarius, conquered the islands for the Byzantine empire. Theoretically, Byzantine rule lasted until the Islamic conquest of Isam-al-Jalawni in 902-3,3 but it is difficult to draw a precise line for the end of late antiquity on the islands. The Muslim occupation at the very start of the 10th c. witnessed a clear shift. In this paper, we will consider the period from the 5th to the start of the 10th c., even if information for the 8th and 9th c. is scarce.

La Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología en Roma (EEHAR–CSIC) realizza ormai da 25 anni scavi archeologici e ricerche su Tusculum e il suo territorio, trattandosi di uno dei progetti di più lunga durata di una scuola straniera su territorio italiano. I risultati ottenuti da diversi gruppi di lavoro hanno restituito un′immagine straordinaria della città con la scoperta di una serie di complessi (foro, teatro, acropoli, chiese) che illustrano archeologicamente l'articolazione urbana del sito e le ulteriori possibilità di sviluppo delle ricerche. Dall′inizio dei lavori, nel 1994,1 la ricerca si è sviluppata in varie fasi contraddistinte da una strategia istituzionale coerente che ha facilitato la continuità del progetto, grazie anche alla partecipazione della XI Comunità Montana. In questi anni sono state numerose le pubblicazioni che hanno messo in circolazione i dati provenienti dalle varie campagne di scavo.2

In the Numismatic Chronicle for 2013, A. Bursche put forward the proposition that the imperial treasury was seized by the Goths when in A.D. 251 they crushed the Roman army at Abritus.1 Most of the plundered Roman gold was presumably in the form of coin (ingots are neither excluded nor confirmed). This gold has now been traced with some confidence to archaeological sites of the Wielbark and the Chernyakhiv cultures, in particular to grave assemblages dated to the second half of the 3rd c. (phase C1b-C2 of the Late Roman period).2 This had even broader consequences, since the capture of an enormous amount of gold by the barbarians could have been the immediate cause of the deterioration of the aureus under Decius‘ successors.3