Late Antique industry in the urban public and private spaces of Asia minor

Abstract

The ubiquity of industrial activities and their movement into what were once public buildings have been seen as defining features of late antique urban change. This paper presents a current synthesis on the material evidence of late antique (late third through seventh centuries AD) industry in Asia Minor, in both public and private contexts. Drawing together a dataset of over 100 production contexts in 39 cities, this article identifies large-scale trends in the archaeological record of urban industry in order to address some fundamental questions regarding: the degree to which this was a region-wide phenomenon, the phasing of this process in different building forms, and the evidence of different industries in this process. In so doing, it then considers the results of this study in relation to the wider debate concerning the slow and phased trends of continuity and change in late antique urbanism.