Collapse of society ?

[Dan Howard]

I did use the word in blurry context. I was referring to iron as the LBA's downfall. A new group entered the Frog Pond using lighter, quicker, sharper, weapons.

There isn't really any evidence to support this. By the time the alleged invaders attacked Egypt, Greece, Hatti etc., all of these cultures had already adopted the new weapons and tactics. Both sides fought the same way.

[Caballo]

I can strongly recommend this book (also very short).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fall-Rome-End-Ci...0192807285

Bryan Ward-Perkins is not only an excellent scholar but a charming person. And if you just fancy listening to him in the car on a podcast on the end of Rome and the end of civilisation, here are the downloads.

http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/bryan-ward-perkins

And finally, here is an article he wrote back in 2009.



Call this a recession? At least it isn’t the Dark Ages

By Bryan Ward-Perkins

As we face an uncertain and worrying New Year, we can at least console ourselves with the fact that we are not living 1,600 years ago, and about to begin the year 410. In this year Rome was sacked, and the empire gave up trying to defend Britain. While this marks the glorious beginnings of “English history”, as Anglo-Saxon barbarians began their inexorable conquest of lowland Britain, it was also the start of a recession that puts all recent crises in the shade.

The economic indicators for fifth-century Britain are scanty, and derive exclusively from archaeology, but they are consistent and extremely bleak. Under the Roman empire, the province had benefited from the use of a sophisticated coinage in three metals – gold, silver and copper – lubricating the economy with a guaranteed and abundant medium of exchange. In the first decade of the fifth century new coins ceased to reach Britain from the imperial mints on the continent, and while some attempts were made to produce local substitutes, these efforts were soon abandoned. For about 300 years, from around AD 420, Britain’s economy functioned without coin.

Core manufacturing declined in a similar way. There was some continuity of production of the high-class metalwork needed by a warrior aristocracy to mark its wealth and status; but at the level of purely functional products there was startling change, all of it for the worse. Roman Britain had enjoyed an abundance of simple iron goods, documented by the many hob-nail boots and coffin-nails found in Roman cemeteries. These, like the coinage, disappeared early in the fifth century, as too did the industries that had produced abundant attractive and functional wheel-turned pottery. From the early fifth century, and for about 250 years, the potter’s wheel – that most basic tool, which enables thin-walled and smoothly finished vessels to be made in bulk – disappeared altogether from Britain. The only pots remaining were shaped by hand, and fired, not in kilns as in Roman times, but in open ‘clamps’ (a smart word for a pile of pots in a bonfire).

We do not know for certain what all this meant for population numbers in the countryside, because from the fifth to the eighth century people had so few goods that they are remarkably difficult to find in the archaeological record; but we do know its effect on urban populations. Roman Britain had a dense network of towns, ranging from larger settlements, like London and Cirencester, which also served an administrative function, to small commercial centres that had grown up along the roads and waterways. By 450 all of these had disappeared, or were well on the way to extinction. Canterbury, the only town in Britain that has established a good claim to continuous settlement from Roman times to the present, impresses us much more for the ephemeral nature of its fifth to seventh-century huts than for their truly urban character. Again it was only in the eighth century, with the (re)emergence of trading towns such as London and Saxon Southampton, that urban life returned to Britain.

For two or three hundred years, beginning at the start of the fifth century, the economy of Britain reverted to levels not experienced since well before the Roman invasion of AD 43. The most startling features of the fifth-century crash are its suddenness and its scale. We might not be surprised if, on leaving the empire, Britain had reverted to an economy similar to that which it had enjoyed in the immediately pre-Roman Iron Age. But southern Britain just before the Roman invasion was a considerably more sophisticated place economically than Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries: it had a native silver coinage; pottery industries that produced wheel-turned vessels and sold them widely; and even the beginnings of settlements recognisable as towns. Nothing of the kind existed in the fifth and sixth centuries; and it was only really in the eighth century that the British economy crawled back to the levels it had already reached before Emperor Claudius’s invasion. It is impossible to say with any confidence when Britain finally returned to levels of economic complexity comparable to those of the highest point of Roman times, but it might be as late as around the year 1000 or 1100. If so, the post-Roman recession lasted for 600-700 years.

We can take some cheer from this sad story – so far our own problems pale into insignificance. But Schadenfreude is never a very satisfying emotion, and in this case it would be decidedly misplaced. The reason the Romano-British economy collapsed so dramatically should give us pause for thought. Almost certainly the suddenness and the catastrophic scale of the crash were caused by the levels of sophistication and specialisation reached by the economy in Roman times. The Romano-British population had grown used to buying their pottery, nails, and other basic goods from specialist producers, based often many miles away, and these producers in their turn relied on widespread markets to sustain their specialised production. When insecurity came in the fifth century, this impressive house of cards collapsed, leaving a population without the goods they wanted and without the skills and infrastructure needed to produce them locally. It took centuries to reconstruct networks of specialisation and exchange comparable to those of the Roman period.

The more complex an economy is, the more fragile it is, and the more cataclysmic its disintegration can be. Our economy is, of course, in a different league of complexity to that of Roman Britain. Our pottery and metal goods are likely to have been made, not many miles away, but on the other side of the globe, while our main medium of exchange is electronic, and sometimes based on smoke and mirrors. If our economy ever truly collapses, the consequences will make fifth-century Britain seem like a picnic.

The writer teaches history at Trinity College, Oxford and is the author of ‘The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization’

[Dan D'Silva]

I did use the word in blurry context. I was referring to iron as the LBA's downfall. A new group entered the Frog Pond using lighter, quicker, sharper, weapons. The singular female deity was replaced by a male-oriented pantheon, not actually "better" but we still live with it. The newcomers wound up being proto-Greeks and Philistines, and the Frog Pond changed forever.

Eh? I may be misreading you, but are you equating the Iron Age with the arrival of Greeks in Greece and the beginning of the Olympic pantheon? Those events predate the Iron Age by... well I'm not sure what the dates are now, but it's some centuries.

[Alanus]

Dan,
No, I was referring to the singular "earth goddess" being replaced by groups of gods, some female (Dawn) and some male (Apollo), and they arrived Everywhere. The proto-Greeks probably arrived from the other side of the Balkans, so they weren't part of the Sea People. But they carried the seed of a newer culture, as recorded in the Iliad.

The introduction of Iron was much older than the events in Cline's book, and we find bimetal weapons in Eurasia and an iron dagger in Tutankhamen's grave. The whole process was slower, earlier, and not the cataclysmic event that Cline wants us to believe.

[Feinman]

Dan,
No, I was referring to the singular "earth goddess" being replaced by groups of gods, some female (Dawn) and some male (Apollo), and they arrived Everywhere. The proto-Greeks probably arrived from the other side of the Balkans, so they weren't part of the Sea People. But they carried the seed of a newer culture, as recorded in the Iliad.

The introduction of Iron was much older than the events in Cline's book, and we find bimetal weapons in Eurasia and an iron dagger in Tutankhamen's grave. The whole process was slower, earlier, and not the cataclysmic event that Cline wants us to believe.

I believe that the Sea Peoples did consist of Greek tribes; aside from their names, you can actually see much of the armour mentioned by Homer in the Iliad; amphiphalos helmets, cuirasses, large round shields, and long rapier style swords found in Greece.
Tiara helmet remains (like those shown at Medinet Habu) and others:
http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/helmets3.htm

There is even an anecdote in the Odyssey mentioning an attack on Egypt:

"But my comrades, yielding to wantonness, and led on by their own might, straightway set about wasting the fair fields of the men of Egypt; and they carried off the women and little children, and slew the men; and the cry came quickly to the city. Then, hearing the shouting, the people came forth at break of day, and the whole plain was filled with footmen, and chariots and the flashing of bronze. But Zeus who hurls the thunderbolt cast an evil panic upon my comrades, and none had the courage to hold his ground and face the foe; for evil surrounded us on every side. So then they slew many of us with the sharp bronze, and others they led up to their city alive, to work for them perforce."

Odyssey xiv 262–272

http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=Artic...12&mn=4997

[Alanus]

Todd!

This is very interesting, and I'd missed it. It certainly sounds like the proto-Greeks were among the Sea People. I'll bet this would interest J.P. Mallory and David Anthony, both (I believe) holding to the Balkans theory. :eek:

[Feinman]

Thanks Alanus! I lurk regularly and I really enjoy your posts on the forum here. We've been round and round over the Sea Peoples, Trojan War, and low chronology over at the Bronze Age Center. I agree with Dan about the departure of the aristocracy and the collapse of the Mycenaean palace culture and the plunge into a feuding chaos of warlords; it is echoed in the Odyssey, with all of the shameless suitors that besiege Penelope, and also the murder of Agamemnon by Aigisthos.

[Robert Vermaat]

"People move from building in stone to building in wood."
What needs to be defined is who the "People" are, Roman colonist or native or slave. Who built in stone and stopped and who always built in wood and continued to build in wood. The vastness of the Western Empire also must be considered as some places probably never built many personal dwellings in stone.

Well, there is a difference, because the empire was rich enough to allow also the small rural buiding to be built in stone with tiled roofs, and this ended until the 16th c. or so.
However, even when the buildings were no longer built in stone, they contunuid to be built. My favorite example is the 'palatial' building in Wroxeter, which re-used stone from other buildings, and which despite being built from wood was a quite spectacular classical building.

Also, as already mentioned, we see no total disruption of the agricultural pattern in Britain (for instance). When society really collapses, you'd expect that not only the city go to ruin, but also the countryside. I've seen no evidence of that on any largeer scale. To the contrary, settlement and agricultural patterns outside the Empire show much more change thatn those within. For instance, Frankish families in Drenthe (Netherlands) which showed a pattern of employment in and a return from the Empire, are now deserting their ancestral lands to move south.

I think that the 5th century showed a major economical crisis, together with a mahjor political crisis and an end to many political-military intsitutions, both with a devatating effect on trade, but not a 'collapse of society'.

[Caballo]

"I think that the 5th century showed a major economical crisis, together with a mahjor political crisis and an end to many political-military intsitutions, both with a devatating effect on trade, but not a 'collapse of society'. "

I'd have to disagree- although it all depends on your point of view. If you are a hill farmer, with sheep, then apart from the collapse of the local market, not much changes. Maybe a new overlord speaking another different language.

If you are a towns person, or educated, or a trader, or educated then your world in one generation becomes very diferrent.

In Britain, we have the complete disappearance of the monetary economy and return to small scale, local barter- one recent lecture I was at spoke about the 5th century economy falling to a level below that of pre Roman Britain.

Collapse of security barring what policing and soldiery could be organised locally- so an end to law and order. I'd argue that modern gangs show an interesting parallel here in the way that they operate and can dominate localities.

No point in sending goods to trade- the markets don't exist and the roads aren't safe. And the towns have continued to decline and become overgrown (this begun pre 5th century). The town may have become quite dangerous to visit with unsafe walls and roofs- much better for a Saxon wick to be created by the Strand (beach) in London than in old , rotting Londinium.

Literacy falls- as state sponsored edication funding is withdrawn (all those bad pagan texts...). The wealthy villas are abandoned. Libraries are lost. The infrastructure is not maintained (on the whole) and it becomes a matter of local civic pride when something is still working - eg the watersupply at Carlisle.

And on top of that new folk are raiding , trying to get a share of the now undefended wealth.

If thats not collapse of a society, I'm not sure what is?

[Nathan Ross]

we absolutely can talk about the collapse of society in the 5th century Roman West. The Roman state and, more importantly, culture by any meaningful rubric does indeed collapse... There's a lot of hippy dippy "scholarship" dealing in "transformation" ...

I wouldn't call Peter Brown either a hippy or dippy, or question his scholarship, but it does seem that some of his followers have taken his notion of an anti-climactic transition or transformation in the Roman west to an unsustainable extreme. Ward-Perkins, as Paul B mentioned above, provides a very pithy rebuttal of the idea that the barbarian kingdoms in the west were established by peaceful negotiation and sustained in an atmosphere of amicable co-existence...

However, without wanting to sound outrageously fashionable, I do think it's possible to speak of different levels of society, and different levels of culture. Some of these levels may be more apparent in the archaelogical and literary record than others; some of these levels, likewise, may have proved better able to withstand the disruptions caused by the breakdown of Roman state control.

I've recently been reading Esmonde Cleary's The Roman West AD200-500, and I was reminded just how much was apparently lost in the provinces of Gaul and the Germanies - not in the fifth century, but in the second half of the third. I know that the interpretation of destruction evidence has been rather skewed by the desire to accord with a narrative of barbarian invasions at certain known dates, but even allowing for margins of error - and the alternative cause of endemic civil war - it strikes me that the destruction and attendant social collapse in this era was perhaps far greater than that of a couple of centuries later.

Cities sacked and often abandoned, many losing up to 75% of their urban fabric, the parts that remained heavily walled and transformed into military bases connected by guarded supply roads; large tracts of agricultural land deserted; a rise in organised banditry (the bagaudae); the apparent collapse of the villa economy in northern Gaul (of several hundred known villas in cAD200, only a couple of dozen remained in use by c.AD300), not to mention the possible appearance of a hybrid Gallo-Romano-Germanic culture in the border provinces - all this suggests a comprehensive collapse of the civilian infrastructure in the north-west, and its replacement by martial law and either military occupation or barbarian settlement.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

a rise in organised banditry (the bagaudae)

The 5th century Bagaudae moreso consisted of local possessores looking to their own administration and defense to eliminate the tax burden from the Roman government with a much lighter one. Eventually they became the Armoreciani, and it seems that in 447-452 the Spanish Bacaudae even nominated their own emperor, if the name of their leader Basiliscus means anything.

AFAIK, I thought the lack of Roman government in Britain created an economic boom in the 5th century?

[Caballo]

"AFAIK, I thought the lack of Roman government in Britain created an economic boom in the 5th century? "

Not sure what evidence there is for that- are you thinking of the rise in villa building by the Romano-British version of the Cotswolds set in the late 4th century? I often wonder whether the money that would otherwise have gone in taxes when into luxurious mosaics and bath houses- for example here in North Leigh Roman villa https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/days...-research/

[Flavivs Aetivs]

I was thinking moreso along the lines that the transition to a local government and the reduction of the tax burden upon all classes of society would have caused a local economic boom. I saw it argued once but can't remember where.

[Lyceum]

Oh how very 19th century it has suddenly got in here. I'm not going to engage but I really must protest at sea peoples= proto-Greeks. You realise that by definition the Mycenaean age precludes proto-Greek since it has already passed through a few phonological (and morphological) shifts that distant it from Proto-Greek right? right?

Yei Nathan.

we absolutely can talk about the collapse of society in the 5th century Roman West. The Roman state and, more importantly, culture by any meaningful rubric does indeed collapse... There's a lot of hippy dippy "scholarship" dealing in "transformation" ...

I wouldn't call Peter Brown either a hippy or dippy, or question his scholarship, but it does seem that some of his followers have taken his notion of an anti-climactic transition or transformation in the Roman west to an unsustainable extreme. Ward-Perkins, as Paul B mentioned above, provides a very pithy rebuttal of the idea that the barbarian kingdoms in the west were established by peaceful negotiation and sustained in an atmosphere of amicable co-existence...

Well Brown's thesis wasn't quite so OTT with regards to continuity and his concept of transformation is exactly that, transformation. Which is why his work will still be read by my grandchildren when all the more hippy crap will be given to the fire.

However, without wanting to sound outrageously fashionable, I do think it's possible to speak of different levels of society, and different levels of culture. Some of these levels may be more apparent in the archaelogical and literary record than others; some of these levels, likewise, may have proved better able to withstand the disruptions caused by the breakdown of Roman state control.

I've recently been reading Esmonde Cleary's The Roman West AD200-500, and I was reminded just how much was apparently lost in the provinces of Gaul and the Germanies - not in the fifth century, but in the second half of the third. I know that the interpretation of destruction evidence has been rather skewed by the desire to accord with a narrative of barbarian invasions at certain known dates, but even allowing for margins of error - and the alternative cause of endemic civil war - it strikes me that the destruction and attendant social collapse in this era was perhaps far greater than that of a couple of centuries later.

Cities sacked and often abandoned, many losing up to 75% of their urban fabric, the parts that remained heavily walled and transformed into military bases connected by guarded supply roads; large tracts of agricultural land deserted; a rise in organised banditry (the bagaudae); the apparent collapse of the villa economy in northern Gaul (of several hundred known villas in cAD200, only a couple of dozen remained in use by c.AD300), not to mention the possible appearance of a hybrid Gallo-Romano-Germanic culture in the border provinces - all this suggests a comprehensive collapse of the civilian infrastructure in the north-west, and its replacement by martial law and either military occupation or barbarian settlement.

There is of course several layers to any so called "culture". It is never monolithic and if I can draw your attention away from Rome to archaic Greece (which is the sexiest of disciplines btw) there is a wonderful monograph edited by L Kurke and C Dougherty called something like "Cultures within Ancient Greek culture" or some such with a great collection of articles detailing how we look at this stuff (Roman studies is actually behind on this and really needs to catch up with anthropology etc). That is a given, however distinctly Roman (to some large degree, classical) culture is...well civilisation in an etymological sense. A specific relationship between urban centre and hinterland is vital to Roman civilisation and that does break down as you say, the trappings of Roman culture die with it. Conversely they also happily live on in the east for a while longer.

You're right that seemingly hybrid cultures appear. Though for my money I think such cultures were always to a degree hybridised. I think too that collapse was long term in several iterations rather than single time event.

Also have you seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vSGPHByAZc

I know Ando primarily from a pov of religion and/or law but this is an interesting engagement with teaching, popular history and intellectual history.

[Dan D'Silva]

Dan,
No, I was referring to the singular "earth goddess" being replaced by groups of gods, some female (Dawn) and some male (Apollo), and they arrived Everywhere.

I'm aware that that's a popular theory, but I'm pretty suspicious of it. The religions of pre-Indo-Europeans in Greece and most elsewhere in Europe belongs to prehistory and interpretations about them are necessarily tenuous -- there may, for all we know, have been as much variety among them as there was in Europe in Classical times.