The Cambridge encyclopaedia of late antique art and archaeology

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

In the commendably succinct introduction (pp. 1-5) to their hefty, two-volume Encyclopaedia of Late Antique Art and Archaeology, the editors flatly declare that “early Christian archaeology,” as a term and a discrete academic discipline, should be done away with: “there is only one way by which we should identify the archaeology of this period, and that is by calling it ‘late antique’” (p. 3). The looming history and historiography of an ascendant Christianity thus underlies the editors’ insistence on the need for a more holistic approach to the transitional centuries between ‘ancient’ and ‘medieval’ that Peter Brown’s classic The World of Late Antiquity (1971) encouraged Anglophone readers to view as a vibrant, sui generis epoch deserving of study on its own terms, rather than as a gloomy postscript to antiquity or an inchoate prelude to the Middle Ages. Revolutionary as the new monotheism was, even for practicing Christians – to say nothing of their pagan and Jewish neighbors – it was but one strand in the fabric of lived experience across the territory of the late Roman empire and, sooner or later, neighboring regions of northern and eastern Europe, the Near East and Africa. Better, then, not to examine the material culture of the era through an exclusively (and excluding) “Christian” lens: “The study of archaeology should always encompass the entire material record of a given period, be it artefacts, built remains, rubbish pits, settlement patterns, landscapes, funerary customs, animal bones, palaeobotanical remains or eDNA” (p. 3). All these topics find a place in the nearly 1000 pages (encompassing 51 chapters divided into five thematic sections) that follow, alongside many others outside the pale of these staples of field archaeology, particularly in the realm of art history and iconography.

A reader who began and stopped with “Part I: Architecture and Iconography” might be forgiven for thinking that the editors, three of the four of whom are in fact renowned for their work on ‘religious’ art and archaeology (Rutgers and Magness on Judaism and Jensen on Christianity), had not fully lived up to their goal of transcending confessional framings of late antiquity. Nine of the 13 chapters here quite explicitly focus on distinct categories of faith: two “pagan” (architecture and iconography), two “Jewish” (architecture and iconography), and five “Christian” (church architecture, monastic architecture, iconography, saint veneration, the Roman catacombs),[1] leaving all of “monumental civic architecture,” “private architecture,” “Byzantine military architecture” and “late antique cemeteries” with less than a third of the collective page-count.

In the following sections, however, the scope becomes more ecumenical as the confessional slant recedes. The one-word titles of most of the studies in “Part II: Artefacts and Evidence” include portraiture, sarcophagi, pottery, glass, ivory, metalwork, epigraphy, coins, technology and spolia, along with “wall painting,” “dress and furnishing textiles,” “illuminated manuscripts” and “travel and communications.” “Part III: Urbanism and the Countryside” fleshes out the civic, private and to a lesser extent military themes summarily treated in Part I with syntheses on “cities” East and West, “countrysides” East, West and North African, and “cities and countrysides” in the Balkans, along with monographic chapters on Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Carthage, Ravenna and Trier. “Part IV: Regional and Ethnic Variety” studiously avoids faith-based categorizations of the “peoples” of northern and eastern Europe and Syria, Egypt and Armenia, save in the final contribution on “early Islam,” the one chapter devoted to the other emergent monotheism in the collection, which otherwise centers on a ‘short’ late antiquity stretching from the mid-3^rd century into the later 6^th. “Part V: Issues and Debates” makes an “issue” of “the spread of Christianity,” but counterbalances it with three chapters on the late Roman economy, barbarian migrations, and – perhaps inevitably – “the archaeology of late antique identity.”

The editors acknowledge the inevitable, obvious points that their Encyclopaedia cannot possibly be exhaustive and might have included any number of other topics. As there will be as many personal lists of desiderata as there are readers, another need not be added here. The editors are in any case to be complimented for corralling such a daunting array of thematic essays into the most capacious synthesis of late antique material culture yet produced. The list of authors reads as a who’s who of leading specialists many of the fields covered – to the point that finding qualified reviewers may prove challenging –, though younger voices are also represented; and the quality of the contributions is generally high, though naturally variable. To single out a bare handful of them for special praise or criticism would either seem arbitrary or smack of partiality, so I will instead highlight the single longest contribution to the two volumes as an unqualified triumph: the index.

Readers of BMCR unaccustomed to finding a reviewer’s standard encomia (essential, monumental, compendious, etc.) in relation to an index should rest assured that these terms all apply to the 71 folio-sized pages with three columns of densely packed, small-format text each that conclude the second volume of the set. I suggest that prospective users – at least the presumably large majority who will not read both volumes cover-to-cover and want a handy overview of topics chosen à la carte – might want to begin with it, even before the table of contents. It is here that the collection takes on a life of its own as a complex organism whose connecting tissues extend and ramify across time, space and media. A dip into the index is an invitation to plot new mental itineraries, each wending outward from a subject-heading into polyfocal thematic strands. All readers are free to devise their own routes, and may in so doing find the Encyclopaedia growing into something greater and more surprising than the sum of its individual components.

If you want to learn about monetary production and circulation, for example, you might begin by looking up “coins.” In addition to Andrew Burnett’s dedicated study on the subject, you will be invited to explore “portraiture” (Prusac-Lindhagen), “sarcophagi” (Dresken-Weiland) and “pagan iconography” (Faust and Myrup-Christensen), and further to consider coins in contexts ranging from “the spread of Christianity” (Ristow) to “the archaeology of identity” (Bowden), everywhere from the Roman catacombs (Fiocchi Nicolai) to northern Europe (Halsall) via Constantinople (Bassett), Jerusalem (Gutfeld), Armenia (Maranci) and “early Islam” (Milright). Altogether, “coins” will take you to 13 of the 51 chapters, and the 26 subheadings add another nine to the total. If you want to know more about African Red Slip ceramics, you will be directed not only to Michael Bonifay and Paul Reynolds’ survey of “pottery,” but also to chapters on technology (Cuomo), cities West (Christie) and East (Saradi), countrysides West (Grey), East (Mitchell) and North African (Leone), “Egypt” (Cromwell and Gibbs) and the late Roman economy (Poblome). This last chapter might then inspire you to look up “ports,” where you will be referred back to “pottery” along with chapters on “Travel and Communications” (Adams and Gibbs), Rome (Liverani), Ravenna (Deliyannis), the Balkans (Pillinger), Constantinople, Egypt, “cities in the East” and “early Islam.”

If you have nothing particular in mind but find yourself with an idle hour to while away in the library (which is surely where most reading of the print version of the Encyclopaedia will happen; more on this later), I recommend again turning straight to the index and perusing it aimlessly until you happen on a topic that strikes your fancy. “Ditches,” for example. You will naturally end up at “Byzantine Military Architecture” (Davies), but also be encouraged to take side-trips through northern and eastern Europe (Halsall and Curta, respectively), cities West and East (Christie and Saradi, respectively), Carthage (Miles) and Trier (Weber), as well as late antique cemeteries (Effros). Those struck by “children” will find themselves exploring the aforementioned chapters on cemeteries, sarcophagi, the archaeology of identity and the spread of Christianity, along with “the material culture of saint veneration” (Yasin), “early Christian iconography” (Jensen), “dress and furnishing textiles” (Schrenk), and even “Jewish architecture” (Magness, under the subheading “young children”), among others.

Many students and teachers of late antiquity should be able to invent profitable ways of using the Encyclopaedia, in short, and this is reason enough for its existence. It also goes a long way toward filling a void still nearly as open as when these volumes were conceived over a decade ago, when none of the principal surveys of late antiquity (Bowersock, Brown and Grabar’s Guide of 1999 being perhaps the most familiar to Anglophone readers[2]) focused mainly, much less exclusively, on archaeology and material culture. The most noteworthy competitor to appear in the interim, The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology,[3] will undoubtedly share many readers with this Encyclopaedia, but will fail to satisfy many others anxious to see all the facets of culture, material and otherwise, that the reductive filter of Christianity obscures. The Encyclopaedia is neither all-encompassing nor unimprovable (what is?), but it is for now, and will likely remain for some time to come, the most wide-ranging survey of late antique art and archaeology available in any language.

How available, however, and to whom? The editors lament that the Italian translation of Deichmann’s Einführung in die christliche Archäologie (1993, original ed. 1983) appeared “at a price that graduate or undergraduate students could not readily afford” (p. 1), but their own encyclop(a)edia costs $210 for the set or $145 for a single volume in both print and e-book formats. While not unreasonable by current standards (the Oxford Handbook, a single volume of a mere 700-odd pages, lists at $215), it is hard to imagine students or, really, anyone without research funds to burn jumping at the chance to buy a personal copy – the more so when they discover that the ‘economical’ list-price comes at the cost of the illustrations in the print edition, which are uniformly in black and white, usually tiny and frequently dingy. Doubtless the editors and contributors would have wished for better, and they might well join me in regretting that the European Research Council, for example, was not involved in funding their work, in which case an open-access digital publication (complete with the copious, large-format color illustrations that most of the chapters in the Encyclopaedia badly need) would have been not only feasible but required,[4] and the masses would have rejoiced to have these volumes to hand for leisurely consultation anywhere, anytime. As it is, those fortunate enough to enjoy access to a research library offering the digital edition, which does have color images that can be enlarged for proper inspection, will find it well worth their while to have a look.

Authors and Titles

Volume 1:

Introduction: Leonard V. Rutgers, Jodi Magness, Robin M. Jensen, and Neil Christie

Part I. Architecture and Iconography

1. Pagan Architecture: Christophe J. Goddard
2. Pagan Iconography: Stephan Faust and Troels Myrup Kristensen
3. Church Architecture: Olof Brandt
4. Monastic Architecture: Karel Innemée
5. The Material Culture of Saint Veneration: Ann Marie Yasin
6. Early Christian Iconography: Robin M. Jensen
7. Jewish Architecture: Jodi Magness
8. Jewish Iconography: Zeev Weiss
9. Monumental Civic Architecture: Gunnar Brands
10. Private Architecture: Isabelle Baldini
11. Byzantine Military Architecture: Gwyn Davies
12. The Catacombs of Rome: Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai
13. Late Antique Cemeteries: Bonnie Effros

Part II. Artifacts and Evidence

14. Portraiture: Marina Prusac-Lindhagen
15. Sarcophagi: Jutta Dresken-Weiland
16. Wall Painting: Matteo Braconi, Dimitri Cascianelli, and Giovanna Ferri
17. Pottery: Michel Bonifay and Paul Reynolds
18. Glass: Constanze Höpken and Stefanie Nagel
19. Ivory: Niamh Bhalla
20. Metalwork: Marlia Mundell Mango and Benjamin Fourlas
21. Dress and Furnishing Textiles: Sabine Schrenk
22. Illuminated Manuscripts: Michelle P. Brown
23. Epigraphy: Antonio Felle
24. Coins: Andrew Burnett
25. Transport and Communication: Colin Adams and Matt Gibbs
26. Technology: Serafina Cuomo
27. Spolia: Bente Kiilerich

Volume 2:

Part III. Urbanism and the Countryside

28. Rome: Paolo Liverani
29. Constantinople: Sarah Bassett
30. Alexandria: Marjorie Venit and Julie Marchand
31. Antioch: Gunnar Brands and Andrea U. De Giorgi
32. Jerusalem: Oren Gutfeld
33. Carthage: Richard Miles
34. Ravenna: Debora Mauskopf Deliyannis
35. Trier: Winfred Weber
36. Cities in the West: Neil Christie
37. Cities in the East: Helen Saradi
38. Countrysides of the Late Roman Western Empire: Cam Grey
39. Countrysides of the Late Roman Eastern Empire: Stephen Mitchell
40. The Countryside in Late Antique North Africa: Anna Leone
41. The Balkans: Cities and Countrysides in Late Antiquity: Renate Johanna Pillinger

Part IV. Regional and Ethnic Variety

42. Peoples of Northern Europe: Guy Halsall
43. Peoples of Eastern Europe: Florin Curta
44. Peoples of Syria: Emma Loosley Leeming
45. Egypt: Jennifer Cromwell and Matthew Gibbs
46. Armenia: Christina Maranci
47. Early Islam: Marcus Millwright

Part V. Issues and Debates

48. The Economy of the Later Roman Empire: Jeroen Poblome
49. The Spread of Christianity: Sebastian Ristow
50. Barbarians and Migrations: Peter Heather
51. The Archaeology of Late Antique Identity: William Bowden.

Notes

[1] Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai’s chapter on the catacombs of Rome treats them (rightly, I think) as having been planned, developed, and almost exclusively occupied by members of the Christian community.

[2] G. Bowersock, P. Brown, A. Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1999.

[3] D.K. Pettegrew, W.R. Caraher, T.W. Davis (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

[4] See https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/ERC_Open_Access_Guidelines-revised_Dec_2021.pdf, accessed Jan. 20, 2026.