"Squatters" at Late Roman Villas: Rethinking the Evidence for Occupation, Third - Sixth Centuries C.E. (20 min)

Presenters

Sarah E. Beckmann, University of California, Los Angeles

Abstract

The Roman villa qua elite status symbol is well-accepted in scholarship, whether as a literary topos or a physical entity. This conceit holds true for late antiquity as much as for the late republic. Indeed, many archaeologists attach the widespread renovation of villas in the western provinces to the burgeoning of the senatorial elite in the fourth century C.E. The demise of the villa from the mid-fifth century on is less well understood, but scholars like Tamara Lewit and Kim Bowes have argued that documented changes—subdivisions in the pars urbana; constructions in ephemeral materials; the repurposing of space for burial, industrial work, or storage—may be evidence for the new material face of the elite class. They challenge previous interpretations of this same evidence as “squatter” occupation, but still, their work underscores the conceit of the villa as a site of elite habitation, if in a decidedly nonclassical mode from the mid-fifth century on.

My paper reconsiders the rise and fall of the late antique villa but eschews the top-down approach that pervades the last century’s scholarship. Understanding owners as absentee domini, I advocate attention to nonelite groups residing in and around villa estates. Laborers of varying statuses and abilities are rarely considered as villa inhabitants, but their constant presence encourages a reassessment of the aforementioned fifth–sixth century changes. Using three sites in the Roman West, I reinterpret the evidence for postantique “squatter” occupation as proof of the continuous presence of nonelite populations, if in different modes and spaces in the fourth versus the sixth century. Acknowledging the ubiquity of such groups (vs. sporadic visits by elite domini) may also help us better understand the shape, orientation, and evolution of rural life and rural hierarchies, in late antiquity and beyond.