Separating Romans and barbarians: rural settlement and Romano-British material culture in North Britain
This thesis investigates the role which Roman artefacts played within rural settlements in North Britain during the Romano-British period. The possibility that Roman artefacts were used by native Britons as markers of prestige is explored through the presence or absence of Roman artefact types.
The size of the economy and the distribution of income in the Roman Empire
Different ways of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century CE produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year. It is estimated that elites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income while middling households (perhaps 10 percent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.
Julian's strategy in AD 361
Both Roman generals and modern historians have tended to find Julian’s moves in the civil war of AD 361 hazardous as well as difficult to understand. This is especially true of his long, ultra-rapid and semi-clandestine journey down the Danube, which was carried out by a dangerously small corps (under the command of the Usurper himself !) and ended with a very brief visit to Sirmium.
Attire in Ammianus and Gregory of Tours
Ammianus (c. 330–c. 395) and Gregory of Tours (538–594) both wrote large-scale histories and, as a soldier and a bishop respectively, had first hand experience of many of the persons and events they wrote of. But they lived in very different worlds, the splendid Indian summer of the Roman Empire on the one hand, and the fragmented, perpetually feuding Germanic kingdoms of sixth century, sub-Roman, Merovingian Gaul on the other, where not only bodily coverings and adornments themselves changed but some attitudes towards them did too.