Assessing Late Antique villa transformation at individual sites: towards a spatial approach

Abstract

This paper builds on the methodology for assessing the transformation of Roman villas in Late Antiquity. Previous studies have moved from simple identification towards a more holistic way of spatially visualizing transformation (for example, Chavarría 2007; Dodd 2019), however, none of these previous attempts have led to a spatially comparable approach to site transformation across different regions and individual settlements. This paper will lay out the problematic nature of spatially illustrating villa transformation and address the development processes of prior studies. It will lay out the conceptual framework for a new approach to addressing villa transformation based on three spatial layers and demonstrate their applicability on two important villa settlements in Northern Britain and the Saarland.