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The Transition to Late Antiquity

Large-scale excavations at Dichin, an early Byzantine Fortress, and intensive field survey in north central Bulgaria

Andrew Poulter

The aim of this research programme (1996-2002) has been to investigate the character of the countryside on the Lower Danube during Late Antiquity. The research is intended to explain the dramatic physical and economic changes identified during the excavations at Nicopolis.

The method involved the large-scale excavation of a ‘type site’, near the modern village of Dichin, and the implementation of a new form of intensive field survey, researching the changes which took place within the city’s fertile territory, concentrating upon the Roman villa estates. 

• The 'type site': Excavations on the site of the late Roman fortress at Dichin in central Bulgaria represented the largest British excavation ever organised from Britain, including up to 25 professional field officers, 20 specialists and 150 students and postgraduates from UK and other European universities.

  The results provide a unique insight into the military organisation and economy on the Lower Danube in the 5th to 6th centuries AD. 

• The field survey: The other related programme required the development of a new type of site-specific survey which provided a dramatic insight into the collapse of the Roman economy in the north Bulgarian Plain during the late 4th century AD.

 

Research conclusions

The combination of these two methods led to a number of discoveries that transformed our understanding of this site. 

The city of Nicopolis, from its foundation until the 3^rd century, derived its income form the exploitation of its agricultural and industrial resources. The presence of the army on the Danubian frontier offered a profitable interchange, which benefited the land-owning villa class. 

Then came the decline and eventual destruction of the city at the hands of the Huns c. 450. But, by then, the basis of the city’s prosperity, the land, was no longer farmed by the villa class The destruction of the villas and their abandonment in the years following the defeat at Adrianople not only had direct implications for the fate of the city but also deprived the Empire of the resources it needed to sustain the army on the frontier.

With the departure of Alaric for the West and the restoration of military control from Constantinople, there was an urgent need to restore the frontier forts, as well as to provide for their supply. It was for this purpose that forts, such as Dichin, must have been built by the military but these, and this is the surprise, were intended for irregular garrisons, foederati, who no doubt offered local protection for the countryside but who were primarily there to supervise the collection of foodstuffs and other supplies which could be shipped north to the Danube,  In return, the new soldiers, though under the control of the regular army possessed lands sufficient for their needs (presumably taking over the abandoned villa estates) and maintained themselves by farming. 

The collapse of the villa economy and the Empire’s radical solution to their problem of supply had profound consequences for Nicopolis. Its best lands, at very least,  were directly under military control and, even with the eventual restoration of imperial control at the end of the 5th century, there would seem to have been no clear change in the nature of military control exercised by these soldier/farmers. Once rebuilt on very similar lines, Dichin continued to exist until the latter years of the 6th century. What is uncertain is whether or not it continued to act as a supply base.  The fort may have been reduced to simply acting as a defensive base responsible for the protection of the Rositsa valley. What can be assumed, however, is that the land was under their control and could not be handed back to an urban elite whose responsibility it had been to supply the frontier. Without the return of that wealthy land-owning class, there was no possibility that the city could resume its traditional role and aspect which it had possessed, especially in the Antonine and Severan periods. 

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Publications

'L'avenir du passé: Recherches sur la transition entre la période Romaine et le monde protobyzantin dans la région du Bas-Danube', Antiquité Tardive, 6, 329-343.

'The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Lower Danube; an interim report (1996-8)', Antiquaries Journal 79 (1999), 145-185.

'The Roman to Byzantine transition in the Balkans: preliminary results on Nicopolis and its hinterland', The Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999, 347-358.

'Cataclysm on the lower Danube: the destruction of a complex Roman landscape', Landscapes of Change: rural evolutions in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, ed. N. Christie, Ashgate, 2003, 223-253.