Urban Survival and the role of the middleman
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• What links survival?  Administrative or Christian centre, or official supply systems had effect did not guarantee continuity.  Prosperous countryside not enough –what about Africa – N Italy and Oriens seem plausible for continuity – common factor stood at frontier distinct cultural, geographical, political zones need for contact and exchange.  Trade and Culture of Byzantium – Lombardy and trans Alpine.  8^th century Venetia all pointed node trading network.
• Links to Hodge and Whitehouse development of gateway communities  (Dorestad, Hamwih, Quentovic)- lacked independent aristocratic life – inheritance classical life.  Exchange one factor – but not only one
• Political disintegration meant slow fragmenting of Roman networks of change + ending state requirement, loss of costly cosmopolitan lifestyle of great landowners; declining need for surplus and exchange.

Other Notes in this Category

1. Factors Transforming the city
2. Post-Roman unity, disintegration and renewal
3. Regional survey of urban change ad survivals
4. The 5^th century and after: the East
5. The ancient city: a centre of administration and a way of life
6. The Fifth Century and After: the West
7. The third-century crisis and the inscriptions of Aphrodisias
8. The transformation of classical cities and the Pirenne debate
9. Types of Post-Roman City
10. Urban Survival and the role of the middleman
11. Why and when did the ancient cities end?

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