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358 13. specialized production and exchange
and fourth century, and also had some success in the east. The Vandal
conquest seems to have caused some decline and some redirection of
exports, but by no means ended the distribution overseas of African
products: rather, they continued to be extremely important throughout
the fifth- and sixth-century western Mediterranean. However, very
slowly the areas reached by African amphorae and red-slip ware became
more and more restricted, and the quantities involved diminished, so
that, for instance, by the end of the sixth century, African red-slip ware,
although still found on many sites in the western Mediterranean, now
only appears on sites near the coast and generally in small quantities (see
Fig. 16, p.372 below). 19
By 600, at the latest, the African provinces displayed far fewer evident
signs of economic sophistication than they had done in the fourth century;
and, although this cannot be stated with confidence (because of the
difficulties of dating and of comparison), it may well have been the case
that during the fifth century the provinces of the Near East had already
overtaken Africa as the richest part of the empire.
The Aegean world
The period of the fourth, fifth and at least the early part of the sixth
century seems to have been characterized by a flourishing and complex
economy in the lands around the Aegean sea. Rural settlement in Greece,
as revealed in a number of field-surveys, was far more extensive than in the
early Roman period (the exact opposite of the situation documented in
Italy). Towns, too, seemingly prospered in both Greece and western Asia
Minor, as is shown by the building of some traditional public monuments,
of churches and of aristocratic houses. However, the evidence from the
towns presents a problem worth noting: we know far more about important
centres (such as Corinth, Athens, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Aphrodisias
and Sardis, as well as Constantinople itself) than we do about more ‘ordinary’
small towns, which have attracted far less archaeological attention. We
also know much more at present about western Asia Minor, near the
Aegean coast, then we do about the interior and the east. 20
The Aegean region was, in the fourth to sixth century, involved in a wide
overseas exchange network. For instance, the quarries of the island of
Proconnesos in the Sea of Marmara (and, to a lesser extent, the other
eastern quarries of Thasos, Thessaly and Docimium) came in late antiquity
to dominate the production and trade of marble in the whole
Mediterranean. Columns, capitals and bases in the grey-striped marble of
Proconnesos, and in particular chancel-screens (because they weighed less
19 Fentress and Perkins (1988); Reynolds (1995) 6–34 and 40–60.
20 Rural surveys: Alcock (1985). Towns: Claude (1969); Spieser (1984); and particular studies such as
Frantz (1988) on Athens and Foss (1979) 3–99 on Ephesus.
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