Discussion here:
http://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/perkins.pdf
Yerxa: Is there evidence that a civilization collapsed when Rome fell?
Ward-Perkins: This is an area where historians seem to be decidedly myopic. In looking closely at their texts, they have failed to notice that in every single area of the empire (except perhaps the Levantine provinces conquered by the Arabs) there was an extraordinary fall in what archaeologists term “material culture.”
The scale and quality of buildings, even of churches, shrank dramatically—so that, for instance, tiled roofs, which were common in Roman times even in a peasant context, became a great rarity and luxury. In the 6th and 7th-century West the vast majority of people lived in tiny houses with beaten earth floors, drafty wooden walls, and insect-infested thatch roofs; whereas, in Roman times, people from the same level of society might well have enjoyed the comfort of solid brick or stone floors, mortared walls, and tiled roofs. This was a change that affected not only the aristocracy, but also huge numbers of people in the middling and lower levels of society who in Roman times had had ready access to high-quality goods.
Yerxa: You discuss evidence from graffiti, coins, roof tiles, and especially pottery, whereas scholars from the Late Antiquity school point to religious texts. Why is it important to pay attention to material culture and economic history?
Ward-Perkins: However elevated our thoughts, we all live in a sophisticated material world, supported by a complex economy, and we all enjoy the convenience and comfort of high-quality goods (whether clothes, washing machines, or the latest laptop and Internet connection). So it seems very obvious to me that material change (and there was dramatic material change at the end of the Roman Empire) is well worthy of our attention. Even the saints were affected by material changes in this period: the new churches constructed in the later 6th- and 7th-century West, in places like Rome and Visigothic Spain, are tiny in comparison to those of the 4th century or of the later Middle Ages.
I also believe—and this seems obvious from modern experience—that sophistication in intellectual life generally requires solid economic underpinning. In my book I attempt to show this by focusing on the evidence of graffiti (which were very common in Roman times, but virtually disappeared thereafter) in order to demonstrate that basic intellectual skills—reading and writing—suffered as dramatic a downturn with the fall of Rome as did the availability of high-quality material goods...
...What is so striking about the fall of Rome is the collapse of material sophistication that
ensued. This happened, I believe, precisely because the Roman world was not entirely dissimilar
to our own: complex economies are very fragile because they rely on hugely sophisticated networks of production and distribution. If these are seriously disrupted, widely and over a long period of time, the entire house of cards can collapse. Although I have a great deal of respect for the new Late Antiquity, it does seriously worry me that it smoothes over the very real crisis that happened at the end of the Roman world. The Romans, like us, enjoyed the fruits of a complex economy, both material and intellectual. And like us, they assumed their world would go on forever. They were wrong, and we would be wise to remember this. The main lesson I think we should learn from the collapse of the Roman Empire and of ancient civilization is not some specific panacea that can preserve our civilization forever (since modern circumstances and the threats to our well being are ever-changing), but a realization of how insecure, and probably transient, our own achievements are—and, from this, a degree of humility
