‘Vanishing villas’: what happened to élite rural habitation in the West in the 5th-6th c? Tamara Lewit Introduction [At the height of the Roman Empire, the characteristic form of wealthy rural habitation was the villa. Throughout the empire, villas were characterised by a separate stone-buil habitation (the pars urbana), a standard floor-plan (e.g., a corridor or courtyard plan), obed- ience to a classical aesthetic (e.g., marble, wall-paintings, and mosaics) and features reflecting a classical lifestyle (e.g., baths and hypocausts). They were the rural residences of land- owners of different levels of wealth and rank, and varied from the relatively small and simple to huge, sprawling mansions adorned with every conceivable luxury. The date of the initial wave of villa construction varies from the Ist ¢. BC. to the 2nd c. A.D. in different parts of the empire, correlating with their dates of Roman conquest. In the 4th c. imposing reception areas, apsed rooms, and peristyle courts were often added.? Throughout the West, regardless of their date of construction, excavations have revealed an overwhelming transformation during the 5th and 6th c. in the style and nature of occupation at villa sites: the typically Roman forms of building and use disappear at site after site, to be replaced by radically altered functions (e.g., industrial use or use for burial), and building in a quite different style and ephemeral materials, often described as ‘squatter occupation’. This transformation has been universally interpreted as evidence of the abandonment of villas as habitations by the land-owning élite. This article aims to re-interpret the transfor- mation of villa sites in the West. I will argue that rich urban houses in many regions underwent the same overwhelming change in occupation style in the 5th-6th c. as did villas. Any inter- pretation of the transformation of rural villas must take into account the parallel develop- ments in towns. It is now generally agreed that urban change was the result of socio-cultural and political transformation. It will be suggested here that the transformation of rural villas took place as a consequence of similar factors, and that villas were not abandoned or occupied only by poor ‘squatters’ but, in many cases, continued to be occupied by land-owners living in a different, non-classical style. The transformation of villa sites in the West in the 5th-6th c. Excavations of villa sites throughout the West reveal a series of characteristic transforma- tions during the 5th or 6th c,, and sometimes as early as the 4th c. These transformations ap- pear in every region, including Britain, Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy. The use of rooms (often even the richest and most decorative) in the pars urbana for new purposes associated with agricultural or industrial production is a recurring feature in the Sth- 6th c. These new patterns of use defy classical aesthetic traditions and lifestyle, destroying mosaics, converting decorative areas to agricultural or industrial uses, and ignoring the distinc- 1 On the definition, typology and development of the villa, see Percival 1976; Smith 1997, and Terrenato 2001. The question of whether the size of a villa residence can be considered to reflect the rank of its ‘owner and size of his estate is a vexed one. Clearly, farmland could sometimes be part of a huge estate but have been worked by a vilicus or colonus living in a small dwelling. Some rich land-owners might also own many but scattered parcels of land, so that huge homes were not necessarily located on huge, agglomerated estates. However, most of the stone-built and substantially decorated buildings labelled ‘villas’ look more like owners’ showy houses than the functional habitations of supervisors or tenants, while evidently huge mansions were the residences of the most important land-owners, whether their estates were consolidated or scattered parcels of land. For the ostentatious architecture of the 4th c,, see Ellis 1997. Permission to copy may be obsined only from /RA (raBfournalofRomanArch com)“Vanishing villas’ 261 Fig. 1. Villa of Saint-Emilion, Gaul, postholes cut Fig. 2. Villa of St-André-de-Codols, Gaul, with Sth- through mosaic floor of reception-room (Balmelle c. wooden structures and features shown in black 2001, fig. 48). (Pellecuer and Pomarédes 2001, 515). tion between luxurious residential and utilitarian buildings. Oil presses, dolia, hearths, pottery kilns, iron-working furnaces, fish-processing tanks and cisterns were installed in former habitations. Often these utilitarian features were cut into rich mosaic floors, implanted in the peristyle, or constructed in converted bath-houses.? ‘At many villa sites, and even at the most luxurious villas, building or alterations were carried out in the 5th and 6th c. in a style which contrasts markedly with that of earlier build- 3 Chavarrfa (1996, 175-89, and 2001) traces this process at many Spanish villas: for example, the sumptuous peristyle villa of Torre Llauder was drastically re-organised around the 5th c. when residential rooms were used as storerooms, 18 dolia were sunk into one of the mosaic floors and a tank in another in the peristyle. At the El Ruedo villa, formerly graced by a peristyle, nymphaeum and exceptionally fine sculptures, industrial installations including basins, water-channels and an oven, possibly for metallurgy, were placed in the former habitation areas some time after the mid-5th c. (Waquerizo Gil and Cerrillo 1995, 132). In Gaul, at Newel the gallery facade was converted into a ‘workshop with drying oven (Clippers and Neyses 1971; Van Ossel and Ouzoulias 2000, 147). At the imposing villa of Labastide d’ Armagnac, with its 4th-c. peristyle and rich mosaics, pottery kilns were ‘builtin the central peristyle some time later (Clemens et al. 1977; Bost et al. 1984; Balmelle 2001, 358-59). In Italy, an oil-press was installed during the 5th-c. rebuilding of the Posto villa (Cotton 1979). Similar ‘examples appear in Britain: at Great Witcombe, with its two bath complexes, octagonal shrine and a gallery linking two wings, probably in the Sth c. an oven and corn-drying flue were installed in the N terrace (Clifford 1954); at Shakenoak, the bath-house was converted to an agricultural building as early as the 3rd c. (Brodribb, Hands and Walker 1978); and at the winged villa of Iichester Mead, 4th-<. hearths and ovens were placed on tessellated floors, and one building was converted into workshops (Hayward 1982). The same pattern has been observed around Trier (Bender 2001, 193).262 Tamara Lewit ing, often with a complete disregard for the earlier architectural and decorative design. Such new building was carried out using ephemeral materials (e.g., wood and stucco), opus signinum rather than mosaic floors, and rough building techniques. The earlier aesthetic design was frequently disregarded, as when post-holes for wooden walls were dug into mosaics (fig. 1) Often large, luxury areas were partitioned into smaller rooms without regard for the original imposing plan. Sometimes earlier stone buildings were deliberately demolished to make way for new ephemeral ones. At some sites, the new wooden structures were built close to, rather than within, the old villa building (fig. 2). Sometimes such changes were associated with the kinds of utilitarian uses described above, but a non-classical building style was also used for residential buildings. Another aspect of late-antique changes to villas is the disuse (or radically changed use) of particular parts of villas that had been characteristic of the classical élite’s ostentatious lifestyle, such as the bath-house, reception-rooms, and peristyle, Frequently, these were used for burials or for utilitarian functions, or were converted into private oratories or baptisteries 5 ‘A phenomenon repeated at a large number of villa sites after the 4th c. is the placement of burials within the walls or clustered around the villa building. What concerns us here is the late-antique practice of inserting small numbers of tombs into one or more rooms of the villa, or placing burials in a subsidiary building, rather than the covering of the whole site of a former residence with a sizeable cemetery. The classical villa segregated habitation from burial areas, which would be situated at least 30 m away,’ but at many late-antique villas a single or as many as two dozen burials were placed in the former bath-house,* habitation rooms? or a 4 For example, at the sumptuous villa of St-André-de-Codols (fig. 2 here), which had been richly reconstructed in the 4th c, walls were demolished and a new two-room structure (150 m®), supported by heavy wooden posts, was built only a few metres from the facade (Pellecuer and Pomarédes 2001, 513- 16). The villa of La Befa (Italy) was completely rebuilt and re-arranged: elevated floors were removed, hypocausts disused, doorways and one room blocked up, a small central room added, and rough stone and plaster floors added in 3 rooms (Dobbins 1983; Valenti 1996, 187). At Torre de Palma, occupation of the Sth-7th c. is characterised by unmortared subdividing walls and hearths in the formal rooms (Maloney and Hale 1996, 293). At Shakenoak, a circular Celtic-style building was built right in front of the villa facade in the 3rd c. (Brodribb, Hands and Walker 1978). The latest, Sth-c. phase of the villa at Babarc (Hungary) consists of ‘poorly made’ dwellings overlying the stone-built rooms (Visy 2001, 177). (On the process in N Gaul see Van Ossel and Ouzoulias 2000, 140-50. 5 Examples include San Cromazio, where a church was built on the former baths (Pianu et al. 1982}; and Nuvolento, where late 6th-c. wooden houses were built within demolished walls of the former bath- house (Rossi 1996). At El Val (Spain), a wooden structure (14 x 19 m), showing evidence of habitation and utilitarian use, was built on top of the mosaic in the main reception-room (Rascén Marqués eal 10991), At the huge villa of Séviac, a grain silo was installed in the baths in about the 6th c. (Balmelle 2001, 121). For the conversion of rooms into oratories or baptisteries, see Chavarria 1996; Ripoll and ‘Arce 2000, 74-86; Bowes 2001. For other examples of the disuse of former bath-houses, see n.3 on. utilitarian uses and n.6 on burials 6 See Percival 1976, 183-99, on “literally hundreds of examples” in Gaul and the Rhine-Danube region; James 1977, 183 for SW Gaul of the 6th-7th c.; Gelichi, Mainati and Ortalli 1986, 562, for Lombard Ita- ly; Esmonde Cleary 1989, 185, for Sth-c. Britain; Lewit 1991, 41-43, for Sth-<. Britain, Gaul, Italy, and Spain; Le Maho 1994 for NW Gaul of the éth-7th c.; Chavarria 1996, 189-96, for Sth-c. and later Spain; Ripoll and Arce 2000, 88-94, for Gaul and Italy of the 6th-7th c; Balmelle 2001, 118-22, for SW Gaul 7 See, for example, Naumanr-Steckner 1997, 145 and 152. 8 Le Maho lists a number of villa sites in N Gaul where groups of about a dozen late graves have been found carefully placed within bath-houses, sometimes surrounded by many more burials outside close to the walls; they include Gisay-la-Coudre, Grand-Couronne, Lillebonne, Plasnes, and Menneval (Le Maho 1994, 12-13 and 19-20). Similar examples appear elsewhere: for example, a sarcophagus was found in the bath-house at the Mola di Monte Gelato (Potter 1991, 204; Potter and King 1997). 9 For example, 6th-c. graves were cut into the mosaic and wall ofthe villa at Fraga in association with an early church (Serra Réfols 1943); a small 6th-c. cemetery was placed in one room of the villa at Castel- culier (Balmelle 2001, 120); at Matrice, several burials were inserted in rooms in the 6th c. (Lloyd 1995,