Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 28.

1 (2015) 81-103
ISSN (Print) 0952-7648
ISSN (Online) 1743-1700

Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean: Regional Models for the

Iberian Peninsula

Javier Martínez Jiménez1 and Carlos Tejerizo García2

1
Oxford Archaeology, Janus House, Osney Mead, OX2 0ES Oxford, UK and CUPARQ, Consorcio de
Mérida, C/ Reyes Huertas, 5, 06800, Mérida, Spain
E-mail: javier.martinez@arch.ox.ac.uk
2
Universidad del País Vasco, C/ Honduras, 16, 7ºC, 01012, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba, Spain
E-mail: carlosteje@gmail.com

Abstract
Most current discussions on Late Antique and early medieval archaeology are focused on issues such as the
use of the landscape, the abandonment of towns, and the reorganisation of rural settlements. The common
element in all these cases is that the presence of a central place is key to analysing the social, political, and
economic interrelations between sites, areas, and territories. Within the academic literature, however, the
notion of a ‘central place’ has been determined by the conceptualisation of Roman towns, and this is not
necessarily applicable to Late Antique contexts. Discussing this, and taking the Iberian peninsula as a case
study, we propose various different archaeological regional trends to define how a central place was config-
ured in the Visigoth period. These regions are the north coast, the north plateau, the Toledo–Reccopolis axis,
and the Mediterranean coastline, taking advantage of the most recent archaeological finds. For this, special
attention is given to towns (older Roman settlements and new foundations), hill-forts, and other major
places that had a primary economic, religious, or administrative role in a given territory. These models, in
which various degrees of urbanisation and territorial organisation are noticeable, form the basis for further
discussion of Iberian central places in the Late Antique Mediterranean context.
Keywords: central places, territorial administration, urbanism, villages, Visigoth Spain

Introduction In this context, studies of the processes and

The recent explosion in the number of contribu-
tions and archaeological publications on change
in the Roman world have contributed much to
the inclusion of the Iberian peninsula in general
discussions of the post-Roman and Mediter-
ranean world. This has especially been the case
regarding central places, which alongside rural
sites provide key elements to our understanding
of the transition to the Medieval world (Wick-
ham 2005: 741-59; Quirós 2009; Escalona and
Reynolds 2011; Esmonde Cleary 2013: 2-17).
transformations that can be seen in Late Antique
Iberian central places focused mostly on towns
as the main type of central place (Olmo 2008;
Martínez 2013). However, a more nuanced
study and detailed analysis of the archaeological
record allows us to reach a more complex and
complete understanding of the historical reality
of central places as elements that may help us
to understand changing settlement patterns and
social dynamics. In this study, we discuss some
regional case studies that may relate to other,

© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/jmea.v28i1.27502

82 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
similar Mediterranean contexts for this period.
Each region under consideration has been chosen
because of its varying degree of continuity and
rupture with the Roman period, and according
to the way local societies responded to these
social and economic changes. The fact that these
regions were all allegedly included in a single
polity during the sixth and seventh centuries ad
(the Visigoth monarchy) makes the study even
more interesting, because it shows that regional
responses to organisation and administration
varied even within the same macro-regions, thus
validating the regional and comparative approach
to post-Roman territorial control (Wickham
2005: 1-14).
The aim of this study, therefore, is to analyse
what we consider a central place to be on the
Iberian peninsula during Late Antiquity (and
in particular, during the period of Visigoth state
formation), and then to use the archaeologi-
cal evidence that fits this definition to explain
the role of central places within the territorial
organisation. Once these case studies are pre-
sented, it is possible to look beyond the regional
scope and compare them to wider Mediterra-
nean contexts.
Post-Roman Spain and the Mediterranean
Context
By the end of the fifth century ad, much of
the peninsula was loosely under control of the
Visigoths, while the northwestern corner was
ruled by the Suevic monarchy. These kingdoms
had taken over the peninsula, which, since its
pacification under Augustus, had played no
major role in Roman history other than serving
as a main supply centre for oil, grain, minerals,
and fish products (Arce 2009; Halsall 2007:
88-89). Visigothic involvement in the peninsula
was almost incidental; most Visigothic attention
was devoted to the Gaulish lands, even after ad
507 when Clovis conquered Aquitaine from the
Goths. It was only when imperial troops landed
on the southern coast in the 550s ad during
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
the civil war that the Visigoth attitude towards
their Spanish territories began to change. The
Byzantine invasion was halted by ad 555, but
its main consequence was the formation of the
Visigoth ‘state’. This occurred mostly during
the reign of Liuvigild (ruled ad 568–586). His
policies were directed towards ‘unification’ (Fig-
ure 1), both by political and military expansion
and by a strategic alliance with the ecclesiastical
and land-owning elites. This period of renewal
came to an end with the mid-seventh century
ad crisis that hit the kingdom and that lasted
until the Islamic invasion of the eighth century
ad (Fernández et al. 2013; Martínez 2013).
In spite of these profound internal changes,
the Visigoth monarchy was not completely iso-
lated from the Mediterranean context. Its main
political interactions were mostly with Merov-
ingian Francia, the Byzantine empire (Wickham
1998), and Italy, especially during the years in
which Theoderic became regent of Spain. This
process of state formation, which is noticeable
in most areas of the Late Antique Mediterra-
nean with slightly different chronologies (Lom-
bard Italy, Merovingian Francia, Vandal Africa,
even Heraclian Byzantium), indubitably will
have had patterns of transformation that could
be extrapolated to other regions. In this process,
the development of new central places beyond
towns was one of the main transformations that
most affected the landscape.
Defining Towns and Central Places
Our understanding of a territory is intimately
linked to the presence (or absence) of ‘central
places’ that articulate it and its inhabitants, not
only in socio-political terms, but also ideologi-
cally. These are usually linked to the development
of the state, the administration and its tax system
(Lull and Micó 2007). A ‘central place’, as used
in central place theory and network analysis, can
be defined primarily as a settlement at the centre
of a region, in which certain types of products
and services are available to consumers (King
1984). The presence of these central places in
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 83

Figure 1. Map of the Iberian peninsula in the late sixth century ad, during the period of state formation, indicating sites
mentioned in this study, and the approximate extent of the Byzantine province. Base map © Esri (Environ-
mental Systems Research Institute), 2014.

a territory creates, maintains, and reinforces
territorial articulation and hierarchy, which are
determined by social and political structures. If
used as a historical concept, however, this general
definition of a central place needs to be put in
context before it can be analysed properly.
For the Roman period, towns (civitates) can
be seen as the main type of central places within
their territory, dotted with villas, mansiones, and
other minor rural entities that served as second-
ary nuclei, and formed the economic and politi-
cal network from which Imperial power was
established and maintained. Towns are easily
recognisable in the archaeological record and,
therefore, draw most researchers’ attention. This
has led to a direct association between central
places and towns, sometimes at the expense of
other potential forms of central places. This
territorial logic was hegemonic in the Roman
Empire and, as a consequence, many scholars of
Late Antiquity have taken the Roman town as
the paradigm of a central place.
But what is a town? In the Code of Justin-
ian (1.3.35), a town was defined by the pres-
ence of a bishop (Brandes 1999: 27), although
archaeologically some other functions have been
outlined as necessary for a settlement to be
considered a town. Brogiolo (1999: 99), for
example, defined a town as fulfilling legal, mili-
tary, ecclesiastical, economic, and administrative

© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015

84 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
functions, so there are two main characteristics
within this definition: (a) being part of a wider
political context (the Roman state) but, at the
same time, (b) having some autonomy in terms
of local administration. This definition slightly
overlaps with Ward-Perkins’s (1996: 4-14) earlier
proposal which, apart from administrative and
religious functions, included some more quanti-
tative characteristics: size, status, urban planning,
and significant public and private buildings.
Halsall (1996: 236-37) lists similar characteristics
expected from a town, such as being the perma-
nent settlement of a large population that fulfils
an economic purpose and that has administra-
tive functions; he also suggests that towns were
socially differentiated. Similar terms were used
by Loseby (2006: 72, 85-88) to define towns in
Merovingian Gaul as administrative centres and
tax units (at a local, urban level, and at a regional,
state level), where local power was held by urban
elites. More recently, Esmonde Cleary (2013:
100-101) defined towns in the Late Roman
period as dense, non-agricultural settlements that
provided services (religious, educational, legal,
etc.) to its territory and that were characterised by
their monumentality and economic roles.
Figure 2. The Roman civitas central place model.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
Overall, there are no great discrepancies
regarding the nature of what towns are, and
these same characteristics seem to have been
equally useful for defining towns in other peri-
ods, such as the Islamic period (Carver 1996).
Therefore, what we are defining and describing
here is the ideal type of central place, normally
equated with urban places. This is especially
true in contexts where the state is structured
and fully functional, as is the case in early
Roman times (Figure 2). Strong states needed
centralised towns to function, but in other
historical periods—such as the time of state
formation in the Germanic kingdoms—this is
not necessarily the case. Furthermore, as a result
of the reduction in and decline of the Roman
urban network throughout the fourth and fifth
centuries ad, alternatives to towns emerged.
Many of these alternatives had to fulfil the
same functions as territorial nodes that towns
did, but from the archaeology (according to the
definitions provided) they do not seem ‘urban’
as would commonly be understood. This would
account, for instance, for the fortified hillforts
or burgi that appear in northern Gaul or the
Alpine regions (Esmonde Cleary 2013: 75-79),
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 85
built by the state to control a territory in which
towns were not as efficient as they had been.
Another example could be the well-known
Frankish and Anglo-Saxon emporia, which were
economic hubs and redistribution centres of
imported products that fulfilled a clear central-
place function (Hodges 1996).
In order to integrate all these possibilities for
central places, it is perhaps more useful—at
least for the historical period with which we are
concerned—to fall back on traditional anthro-
pological definitions of central places. In these,
the redistributive nature of the site is confirmed
by the presence of an authority or economic
elite (Harris 2011: 378-93), so as to differenti-
ate between central places and urban centres,
with the latter being one of the possibilities
of the former, but not the only one. Added
to this, it can be said that a central place, as a
historical concept, needs to be chronologically
and geographically contextualised. This raises
two issues, the first being that the definition of
a central place is relative to its historical context.
In other words, central places can be archaeo-
logically recognised by their distinctive material
culture when compared with other contempo-
rary, regional settlements (e.g. comparative con-
centrations of pottery imports). Second, central
places can be visually different in neighbouring
regions within the same period. We believe that
taking account of these factors avoids biased
approaches to central places and, at the same
time, allows enough flexibility to include a vari-
ety of types of settlement within the definition
of ‘central place’. This is especially true in the
Late Roman and post-Roman periods, when
the collapse of the Roman system prompted the
isolation and regionalisation of the economy.
Consequently, many regions had to fall back on
their own economic and administrative struc-
tures, resulting in various models of territorial
management. Central places can be analysed as
a reflection of elite power in a particular region
and, at the same time, as the consequence
of a dialectic and dynamic balance between
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
state and regional elites, as proposed by other
authors (e.g. Castellanos and Martín 2005).
The variation and intensity of these factors leads
to different theoretical models to explain the
articulation of power and economic strategies,
as we propose for the Spanish examples.
Taking all of this into account, we propose
defining a central place in archaeological terms
as follows:
• it fulfils an administrative and economic
role, serves as a focal point when it comes
to territorial control and hierarchy, and is
not matched by any other similar site in
the same territory;
• as a consequence of this centrality, there
is an aristocracy, or evidence for the pres-
ence of ruling classes (either civil and/or
religious), whose consumption patterns
generate a demand for specialised prod-
ucts or specialised construction techniques
(Wickham 2008), especially when they are
contrasted with the material culture found
in other settlement contexts in the same
region;
• economic diversification and specialisation
are evident on the alleged site, in addition
to the social differentiation mentioned
above.
Archaeologically, territorial control and admin-
istrative roles can be inferred from the presence
of buildings such as mints, episcopal centres,
public buildings (new or re-used), walls, pro-
duction areas, etc. Further, although it may not
necessarily be the case, the presence of prestige
elements in funerary contexts or high-status
domestic architecture could also be indicators
of elites, and therefore of central places. Lastly,
economic diversity has to be understood both in
terms of production and redistribution (includ-
ing trade and imported goods, storage, harbour
facilities, etc.). In fact, it can be argued that
the relation between the presence of imported
or luxury goods and the presence of elites is
causal: the elites generate a demand for such
86 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
products that could further display their rank
and position. This definition is elite-led, but
this is justified, because, as we argue, elites are
intrinsically related to central places. In short,
this characterisation of central places allows us
to move beyond ‘towns’ to a more holistic view
of settlement patterns in Late Antique Iberia
and beyond.
Hilltops as Central Places: The Northern
Meseta between the Fifth and Sixth Centuries
On the northern Iberian plateau, the dissolu-
tion of imperial economic structures triggered
a period of profound changes during the fifth
century ad. This is reflected, for example, in the
abandonment of villae and the emergence of
rural villages with new burial practices (Quirós
and Vigil-Escalera 2006). At the same time,
archaeology clearly shows a pattern of town
abandonment, and urban settlements—even if
these were formally the capitals of the civitas ter-
ritorial system (a territorial unit formed by a city
and its territory)—can no longer be considered
central places from the fifth century ad onwards.
Figure 3. The hillfort central place model.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
A typical case is Confluentia (near modern
Duratón; Figure 1). The small excavations car-
ried out have documented an access ramp to the
city, a large building, and a building of 150 sq m
that the excavators suggest may be part of a cattle
market. All these structures were abandoned by
the fifth century ad, if not before. By the sixth
century, parts of the Roman town were destroyed
by a new cemetery in the southern area (Martínez
2010). Similar developments occurred in other
major Roman towns, such as Clunia (Cepas
2006), Tiermes (De la Casa and Izquierdo 1989),
and Segovia (Santiago and Martínez 2010). It
is worth noting that very little imported pot-
tery is documented throughout this area, which
suggests that long-distance commercial activity
declined strongly after the fifth century ad.
Along with the mid-fifth century ad changes
mentioned above, we see another important
phenomenon: the (re)occupation of hillforts,
which are numerous in this large territory. At
these sites, the archaeological record from the
mid-fifth century onwards is very different
from that of cities or rural settlements, with the
appearance of high-capacity storage structures,
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 87
like the one documented at El Castillón (Sastre
and Catalán 2012), pottery assemblages mostly
made up of storage and luxury ceramics like fine
stamped wares (Tovar and Blanco 1997), and
defensive structures (Figure 3). One particular
characteristic of elite material culture found at
these hillforts are the so-called ‘Visigoth slates’,
which are fragments of slates used as a means
of writing. They have been interpreted as a
regional tax registration system for local elites in
the southwestern Duero basin (Martín 2006).
A particularly interesting case is that of Ber-
nardos (Segovia), which was fortified in the early
fifth century ad (Figure 4). A small excavation
documented the walls, some domestic structures,
and large quantities of well-made stamped pot-
tery (Gonzalo 2007). Near Bernardos is the
Figure 4. Fortified access to the site of Bernardos. Photograph: C. Tejerizo.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
well-documented site of La Mata del Palomar,
which has been interpreted as a peasant village
under the influence of this hillfort (Tejerizo
2012). Archaeological field surveys carried out in
2013 and 2014 show a high density of rural sites
within this territory, and point to a very complex
and articulated settlement pattern, in which hill-
forts such as Bernardos may have played a major
role in the redistribution system during the tran-
sition between the fifth and sixth centuries ad.
Nonetheless, these hilltop occupations did
not last very long, as most seem to have been
abandoned by the end of the sixth century ad
(Vigil-Escalera and Tejerizo García 2014). This
coincides with Visigoth state formation, which
led to the reappearance of institutional and
administrative spaces in various towns, in which
88 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
the Church played an important role. A good
example is again Segovia, where historical sources
mention the presence of a bishopric involved in
religious councils at the end of the sixth century
ad (Alonso 1984–85). The limited archaeological
data seem to support this vision of a Church-led
Segovia, as the sixth century ad saw the construc-
tion of the Church of San Juan de los Caballeros
(Santiago and Martínez 2010), and the possible
survival of the aqueduct could equally be linked
to Church intervention (Martínez 2012).
Segovia has to be seen in the context of dia-
logues between the monarchy and local elites,
especially including ecclesiastical ones, in a
region where the central administration could
not directly exercise its power because of the
dispersed and de-urbanised nature of the set-
tlement pattern. It is only in former towns that
there were attempts to consolidate the admin-
istration in the late sixth and seventh centuries
ad; thus we see, for example, the new bishoprics
of Segovia and Palencia and mints in Salmantica
and León.
Hilltops and Commercial Entrepôts: The
North Coast
Until recently, there was hardly any archaeo-
logical knowledge related to the evolution of
the Roman civitas as a territorial unit in north-
ern Spain (Quirós 2011). Historical narratives
of this area were moreover heavily biased by
the traditional view that the region had been
poorly Romanised, and thus had never known
central places within the Roman network. New
archaeological evidence for the Roman and Late
Antique periods, however, now undermines this
representation.
Even though this region had seen various
Visigoth military campaigns and the founda-
tion of a new city, Victoriacum, it seems that
much of this territory was not organised in a
coherent and hierarchical network. There is lit-
tle evidence for urban central places in the area,
with some particular exceptions, including the
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
little-known hilltop site of Buradón (Bilibio),
which includes a church radiocarbon-dated to
the sixth century ad (Quirós 2006: 62). On
the contrary, central places seem to follow the
model presented for the northern Meseta. One
of the new hilltop sites with clear evidence for
strong local elites is that of Gauzón (Castrillón,
Asturias), a fortified hilltop first occupied in the
second half of the seventh century ad (Muñiz
and García 2010: 320, fig. 1).
Other non-hilltop sites in this region, how-
ever, did function as central places, namely the
commercial entrepôts. Recent excavations in Vigo
have revealed an important pottery assemblage
with imports from Africa, Cyprus, and Asia
Minor that attests to the continuity of long-
distance trade, at least until the mid-seventh
century ad (Fernández 2013). Vigo’s role as
a main harbour nevertheless did not result in
any complex development in its hinterland, as
hilltop sites seem to have done in the Meseta.
Although imports have been recorded inside and
outside the modern city, and can be related to
local urban elites, Vigo was most likely a node
in long-distance commercial networks between
the Levant and the Atlantic coast, perhaps even
northern Europe, and it may have served as a
redistribution centre rather than an importing
node for nearby sites. For example, the villa of
Toralla, near Vigo, was abandoned by the early
fifth century ad (Fernández 2013: 91-114), but
its role as a central place could have shifted to the
harbour site. Some authors have seen this terri-
tory as an example of dispersed settlement pat-
tern (Sánchez Pardo 2013), perhaps prompted
only by a minimal need for centrality. The con-
clusion is that these commercial entrepôts acted
as central places for local elites whose interests
were related to long-distance trade and not to
the articulation of regional territories.
Something very similar happened in Gijón,
where sixth-century imported pottery has been
documented in the excavations of Cimadevilla
(Fernández et al. 1992). The re-use of building
materials in the Late Antique phases of the wall
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 89
indicates moreover the continuity of Gijón’s
role as a fortified enclave. But just as was the
case with Vigo, this preservation of commercial
dynamism did not prompt any hierarchical set-
tlement developments in the surrounding ter-
ritory. For example, the villa of Veranes, a site
close to Gijón, shows that most of the site was
abandoned in the fifth century ad and replaced
by a cemetery (Fernández et al. 2004).
Both cases demonstrate the existence of staging
posts of centralised trade that, however, had lit-
tle impact on the surrounding territory. Even so,
we cannot talk about urban continuities, as what
we have are just isolated cases that are unrep-
resentative of the northern context as a whole.
Most sites follow the well-documented pattern
of Oiasso (Irún), where material remains show
continued occupation until the fifth century ad,
even though the harbour went out of use after
the second century ad as a result of the end of
state mining in Oiartzun, which had maintained
the local economy (Sarasola and Moraza 2011).
The fragile relationship seen between the state
and the urban cores in the north can also be seen
at another nearby site, Veleia, which disappeared
after its military garrison was withdrawn in the
fifth century ad (Quirós 2011).
Direct State Intervention: The Visigoth Core
In contrast with these two regions, the hinter-
land of Toledo formed the core of the Visigoth
kingdom, where the state was strong enough to
exercise its power directly, and this is evident in
the construction and redevelopment of fortified
urban areas. These new urban developments
include the foundation of Reccopolis and Eio and
the construction of the royal suburb at Toledo,
the capital, all of which are unparalleled in the
Late Antique west. These sites, furthermore,
replaced old, abandoned, or declining Roman
centres, and not only made a clear statement
of power, but also restructured the territory
around these new, fortified, and eminently
state-developed settlement centres.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
In the case of Toledo, the Visigoth monarchy
built a large new suburban area at the Vega Baja
on the Tagus River (Figure 1). Excavations have
revealed a wide range of imported materials,
carved marbles, and large masonry structures all
dating to the last third of the sixth century ad
(Olmo 2010). This new complex also included
a street grid, large halls, walls of mortared ash-
lar blocks, and pavements in opus signinum (a
Roman concrete flooring technique). Even if it
is not sensible to compare Toledo with the lav-
ish courts of Ravenna and Carthage based on
the information currently available, it should be
kept in mind that Toledo was not a large city in
the Roman period—in fact it was quite a minor
centre—and the effort made by the monarchy
to create this complex is really striking.
Reccopolis, built in the late sixth century ad by
King Liuvigild, has been identified with the exca-
vations at Zorita de los Canes, in Guadalajara, on
a hill overlooking the Tagus (Figure 1). The exca-
vations have only uncovered a small percentage
of the total area inside the city walls, but already
a cruciform basilica, a large public building (the
‘palace complex’), and a commercial street with
gold and glass workshops, unique examples in
Late Antique Iberia, have been unearthed (Figure
5). The town was also equipped with walls, sub-
urbs, and an aqueduct, and the material culture
retrieved includes carved marbles and a wide
range of Mediterranean imports (Olmo 2008;
Martínez 2015). Reccopolis was an active mint,
although not as productive as Toledo. Lastly,
Reccopolis seems to have been built to control a
large territory, immediately surrounding Toledo,
where there were no active urban centres control-
ling the territory. The old towns of Complutum
and Ercavica had lost their urban nature long
before (Rascón and Sánchez 2008).
Lastly, the site of El Tolmo de Minateda, iden-
tified with the Visigoth bishopric of Eio (Abad
et al. 2008; Gutiérrez et al. 2005), is also located
on a hilltop, and was intended to control the
surrounding territory. Besides its acropolis and
fortifications, the most important building is
90 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
Figure 5. Plan of the excavations at Reccopolis (from Olmo 2008: 48, fig. 3).
the basilica and the episcopal complex. The site
has been interpreted as a Visigoth outpost in the
frontier area with the Byzantines, established in
the late sixth century ad (based on ceramic evi-
dence), and it thus underlines Visigoth control
of a territory by means of an urban centre. The
material culture is not as rich as it is in Toledo
or Reccopolis, but the variety of tablewares is
much richer than in other settlements of the
surrounding region. Unlike Reccopolis, El Tolmo
was neither a mint nor an importing centre, but
it, too, was an elite administrative site.
These new urban settlement centres were
surrounded by a network of secondary centres,
which often were former urban centres turned
into bishoprics, like Complutum and Segobriga
(Abascal et al. 2008). In other cases, hillforts
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
(e.g. Patones) fulfilled this role of subsidiary
nodes, around which a network of rural villages
developed in turn as a further lower tier (Vigil-
Escalera 2007).
The Mediterranean Region: Two Parallel
Models
In the coastal areas and the Guadalquivir val-
ley we find the last type of central place, in
which Roman urban settlements continued to
function as centres of territorial control and
administration. In this category we find two dif-
ferent situations: those cities where the central
state shared and negotiated power with existing
elites, and those that were visually transformed
as a result of the Byzantine invasion. The former
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 91
are characterised by long-term continuity of tra-
ditional late Roman urban patterns, as is evident
for instance at Valencia, Seville, and Córdoba,
while in the latter cases we see the imposition of
a new type of urbanism.
Mediterranean Towns under Visigoth Control
The distinctive feature of the coastal regions and
the wide Guadalquivir valley was the presence of
towns that functioned as central places (Figure
6). Sites such as Valencia, Barcelona, Tarragona,
Córdoba, and Seville are fairly well-known
archaeologically, and it is evident that they
organised the surrounding territory. Mérida,
neither on the coast nor in the Guadalquivir
valley, was also a major city and may similarly be
included in this category. Of course, it is difficult
to make general claims for such a large area in
a period when regionalisation was increasingly
important. All of these sites, however, show the
development of new public munificence in the
service of the new urban elites, who emerged as
a response to the reconfiguration of the Visigoth
monarchy (Fernández et al. 2013).
The development of new episcopal complexes
has been shown in Tarragona (Macias 2008),
Figure 6. The Visigoth civitas central place model.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
Barcelona (Bonnet and Beltrán de Heredia
2002), Valencia (Ribera 2008), and Mérida
(Caballero and Mateos 1995). These new large
constructions (Figure 7) are matched by the
continued arrival of imports from the western
Mediterranean in this period. All these towns
were fiscal centres with active mints, and elite
housing and bathing structures were also com-
mon (e.g., García-Entero 2005; García 2012);
and it is no surprise that aqueducts were pre-
served in precisely those towns that could afford
to maintain them (i.e. Córdoba, Barcelona and
Valencia—Martínez 2012). These new construc-
tions and activities show both the strength of
local ecclesiastical elites and the continuity of
Late Roman patterns of monumentality. In some
cases, it is possible to infer the direct interven-
tion of the Visigoth state, as at Valencia, where a
new fortification was built in the circus (Ribera
2008). Other examples include Barcelona with
the so-called ‘count’s palace’ (Bonnet and Beltrán
de Heredia 2002) and Córdoba with the civil
palace (Vaquerizo and Murillo 2010). Together,
these cases attest to the loose continuation of
Late Roman provincial administrative patterns,
and can be seen as direct post-Roman continui-
92 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García

Figure 7. Plan of the episcopal complex built in Barcelona during the Late Roman and Visigothic periods (according
to the interpretation in Bonnet and Beltrán de Heredia 2002: 79, fig. 9). The original fourth/fifth-century
basilica and baptistery with the hall (yellow) lie to the southwest. In the sixth/seventh-century expansion,
the palace complex (green) was added towards the north. Added in the sixth century, further to the south, is
the bath complex (blue). The extent of this episcopal complex clearly contrasts with the ‘civil’ palace (red),
cornered next to the city walls.

ties of the late imperial system, where direct state
intervention was mostly absent.
The rural areas around these long-term urban
centres are unfortunately poorly documented
and it remains unclear how the surrounding
landscape was structured. Recent surveys and
excavations around Mérida suggest the existence
of small, nucleated, village-like settlements, as
at the site of Casa Herrera (Cordero and Sastre
2010). Similarly, around Valencia, the existence
of a fortified enclosure at València la Vella and an
elite settlement at Pla de Nadal suggest continu-
ity of Late Roman settlement patterns (Rosselló
2005).
Towns in the Byzantine Territories
In those areas where imperial troops held their
ground, the military needs of the Byzantine
administration favoured a different type of cen-
tral place: coastal military bases, as an alternative
development of harbour towns (Figure 8). Most
of these were located in old Roman towns, such
as Cartagena and Málaga, which established a
network of minor nodes, also at coastal loca-
tions (such as Ceuta or Traducta). In these places
the archaeology shows a disproportionate ratio
of eastern imports compared to other Mediter-
ranean sites elsewhere in the Visigoth kingdom
or in Gaul, a pattern which can be linked to the

© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015

 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 93
Figure 8. The Byzantine base central place model.
direct supply via the annona or grain supply to
the garrisons (García 2001). The fact that these
garrisons were small (and necessarily mobile)
may account for this type of central place.
Besides eastern imports, the development of
new docking and storage structures in ports
and harbours like Cartagena, Málaga, Traducta,
and Ceuta, which had been abandoned or
silted for many years, offers further evidence
of direct imperial intervention (Vizcaíno 2009:
374). The military approach to central places is
evident in the reinforced fortifications of naval
bases, as for instance at Cartagena where an
inscription mentions a magister militum Spa-
niae (‘Master of the soldiers for Spania’—Prego
2000), and further confirmed at other sur-
rounding settlements (as in Málaga—Vizcaíno
2009: 424). Military gear and weapons found
in these sites add more weight to this interpreta-
tion (Vizcaíno 2009: 782-91).
It can be argued that this type of central place
was so unique because of the particular circum-
stances of Byzantine military occupation, which
lasted only for the short period in which the
imperial troops were present in the peninsula
(ad 550–625). Both Cartagena and Málaga, the
main Byzantine strongholds, ceased to function
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
as central places after the Visigoth conquest, as
is clear from the disappearance of imports, the
abandonment, if not destruction, of the har-
bour infrastructure and most of the inhabited
areas, and the end of the mint (García 2001:
668-70). New alternative sites were promoted
by the Visigoth monarchy, such as for instance
Eio or Begastri in the Cartagena region, and
these eclipsed and replaced the Byzantine towns
as the main centres of these areas.
Iberian Central Places in a Mediterranean
Context
The political evolution of the Iberian peninsula
between the fifth and the seventh centuries ad
can be summarised in three stages: the collapse
of the Roman political system, the development
of a power vacuum, and the processes of state
formation of the Suevi and the Visigoths. The
imposition of a new centralised state, as was the
case in the Byzantine province, can be included
in this last stage. Parallel to and intimately con-
nected with the two processes of state formation
and state imposition is the consolidation of the
church as a main agent in urban administration.
This evolution is shared in many regions of the
94 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
Mediterranean, especially in the west, and in
many cases it is possible to see the development
of similar responses to the decline of towns as
central places. The relocation or permanence of
central places within a territory, however, was
not only dependent on the degree of state inter-
vention, but also on trading and economic con-
nections with the wider Mediterranean world.
The reorganisation of long-distance commerce
(McCormick 2002) is directly linked to the
transformations of elite consumption and central
places, as defined and discussed in the foregoing.
With this in mind, it is possible to exam-
ine the Spanish regional case studies against a
background in which the degrees of economic
complexity (in terms of the scale of relations
of production and redistribution) and state
intervention (in terms of interaction or lack
thereof with local elites) set the two main axes
Figure 9. Schematic representation of the relative importance between state intervention and economic complexity, and
how the different regional models may fit this correlation.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
(Figure 9). In those areas where both economic
complexity and state intervention were high, we
find continuity of urban centres in Late Roman
fashion. High on state intervention but moder-
ately low in economic complexity is where we
would place the Toledo–Reccopolis model. Low
state intervention but high economic complexity
would represent the northern coast/commercial
entrepôt model, and low economic complexity
but medium state intervention could fit the
meseta/hillfort model. Byzantine harbour sites,
with high state intervention and economic com-
plexity, may be placed on the distant margin.
With this schematic distribution for the
Spanish examples in hand it is not difficult to
find matching examples in the archaeological
record across the Late Antique Mediterranean.
These may be found most easily where the
state directly intervened in the development of
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 95
central places, as all Late Antique states looked
back to the Roman system for a model that was
functional and conferred legitimacy.
In those cases where state intervention dictated
the location of central places of an urban nature,
the clearest comparisons would be with the capi-
tals of the Germanic successor monarchies. Leav-
ing Rome and Constantinople aside, Ravenna
offers a clear example of a central place created
as a result of direct state intervention, because it
became the capital of the Empire (as well as of
the Ostrogothic kingdom and Byzantine exar-
chate) by imperial decision. This explains the
monumentalisation of the town in the fifth and
sixth centuries ad, especially under Theoderic
(Deliyannis 2010). Similarly, the building works
carried out by the Vandal kings were mostly
limited to the capital at Carthage (Sears 2007),
and can be compared with those at Ravenna or
Toledo.
In the eastern Empire, however, where the cen-
tral administration kept functioning for longer,
it is difficult to pin down those sites whose role
as a central place was the direct consequence
of state intervention. Jerusalem and Antioch,
for instance, greatly benefited from imperial
munificence and were key central places in the
Levant; but despite the large investment of cen-
tral resources, their function as a central place
did not derive from this. New foundations such
as Justiniana Prima, or greatly modified towns in
the Balkans, such as Nicopolis, are closer to the
model, as they were the emperor’s reply to the
lack of urban central places in regions of impor-
tance for the Empire, such as the Balkans or the
Persian frontier (Ivanišević 2006; Poulter 2007).
The expansion of the Eastern Empire and the
conquests of Italy and North Africa required the
imposition of a territorial system, of which the
Spanish cases are further examples. The military
nature of these occupations made it necessary to
develop fortified harbours, which are especially
abundant in North Africa and on the central
Mediterranean islands. They are nevertheless not
as prevalent in Italy (Pringle 2001), which is a
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
pattern that would continue until the Islamic
conquests (Fenwick 2013). The clearest example
of reoccupation and refortification of harbour
towns on the model of Málaga and Cartagena
would be Leptis Magna (Goodchild and Ward-
Perkins 1953).
Lower on the scale of state intervention are
the cities of the Mediterranean model and the
hillforts of the central Iberian plateau, both
of which are equally well represented in the
archaeological record of the Late Antique Medi-
terranean. Coastal trade and direct connections
with key economic centres were crucial factors
in the preservation of town life and cities as
central places all over the Mediterranean. Eco-
nomic prosperity and political importance were
directly interconnected, and urban centrality
was thus not only preserved in the great metrop-
oleis like Carthage, Alexandria, Constantinople,
Rome, and Ravenna, but also elsewhere. The
best-studied instances are Marseilles (Loseby
1992), Ephesus, Miletus, and Sagalassos in the
fifth and early sixth centuries ad (Jacobs 2012).
Besides commercial links, each region had its
own distinct patterns of urban development and
monumentality, but the main trading towns of
the Mediterranean basically continued to func-
tion as such, notwithstanding the transforma-
tion of their townscapes. In most instances, the
presence of a bishopric legitimised and justified
the preservation of the territorial administra-
tion centred upon an urban centre. In turn, the
Church developed its own urban architecture of
power during the sixth century ad in the form of
episcopal complexes and palaces (Miller 2000).
The breakdown of long-distance trade routes
across interior regions (Vigil-Escalera and
Quirós 2013) can be linked to the disappear-
ance of the traditional civitas-villa landscape
and its elites, which led to the reorganisation of
regional production after the fifth century ad.
In such regions, towns had been a construct of
the state in order to impose its control over the
territory, and these towns were necessary for
local elites to be recognised within this system
96 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
(Woolf 1999). As a result, once the state col-
lapsed or disappeared from these territories,
towns were transformed as well. The shifting of
centrality away from towns after the demise of
the Roman state system can be seen clearly in
Toulouse: while Toulouse ceased to function as a
central place once the Visigoth state lost control
of this area, new hillfort sites such as Roc-de-
Pampelune in Languedoc became new central
places, articulating a network of villages. In this
case, sites such as Dassargues, or the complex
of Lune-Viel (Raynaud 2000–2001; Schneider
2001), developed around this new hilltop site,
away from existing urban centres. In the interior
of Asia Minor this is a pattern that can be seen
in Galatia, as shown in the recent surveys at Ger-
mia (Niewöhner et al. 2013). On the plateaus
of Anatolia after the second half of the sixth
century ad, towns likewise lost their function as
central places to hilltop sites (kastra), with net-
works of rural villages around them (Niewöhner
2006; Jacobs 2012). A similar relocation of the
centre of regional power away from towns can be
seen in inland Egypt, albeit later, in the Islamic
period, as the old Greco-Roman urban settle-
ments ceased to serve any real function and were
largely abandoned (Alston 2002).
Finally, the existence of commercial entrepôts
along the Cantabrian coast of Spain was
unknown until very recently, but the presence of
imported wares in large quantities in the north
of the Iberian peninsula demonstrates that there
were strong commercial connections. The func-
tion of Vigo and Gijón as central places has to
be linked to the local trading elite, similar to the
merchant elites identified at many other sites,
such as Comacchio in northern Italy (Figure
10). There, archaeologists have identified a
strong trading centre already active as early as
the seventh century ad. Production at Comac-
chio seems to have been aimed at the Lombard
elites of the Po valley, but the site does not seem
to have served any political role itself (Gelichi
2008). As at Vigo and Gijón, Comacchio and
other sites may have been central places in rela-
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
tion to the redistribution of products in long-
distance trade, but not for a political entity of
the surrounding territory.
Overall, the articulation of central places after
the fifth-century ad transformations on the
Iberian peninsula is not isolated from its wider
Mediterranean context. Even though it is clear
that each region must be analysed in detail with
its own idiosyncrasies, problems, and scale, it
is also evident that structural processes can be
detected and traced for larger areas and used for
comparison with other regions where perhaps
less material is available or the theoretical frame-
work is less developed.
Conclusions
Late Antique and early medieval archaeology
on the Iberian peninsula has undergone major
developments in recent years, which may largely
be ascribed to the expansion of commercial
archaeology and the establishment of long-term
research projects that have yielded vast amounts
of new data. It is with the new evidence that
new approaches and interpretive frameworks
are developed that enable us to understand the
fundamental changes that took place between
the fifth and eighth centuries ad.
Central places that articulate a region and serve
to gather and redistribute local production exist
in every complex society where relations between
communities and a central power need to be
shaped and controlled. Roman civitates played
this role while the Empire was strong enough to
maintain a broad network; when the Roman sys-
tem collapsed, the network underwent important
transformations. As we have tried to demonstrate
in this paper, this meant that towns ceased to
be the only type of central place and that there
emerged new alternative systems aimed at con-
trolling and structuring a territory from a central
location while serving elite interests. In this sense,
many agents were involved in the development
of central places in Late Antique Spain, such as
regional elites, the central state, local communi-


© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015

Figure 10. Map showing the location of the Mediterranean sites mentioned in the text. Base map © US National Park Service.
Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean
97
98 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
ties, and, as a new and progressively powerful
agent, the Church. The interactions and dynam-
ics between these factors need to be analysed as
complex models in order to understand the types
of territorial articulation that occurred.
When local communities adapted to these
transformations, they prompted the develop-
ment of various new types of central place, some
of which were based on Roman models (those
promoted by the state and those which still
preserved their urban characteristics), whereas
others fell back on alternative or innovative
solutions like Byzantine landing bases, hilltop
forts, and commercial entrepôts. These diverse
types represented various outcomes of vary-
ing regional circumstances, but above all were
the result of the varying degrees of correlation
between direct state intervention, the relative
power of regional elites, and local economic
complexity. As outlined above, we believe that
the variety of solutions we have detected for the
Iberian peninsula are comparable to those in
other Mediterranean regions for the same time
period. Whereas in some cases the similarities
are evident and linked to very specific circum-
stances—such as the ‘Byzantine’ model seen in
both Cartagena and Leptis Magna, or the ‘state
intervention’ model associated with both Recco-
polis and Justiniana Prima—other comparisons
require further contextualisation and analysis,
as for instance the hilltop settlements of Gala-
tia, the Balkans, and the northern Meseta. But
even in the latter case, the theoretical model
proposed already helps us to understand what a
central place was in Late Antiquity, and why it
functioned and developed as it did.
These developments of the fifth to seventh
centuries ad did not survive into the eighth
century. The emergence of new and stronger
states like the caliphates or new modes of terri-
torial control such as the feudal system, coupled
with the collapse and ultimate transformation
of the developing entities that created them—
the Germanic successor kingdoms—prompted
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
the development of new types of central places.
Overall, we suggest, we should keep in mind
that central places are key to understanding the
construction of political-administrative systems,
because they depend on economic and social
context.
Acknowledgements
This article was first presented as a lecture to the
2013 Early Medieval Archaeology Student Sym-
posium, held at the University of Chester, and
the authors would like to thank the organisers
for accepting our paper. We are also indebted to
Guillermo García Contreras and Zofia Guertin
for revising the text and its contents, and to
Bryan Ward-Perkins, Juan Antonio Quirós, and
Alfonso Vigil-Escalera for their constant sup-
port and supervision. Lastly, we would like to
thank the editors and reviewers of JMA for help-
ing to improve and shape this paper. Despite all
this help, all errors remain our own.
About the authors
Javier Martínez Jiménez has recently (2013)
completed his doctoral thesis at the University
of Oxford on the continuity of aqueducts in
post-Roman Spain and their impact on urban-
ism, and he has published various articles on
this topic (Martínez 2012; 2015). He has
directed the survey and excavation of the aque-
duct of Reccopolis (2010–13) and co-directed
excavations at the Late Antique site of Casa
Herrera, Mérida (2012–13).
Carlos Tejerizo García is currently finishing
his PhD thesis at the University of the Basque
Country (campus of Vitoria-Gasteiz) on early
medieval rural landscapes in northern Iberia.
His main research topics are rural villages,
domestic and funerary architecture, and pottery.
He is currently directing field survey projects in
northwestern Segovia.
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 99
References
Abad, L., S. Gutiérrez, B. Gamo and P. Cánovas
2008 Una ciudad en el camino: pasado y futuro de
El Tolmo de Minateda (Hellín, Albacete). In L.
Olmo (ed.), Recópolis y la ciudad en la época visi-
goda. Zona Arqueológica 9: 323-36. Alcalá de
Henares, Spain: Museo Arqueológico Regional.
Abascal, J.M., M. Almagro and R. Cebrián
2008 Segóbriga visigoda. In L. Olmo (ed.), Recópolis
y la ciudad en la época visigoda. Zona Arque-
ológica 9: 221-41. Alcalá de Henares, Spain:
Museo Arqueológico Regional.
Alonso, Á.
1984–85 Aproximación a la época visigoda en el ter-
ritorio de la actual provincia de Segovia. Studia
Historica: Historia Antigua 2-3: 271-90.
Alston, R.
2002 The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt. Lon-
don: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/
9780203469262
Arce, J.
2009 El último siglo de la España romana, 284-409.
Madrid: Alianza.
Bonnet, C., and J. Beltrán de Heredia
2002 The origins and evolution of the episcopal
buildings in Barcino: from the early Christian
period to the Visigothic era. In J. Beltrán de
Heredia (ed.), From Barcino to Barchinona
(1st to 7th centuries), 74-95. Barcelona, Spain:
Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat.
Brandes, W.
1999 Byzantine cities in the seventh and eighth cen-
turies—different sources, different stories? In
G.P. Brogiolo and B. Ward-Perkins (eds.), The
Idea and Ideal of Town Between Late Antiquity
and the Early Middle Ages, 25-58. Leiden: Brill.
Brogiolo, G.P.
1999 Ideas of the town in Italy during the transition
from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. In G.P.
Brogiolo and B. Ward-Perkins (eds.), The Idea
and Ideal of Town Between Late Antiquity and the
Early Middle Ages, 99-126. Leiden: Brill.
Caballero, L., and P. Mateos
1995 Excavaciones arqueológicas en la basílica de
santa Eulalia de Mérida. In J.M. Gurt and N.
Tena (eds.), IV Reunió d’arqueologia cristiana
hispànica, 297-308. Barcelona, Spain: Institut
d’Estudis Catalans.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
Carver, N.O.H.
1996 Transitions to Islam: urban rôles in the east and
south Mediterranean, fifth to tenth centuries
ad. In N. Christie and S.T. Loseby (eds.), Towns
in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity
and the Early Middle Ages, 184-212. Aldershot,
UK: Scholar Press.
Castellanos, S., and I. Martín
2005 The local articulation of central power in the
north of the Iberian Peninsula (500-1000).
Early Medieval Europe 13: 1-42. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1111/j.1468-0254.2005.00147.x
Cepas, A.
2006 The ending of the Roman city: the case of
Clunia in the northern plateau of Spain. In W.
Davies, G. Halsall and A. Reynolds (eds.), People
and Space in the Middle Ages (300-1300), 187-
207. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
Cordero, T., and I. Sastre
2010 El yacimiento de Casa Herrera en el contexto
del territorio emeritense (siglos IV-VIII). In
A. García (ed.), Espacios urbanos en el occidente
mediterráneo (s. VI-VIII), 91-7. Toledo, Spain:
Toletum Visigodo.
De la Casa, C., and J.M. Izquierdo
1989 Aproximación al hábitat visigodo de Tiermes. In
Actas del 2º Symposium de Arqueología Soriana,
1007-17. Soria, Spain: Diputación Provincial de
Soria.
Deliyannis, D.M.
2010 Ravenna in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Escalona, J., and A. Reynolds
2011 Scale and Scale Change in the Early Middle Ages:
Exploring Landscape, Local Society, and the World
Beyond. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
Esmonde Cleary, S.
2013 The Roman West, ad 200–500. An Archaeological
Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139043199
Fenwick, C.
2013 From Africa to Ifriqiya: settlement and society
in early medieval North Africa (650–800). Al-
Masaq 25: 9-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09
503110.2013.767008
Fernández, A.
2013 O comercio tardoantiguo no noroeste peninsular.
A Coruña, Spain: Toxosoutos.
100 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
Fernández, A., J. Martínez and C. Tejerizo
2013 New and old elites in the Visigothic kingdom
(550–650 ad). In E. van der Wilt and J. Mar-
tínez (eds.), Tough Times: The Archaeology of Cri-
sis and Recovery, British Archaeological Reports,
International Series 2478: 161-70. Oxford:
Archaeopress.
Fernández, C., P. García and A. Uscatescu
1992 Gijón en el período tardoantiguo: cerámicas
importadas de las excavaciones de Cimadevilla.
Archivo Español de Arqueología 65: 105-49.
Fernández, C., F. Gil and A. Orejas
2004 La villa de Veranes: el complejo rural tardo­
rromano y propuesta de estudio del territorio.
Archivo Español de Arqueología 77: 197-219.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/aespa.2004.v77.97
García, E.
2012 La Sevilla tardoantigua: diez años después
(2000–2010). In J. Beltrán and O. Rodríguez
(eds.), Hispaniae urbes: Investigaciones arque-
ológicas en ciudades históricas, 881-926. Seville,
Spain: Universidad de Sevilla.
García, L.A.
2001 Comercio y comerciantes en la Málaga de época
visigoda y bizantina. In F. Wulff, G. Cruz and C.
Martínez (eds.), II Congreso de Historia Antigua
de Málaga: Comercio y comerciantes en la Historia
Antigua de Málaga (siglo VII a.C. –711 d.C.),
663-80. Málaga, Spain: Diputación Provincial.
García-Entero, V.
2005 Los balnea domésticos—ámbito rural y urbano en
la Hispania romana. Anejos a Archivo Español
de Arqueología 37. Madrid: Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas.
Gelichi, S.
2008 The rise of an early medieval emporium and the
economy of Italy in the Late Longobard Age.
Annales 18: 319-36.
Gonzalo, J.M.
2007 El cerro del Castillo, Bernardos (Segovia). Un
yacimiento arqueológico singular en la provincia
de Segovia durante la Antigüedad Tardía. Sego-
via, Spain: Caja Segovia.
Goodchild, R.G., and J.B. Ward-Perkins
1953 The Roman and Byzantine defences of Lep-
cis Magna. Papers of the British School at
Rome 21: 42-73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/
S0068246200006425
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
Gutiérrez, S., L. Abad and B. Gamo
2005 Eio, Iyyuh y el Tolmo de Minateda (Hellín,
Albacete): de sede episcopal a madîna islámica.
In J.M. Gurt and A. Ribera (eds.), VI Reunió
d’arqueologia cristiana hispànica, 345-70. Bar­
celona, Spain: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
Halsall, G.
1996 Towns, societies and ideas: the not-so-strange
case of late Roman and early Merovingian Metz.
In N. Christie and S.T. Loseby (eds.), Towns in
Transition: Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity
and the Early Middle Ages, 235-61. Aldershot,
UK: Scholar Press.
2007 Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376–
568. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harris, M.
2011 Nuestra Especie. Madrid: Alianza.
Hodges, R.
1996 Dream cities: emporia and the end of the Dark
Ages. In N. Christie and S.T. Loseby (eds.),
Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 289-305.
Aldershot, UK: Scholar Press.
Ivanišević, V.
2006 Iustiniana Prima – Caričin Grad. Leskovač, Ser-
bia: National Museum.
Jacobs, I.
2012 Aesthetic Maintenance of Civic Space: The ‘Clas-
sical’ City from the 4th to the 7th c. ad. Leuven,
Belgium: Peeters.
King, L.J.
1984 Central Place Theory. London: Sage.
Loseby, S.T.
1992 Marseille: a late antique success story? Journal
of Roman Studies 82: 165-85. http://dx.doi.
org/10.2307/301290
2006 Decline and change in the cities of late antique
Gaul. In J.-U. Krause and C. Witschel (eds.),
Die Stadt in der Spätantike – Niedergang oder
Wandel?, 96-104. Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner.
Lull, V., and R. Micó
2007 Arqueología del origen del estado: las teorías. Bar-
celona, Spain: Bellaterra.
Macias, J.M.
2008 Tarracona visigoda ¿una ciudad en declive? In L.
Olmo (ed.), Recópolis y la ciudad en la época visi-
goda. Zona Arqueológica 9: 293-301. Alcalá de
Henares, Spain: Museo Arqueológico Regional.
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 101
Martín, I.
2006 Tributación y escenarios locales en el centro de
la Península Ibérica: algunas hipótesis a partir
del análisis de las pizarras visigodas. Antiquité
Tardive 14: 263-90.
Martínez, J.
2012 Reuse, repair and reconstruction: functioning
aqueducts in post-Roman Spain. In B. Jervis
and A. Kyle (eds.), Make-do and Mend: The
Archaeologies of Compromise. British Archae-
ological Reports, International Series 2408:
26-44. Oxford: Archaeopress.
2013 Crisis or crises? The end of Roman towns in
Iberia, between the late Roman and the early
Umayyad periods. In E. van der Wilt and J.
Martínez (eds.), Tough Times: The Archaeology
of Crisis and Recovery. British Archaeologi-
cal Reports, International Series 2478: 77-90.
Oxford: Archaeopress.
2015 A preliminary study on the aqueduct of Rec-
copolis. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 34 (3) (in
press).
Martínez, S.
2010 La ciudad de Confluentia-Duratón y su territo-
rio. In S. Martínez, J. Santiago and A. Zamora
(eds.), Segovia Romana II. Gentes y territorios,
183-220. Segovia, Spain: Caja Segovia.
Miller, M.C.
2000 The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority
in Medieval Italy. Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press.
McCormick, M.
2002 Origins of the European Economy: Communica-
tions and Commerce ad 300-900. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1017/CBO9781107050693
Muñiz, I., and A. García
2010 El Castillo de Gauzón (Asturias, España) y
el proceso europeo de feudalización entre la
Antigüedad Tardía y la Edad Media a través de
las fortificaciones. Munibe 61: 289-328.
Niewöhner, P.
2006 Aizanoi and Anatolia: town and countryside in
late antiquity. Millenium 3: 239-53.
Niewöhner, P., G. Dilikitas, E. Erkul, S. Giese, J. Gorecki,
W. Prochaska, D. Sari, H. Stümpel, A. Vardar, A. Waldner,
A.V. Walser and H. Woith
2013 Bronze Age hüyüks, Iron Age hill top forts,
Roman poleis, and Byzantine pilgrimage in Ger-
mia and its vicinity: ‘connectivity’ and a lack of
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
‘definite places’ on the Central Anatolian High
Plateau. Anatolian Studies 63: 97-136.
Olmo, L.
2008 Recópolis: una ciudad en época de transforma-
ciones. In L. Olmo (ed.) Recópolis y la ciudad en
la época visigoda. Zona Arqueológica 9: 40-63.
Alcalá de Henares, Spain: Museo Arqueológico
Regional.
2010 Ciudad y estado en época visigoda: Toledo, la
construcción de un nuevo paisaje urbano. In
A. García, R. Izquierdo, L. Olmo and D. Perís
(eds.), Espacios urbanos en el occidente mediterrá-
neo, ss. VI-VIII, 87-112. Toledo, Spain: Toletum
Visigodo.
Poulter, A.G.
2007 The transition to late Antiquity on the lower
Danube: the city, a fort and the countryside. In
A.G. Poulter (ed.), The Transition to Late Antiq-
uity: On the Danube and Beyond. Proceedings
of the British Academy 141: 51-96. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Prego, A.
2000 La inscripción de Comitiolus del Museo Munic-
ipal de Arqueología de Cartagena. In J.M. Gurt
and N. Tena (eds.), V Reunió d’arqueologia
cristiana hispànica, 383-92. Barcelona, Spain:
Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
Pringle, D.
2001 The Defence of Byzantine Africa from Justin-
ian to the Arab Conquest. British Archaeologi-
cal Reports, International Series 99. 2nd edn.
Archaeopress: Oxford.
Quirós, J.A.
2006 La génesis del paisaje medieval en Álava: la
formación de la red aldeana. Arqueología y Ter-
ritorio Medieval 13: 49-83.
2009 Early medieval villages in Spain in the light of
European experience: new approaches in peas-
ant archaeology. In J.A. Quirós (ed.), Archaeol-
ogy of Early Medieval Villages in Europe, 13-26.
Bilbao, Spain: Universidad del País Vasco.
2011 Los paisajes altomedievales en el País Vasco,
500-900: de la desarticulación territorial a la
emergencia de los condados. In J.A. Quirós
(ed.), Vasconia en la Alta Edad Media 450–
1000, 29-54. Bilbao, Spain: Universidad del
País Vasco.
Quirós, J.A., and A. Vigil-Escalera
2006 Networks of peasant villages between Toledo
and Velegia Alabense, northwestern Spain
102 Martínez Jiménez and Tejerizo García
(V-Xth centuries). Archeologia Medievale 33:
79-128.
Rascón, S., and A.L. Sánchez
2008 Urbanismo de la ciudad de Complutum los
siglos VI-VII. In L. Olmo (ed.), Recópolis y la
ciudad en la época visigoda. Zona Arqueológica
9: 243-58. Alcalá de Henares, Spain: Museo
Arqueológico Regional.
Raynaud, C.
2000–2001 Les campagnes en Gaule du sud-est dans
l’antiquité tardive et le Haut Moyen Âge. Zephy-
rus 53-54: 473-507.
Ribera, A.
2008 La ciudad de Valencia durante el periodo visi-
godo. In L. Olmo (ed.), Recópolis y la ciudad en
la época visigoda. Zona Arqueológica 9: 303-20.
Alcalá de Henares, Spain: Museo Arqueológico
Regional.
Rosselló, M.
2005 El territorium de Valentia a l’antiguitat tardana.
In J.M. Gurt and A. Ribera (eds.), VI reunió
d’arqueologia cristiana hispànica, 279-304. Bar-
celona, Spain: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
Sánchez Pardo, J.C.
2013 Power and rural landscapes in early medieval
Galicia (400–900 ad): towards a re-incorpora-
tion of the archaeology into the historical narra-
tive. Early Medieval Europe 21: 140-68. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1111/emed.12013
Santiago, J., and S. Martínez
2010 La ciudad de Segovia y su territorio. In S. Mar-
tínez, J. Santiago and A. Zamora (eds.), Segovia
Romana II. Gentes y territorios, 183-220. Sego-
via, Spain: Caja Segovia.
Sarasola, N., and A. Moraza
2011 Erdi Aroko Arkeologia Gipuzkoa: Arqueología
Medieval en Gipuzkoa. San Sebastián, Spain:
Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa.
Sastre, J.C., and R. Catalán
2012 Un asentamiento fortificado en la tardoantigüe-
dad: el castro de El Castillón (Santa Eulalia
de Tábara, Zamora). In J.A. Quirós and J.M.
Tejado (eds.), Los castillos altomedievales en el
noroeste de la Península Ibérica, 77-98. Bilbao,
Spain: Universidad del País Vasco.
Schneider, L.
2001 Oppida et castra tardo-antiques: à propos des
établissements de hauteur de Gaule méditer-
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
ranéenne. In P. Ouzoulias, C. Pellecuer, C.
Raynaud, P. Van Ossel and P. Garmy (eds.), Les
campagnes de la Gaule à la fin de l’Antiquité,
433-48. Antibes, France: APDCA.
Sears, G.
2007 Late Roman African Urbanism: Continuity and
Transformation in the City. British Archaeologi-
cal Reports, International Series 1693. Oxford:
Archaeopress.
Tejerizo, C.
2012 Early medieval household archaeology in
Northwest Iberia (6th-11th centuries). Arque-
ología de la Arquitectura 9: 183-96.
Tovar, L.C., and J.F. Blanco
1997 Cerámica común tardorromana, imitación de
sigillata, en la provincia de Segovia. Archivo
Español de Arqueología 70: 171-219.
Vaquerizo, D., and J.F. Murillo (eds.)
2010 El anfiteatro romano de Córdoba y su entorno
urbano: análisis arqueológico (ss. I-XIII d.C.).
Monografías de Arqueología Cordobesa 19 (2).
Córdoba, Spain: Universidad de Córdoba.
Vigil-Escalera, A.
2007 Granjas y aldeas altomedievales al norte de
Toledo (450–800 d.C.). Archivo Español de
Arqueología 80: 239-84.
Vigil-Escalera, A., and J.A. Quirós
2013 El registro arqueológico del campesinado del
interior peninsular en época altomedieval. In
J.A. Quirós (ed.), El poblamiento rural de época
visigoda en Hispania: arqueología del campes-
inado en el interior peninsular, 289-328. Bilbao,
Spain: Universidad del País Vasco.
Vigil-Escalera, A., and C. Tejerizo García
2014 Asentamientos fortificados altomedievales
en la Meseta: algunas distorsiones historio­gráficas.
In R. Catalán Ramos, P. Fuentes Melgar and
J.C. Sastre Blanco (eds.) Las fortificaciones en la
tardo­antigüedad: élites y articulación del territorio
(siglos V-VIII d.C.), 229-45. Madrid: La Ergás-
tula.
Vizcaíno, J.
2009 La presencia bizantina en Hispania (siglos VII-
VIII). La documentación arqueológica. Antigüe-
dad y Cristianismo 14. Murcia: Universidad de
Murcia.
Ward-Perkins, B.
1996 Urban continuity? In N. Christie and S.T.
 Central Places in the Post-Roman Mediterranean 103
Loseby (eds.), Towns in Transition: Urban Evolu-
tion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,
4-17. Aldershot, UK: Scholar Press.
Wickham, C.
1998 Overview: production, distribution and demand.
In R. Hodges and W. Bowden (eds.), The Sixth
Century: Production, Distribution and Demand,
279-92. Leiden: Brill.
2005 Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2015
Mediterranean 400–800. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
2008 Productive forces and the economic logic of the
feudal mode of production. Historical Mate-
rialism 16: 3-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/
156920608X296051
Woolf, G.
1999 Becoming Roman. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.