Many European towns have experienced loss of population, degradation of physical structure and profound economic change at least once since the height of the Roman Empire. This volume is an examination of the various causes of these changes, the results which flowed from them and the reasons why some urban centres survived, revived and eventually flourished again while others failed and died. The contributors bring to bear the techniques of history and archaeology, the perspectives of economics, agronomy, medicine, architecture and planning, geography and law, to the study. The result is a synthesis which connects the Decline of the Roman Empire to the effects of the Black Death and the economic transformation of Renaissance Florence.
Author(s): T.R. Slater
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 338
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of tables and figures
Notes on contributors
Preface
1 What is urban decline: desolation, decay and destruction, or an opportunity?
Part I Late-Roman and Early-Medieval Urban Decline
2 Change and decline in late Romano-British towns
3 Construction and deconstruction: reconstructing the late-Roman townscape
4 Urban failures in late-antique Gaul
5 Wroxeter and the transformation of late-Roman urbanism
6 The decline of the Wic?
7 Urban development and decline on the central Danube, 100–1600
Part II Late-Medieval Urban Decline
8 Decolonization and the dynamics of urban decline in Ireland, 1300–1550
9 The rise and fall of the medieval town in Wales
10 Archaeology and the late-medieval urban decline
11 Decline or decay? Urban landscapes in late-medieval England
12 ‘Urban decline’ in England, 1377–1525
13 The political economy of urban decline in the Renaissance
Index
