The vast transformation of the Roman world at the end of antiquity has been a subject of broad scholarly interest for decades, but until now no book has focused specifically on the Iberian Peninsula in the period as seen through an archaeological lens. Given the sparse documentary evidence available, archaeology holds the key to a richer understanding of the developments of the period, and this book addresses a number of issues that arise from analysis of the available material culture, including questions of the process of Christianisation and Islamisation, continuity and abandonment of Roman urban patterns and forms, the end of villas and the growth of villages, and the adaptation of the population and the elites to the changing political circumstances.

Javier Martínez Jiménez is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Classics and a By-Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. He did his thesis (Oxford, 2013) with Bryan Ward-Perkins on the continuity of aqueducts in late antique Iberia, and has directed the survey of the aqueduct of Reccopolis and co-directed the Oxford excavations at Casa Herrera (Mérida).Isaac Sastre de Diego is an independent scholar. He has been a researcher in the Spanish National Research Council, where he continued his doctoral research with Luis Caballero (Madrid, 2009) on early medieval liturgy and Christian architecture, directly involved in the direction of excavations at Casa Herrera (Mérida) and surveys on the pre-Romanesque monuments of Asturias.Carlos Tejerizo García is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute of Heritage Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council. His doctoral research (Vitoria, 2016) was focused on the archaeology of rural communities in the Duero basin, where he has done part of his fieldwork, under the supervision of Juan Antonio Quirós and Alfonso Vigil-Escalera Guirado.

INTRODUCTION: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY MEDIEVAL IBERIA. I. 20th century approaches to the periodII. New theories and new data: archaeology in the 21st centuryIII. The nature of the transformations: Regionalism vs centralizationPART I: LATE ROMAN HISPANIAChap. 1. The transformations of Roman Hispania: 4th-5th c.Chap. 2. New townscapes in the late Empire 2.1 Fortifications 2.2 The old Roman monuments 2.3 The fate of urban infrastructure 2.4 Suburbanization and de-urbanization 2.5 The new role of townsChap. 3. Landscape and rural settlements 3.1 The end of the villa and the emergence of villages 3.2 Changing burial practices: social or ethnic transformations? 3.3 Breakdown of trading networksChap. 4. Christianization and Germanization? New evidence for current debatesPART II: THE POST-ROMAN PERIOD (450-711)Chap. 5. Towns and cities under Christian prevalence 5.1 The slow transformations of the Roman urban network 5.2 The Visigothic period of 'urban renewal' and the new foundations 5.3 Topography and architecture of power 5.4 Urban economies and material cultureChap. 6. The new rural landscape 6.1 Villages and other lay rural settlements 6.2 Churches, monasteries and ecclesiastical sites 6.3 HillfortsChap 7. A new material culture and how to understand politics, society and economyPART III: TOWARDS THE MIDDLE AGES (711-850)Chap. 8. The formation of a new culture based on tradition and innovationChap. 9. The consolidation of new political spheres: New urbanism 9.1 The Islamization of towns 9.2 Eastern influences and the rethinking of the townscape 9.3 New state foundations: north and south 9.4 Feudal townscapes?Chap. 10. Changing landscapes and rural settlements 10.1 Castles and junds: the new central places 10.2 The evolution of villages and the emergence of alquerías 10.3 Religious landscapes: churches, monasteries, ribats and cemeteries 10.4 A rural revolution? Technology and innovation