Bryan Ward-Perkins' monograph, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, makes a two-pronged argument. The first prong is that, contrary to many of today's academics, Ward-Perkins believes that the Germanic peoples who swept into the late Roman Empire, and eventually brought about the end of the Western part of it, did not smoothly assimilate and reach accomodation with the peoples already living in those areas. To the contrary, Ward-Perkins argues, the transition to the Germanic rule of western Europe was (as was traditionally believed) a conquest, and often quite a violent one at that.



The second prong of his argument, which takes up the second half of the book (and the half that I found the most intriguing), is that people living in the territory of the Western Empire saw a dramatic decline in material living standards within a relatively short period of time during and after the fall of the empire. Here, Ward-Perkins relies on his archaeological expertise to show how all sorts of everyday goods, such as pottery and housing, regressed significantly in quality (and often quantity, as well.) Coinage became scarce in many areas as the economy degenerated into a more primitive state, far less productive and without the advantages of regional specialization and the division of labor. Knowledge of many crafts and technologies seems to have virtually diappeared in many areas. Even the size of livestock declined after the fall of the Western Empire. Thus it really was the end (or at least a significant downgrade) of a great civilization, at least in material terms. The average person's standard of living actually went backward by several centuries, and took centuries more to get back up to where it had been during the Pax Romana.



This is a great book if you're interested in the fall of Rome, or in the rise and fall of empires and civilizations in general. It is a sober reminder that material progress is not linear, but has periodic, dramatic 'downs' as well as 'ups.' The book is also a great illustration of how archaeology can enhance history. Oftentimes, historians' over-reliance on written sources can lead one to far away from the physical and material world in which we all live our lives. Ward-Perkins brings the tangible world back in, front-and-center, to the story of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

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