Revealing and fascinating, and usefully supplementing Prof Perring's talk on the longer period (he did make it the end, but the latter part was indeed a bit rushed on that occasion!). I'm very taken with the proposition that a shift from an urban focus doesn't necessarily denote collapse but rather a change in the mode of living and producing (and I'm very much a townie, so it's not an anti-urban point). I see it as parallel here to a general process in which provincial development under the Empire itself generated the centrifugal forces that keep popping up from 260: "Now we have all this Roman stuff, do we still need Rome?" - and did Britannia therefore still need its seat of Roman power as may have been the case formerly?
Revealing and fascinating, and usefully supplementing Prof Perring's talk on the longer period (he did make it the end, but the latter part was indeed a bit rushed on that occasion!).
I'm very taken with the proposition that a shift from an urban focus doesn't necessarily denote collapse but rather a change in the mode of living and producing (and I'm very much a townie, so it's not an anti-urban point). I see it as parallel here to a general process in which provincial development under the Empire itself generated the centrifugal forces that keep popping up from 260: "Now we have all this Roman stuff, do we still need Rome?" - and did Britannia therefore still need its seat of Roman power as may have been the case formerly?