Recycling the Roman Villa: Material Salvage and the Medieval Circular Economy

Though abandoned between the third and seventh centuries CE, many Roman villas enjoyed an afterlife in late antiquity as a source of building materials. Villa complexes currently serve as a unique archaeological setting in that their recycling phases are often better preserved than those at urban sites. Building on a foundational knowledge of Roman architecture and construction, Beth Munro offers a retrospective study of the material value of and deconstruction processes at villas. She expl...