City Walls in Late Antiquity: An Empire-wide Perspective. Proceedings of a Conference held at the British School at Rome and the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome on 20–21 June 2018. Edited by E. Intagliata, S.J. Barker and C. Courault. Oxbow Books, Oxford & Philadelphia, 2020. Pp iv + 174, illus. Price £55. ISBN 9781789253641.

 This well-produced volume (albeit without colour illustrations) puts a much-needed spotlight on some of the most substantial monumental survivals from Late Antiquity – city walls. Such circuit walls were constructed primarily from the later third to fifth centuries a.d. and defined cities (or lesser successors) into the Middle Ages. They denoted massive investments of resources – materials, labour, time – requiring reshaping of classical urban spaces, notably via clearances by work-crews, materials deployment, but also inserting major features like ditches (a component frequently forgotten). These defences secured cities but also denoted status. Oddly, however, few city wall-building campaigns are actually memorialised in contemporary inscriptions, hence, as the editors note in their introduction, ‘the chronological uncertainty of many sites’, with recourse by archaeologists to tower forms especially to frame them. A more detailed, ‘empire-wide’ assessment is certainly overdue, given that Stephen Johnson's still valuable Late Roman Fortifications (1983) is now nearly 40 years old. The editors thus seek more joined-up discussion and more comparative analysis of forms, materials, roles and ‘knowledge transfers’, properly spanning Eastern and Western Roman Empires. Such would be a vast but rewarding task, although much first needs to be done at a regional and then provincial level to reveal the quality of the archaeological resource.