The End of the Pagan City: Religion, Economy, and Urbanism in Late Antique North Africa

This book focuses primarily on the end of the pagan religious tradition and the dismantling of its material in North Africa (modern Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) from the 4th to the 6th centuries AD. Leone considers how urban communities changed, why some traditions were lost and some others continued, and whether these carried the same value and meaning upon doing so. Addressing two main issues, mainly from an archaeological perspective, the volume explores the change in religious habits and practices, and the consequent recycling and reuse of pagan monuments and materials, and investigates to what extent these physical processes were driven by religious motivations and contrasts, or were merely stimulated by economic issues.

Anna Leone is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology of the Roman Empire at Durham University, where she has worked since 2004. She is co-Director of the Centre for the study of the Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East, and she is a member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Durham University. Dr Leone has published extensively on various aspects of North Africa in late antiquity.