1.  Students will gain knowledge of key sites and material 
evidence for important historical developments in the eastern 
Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, between the third and 
eighth centuries CE

2. Students will be introduced to research methods and problems 
from Late Antiquity via archaeology, primary source texts, and 
the sciences

3. Students will study the major excavations conducted on Roman 
and Late Antiquity sites since the 1800s

4. Students will understand how the imperial Roman world became 
fragmented territorially, economically, and culturally between 
the third and eighth centuries CE

5. Students will understand how and why the Roman state 
persevered in the eastern Mediterranean through military, 
economic, environmental, and cultural challenges between the 
third and eighth centuries CE and beyond

6. Students will understand how Roman cities changed between the 
third and eighth centuries CE

7. Students will learn how historians and archaeologists answer 
questions about the past through evidence-based research

8. Students will produce writing and research appropriate to the 
subject matter of the course and to the disciplines of classics 
and archaeology

I.  The third-century crisis

II. The tetrarchy

III. Constantine and Constantinople

IV. The fifth century: Sites, trends, and problems

V. The sixth century: Sites, trends, and problems

VI. Goths, Slavs, and Sasanians

VII. The Late Antiquity environment

VIII. The Late Antiquity economy

IX. The Late Antiquity city

X. The seventh and eighth centuries: Sites, trends, and problems