Michelle L. Berenfeld

Elite urban neighborhoods in the late Roman empire (third- through sixth-century CE) were social spaces in which daily negotiations of power, class, and piety played out among the members of the upper classes. Late Roman elites and their houses have been the object of numerous studies, but these have largely overlooked relationships among urban houses, their interaction with public spaces, and changes in those relationships over time. This project employs archaeological evidence for upper-class neighborhoods in selected provincial cities and in Rome, together with texts produced in and about those cities, to explore how the rise of Christianity intersected with developments related to class and elite power during this critical time.