Aktuelles Einzelansicht

30.05.2026

Conference "Land and Power in the Later Roman World"

Tübingen, 29 June to 1 July 2026

The conference will take place from 29 June to 1 July 2026 at Schloss Hohentübingen (Fürstenzimmer), Tübingen.

The aim of the conference is to re-examine the links between land and power between 300 and 600 CE in their legal, socio-economic, and material dimensions. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines and academic traditions, we will survey recent academic developments in this area of research and hope to obtain a comprehensive, interdisciplinary framework for understanding land ownership in this period.

Conference Programme

Monday, 29 June 2026 – Schloss Hohentübingen, Fürstenzimmer

9:00-9:30 Welcome
9:30-9:45 Opening Remarks

Session I: Political economies of landownership

9:45-10:30 Alberto Dalla Rosa — Land, status and loyalty: the politics of land grants to individuals from Augustus to the Severans.
10:30–11:15 John Weisweiler — Imperial fiscality and senatorial property in the fourth century.
11:15-11:45 Coffee Break
11:45–12:30 Sophie Kovarik — Arsinocrats: aristocratic landownership in late antique Fayyum.
12:30–13:15 Damián Fernandez — Land and power in post–imperial Hispania: royal gifts and the politics of ownership.
13:15–14:45 Lunch

Session II: Ecclesiastical economies

14:45–15:30 Simona Tarozzi — Imperial law and ecclesiastical administration in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages: land management in Ravenna and the prefecture of Gallia and Ravenna (4th – 8th centuries).
15:30–16:15 Francesco Verrico — Emphyteusis on Church lands: how ecclesiastical practice (re)shaped a legal institution.
16:15–16:45 Coffee Break
16:45–17:30 Roy Flechner — Distributive justice on the sixth–century Sicilian papal patrimony.
17:30–18:15 Paulo Pachá — Land, power and labor: property and asymmetrical dependence in Visigothic Iberia.
19:30 Conference dinner

Tuesday, 30 June 2026 – Schloss Hohentübingen, Fürstenzimmer

Session III: The dynamics of conflict

09:00–09:45 Pierfrancesco Porena — Land and power: the rise and fall of the Ostrogoths in Italy.
09:45–10:30 Ian Bonze — The economy of power: debt and land disputes in Late Antiquity.
10:30–11:00 Coffee Break
11:00–11:45 Giordana Franceschini — Governing land through conflict: invasio and élite competition in the later Roman World (4th–6th c.).
11:45–12:30 Konstantin Schönleber — In fraudem legum adversariorumque terrorem. The (ab)use of social status in late Roman land litigation.
12:30–14:00 Lunch

Session IV: Small-world economies

14:00–14:45 Paolo Tedesco — Living at the margins: afterthoughts on African peasants in an age of extremes, 300–900 CE.
14:45–15:30 Eugenia Vitello — Fields for shepherds? Socioeconomic leverage of herdsmen in land disputes within late antique Anatolia.
15:30–16:00 Coffee Break
16:00–16:45 James Burns — Small fields and status in late antique Gaul: towards the slaves’ economy.
16:45–17:30 Kevin Hoogeveen — The fragile power of Byzantine landowners: foregrounding the influence of rural Egyptians in the fifth to seventh centuries AD.

Keynote in combination with the Kolloquium des Seminars für Alte Geschichte

18:00-19:30 Paul du Plessis – Land and imperial rhetoric in the Theodosian Code.
20:00 Conference dinner

Wednesday, 1 July 2026 – Schloss Hohentübingen, Fürstenzimmer

Session V: Notions of property and their social context

09:00–09:45 Becca Grose — Co–owning land in the late Roman West: a social and political perspective, 300–600 AD.
09:45–10:30 Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner — Notions of property and the political economy of the later empire.
10:30–11:00 Coffee Break
11:00–11:45 Carlos Machado — Defining property from the ground up: Italy, 300–600.
11:45–12:30 Ralph Mathisen — Landholding and power on the ground: social network analysis and the Tablettes Albertini.
12:30–13:00 Concluding Remarks

The conference language will be English.

Attendance is open to all interested colleagues and students, and we would be delighted to welcome attendees from related fields. The conference will be held in person only and no registration is required.

This conference is part of the AHRC-DFG funded project “Land and Loyalty: the politics of land in the late Roman world”, directed by Profs. Carlos Machado (St Andrews) and Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner (Tübingen).

For enquiries and further information, please contact Dr Giordana Franceschini: giordana.franceschinispam prevention@histsem.uni-tuebingen.de

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