The late antique Domus in Ostia : patterns of diversity and transformation

This study examines fifteen houses from late antiquity in Ostia. Traditional scholarship has treated the late antique domus in Ostia in terms of radical change in architectural form and decoration, symptomatic of an equally profound change in the political, economic and social climate of the city and the Roman Empire from the mid-third century AD to the fifth. This study questions the methodological and historical assumptions underlying this conclusion and proposes analytical and interpretive methods that have not been applied to these houses.