ABSTRACT
Interpreting the Roman and Byzantine economies in this way as non-commercial would have important implications for our consideration of the Pirenne Thesis. As regards the Byzantine Empire, however, accepting the interpretation would strengthen the argument that that empire was simply a continuation of the Roman Empire in the West. Ward-Perkins used the arguments to paint an entirely anti-Pirenne picture of the end of the Roman Empire in the West. In his view the contraction of the sort of commercialised exports he sees in the archaeology of the Roman period marks the definitive collapse of the Roman economic system in the West from the late fifth century onwards. Pirenne's critics pointed out, however, that papyrus was produced in Egypt as a government monopoly, and was thus the sort of economic production directed by the imperial government posited by the interpretation of Jonesand Finley.
