ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly reviews recent work in the archaeology of Late Antiquity, noting especially the outstanding contributions in the Late Antique Archaeology series. It focuses on two basic and important facets of Late Antiquity. First, it demonstrated that trends of "decline" were not uniform throughout the Roman Empire. Second, although archaeologists have shown that "decline" was not uniform in the 4th and 5th centuries ce, they have, in many cases, pushed it back to the 6th and 7th centuries ce instead, coinciding with the Arab Invasions at the beginning of the 7th century ce. The Roman Empire was a huge, complex, and extremely wealthy system. For the Classic Maya, the loss of the "Holy Lords" and their Great Tradition was the indicator of the political fall at the various centers. Slow collapses are real, possible, and characteristic of the ends of complex societies. Sustainability and resilience do not mean that things are not going to change.
