Introduction

Professor ward perkins studies late antiquity, the decline and fall of the western roman empire. His book focuses less on why rome collapsed than on what happened when the empire began to decline. Pots are very good indicators of economic sophistication because you don't make a lot of money making an individual pot. There are no pottery industries in brittany after about 50 at the latest. In the mediterranean people do continue to make pots but the large scale or pottery industries like north africa disappear completely.