IPCAA's Tyler Johnson successfully defended his dissertation "Beyond Abandonment: Residential Transformations in Rome and its Region from the Imperial Period to Late Antiquity" on Mon, Apr 3.

Tyler's dissertation "reevaluates a recurring trope in catastrophic narratives about the fall of Rome: the disuse and abandonment of once luxurious houses followed by the widespread emergence of squalid living conditions. To accomplish this, Tyler investigates 46 recently documented residential buildings in the city of Rome, its suburbs, and broader regional territory from the 1st-7th century CE. Examining each case study at a granular level in an interactive medium designed with a game engine, his work emphasize the significance of daily human activities, not just architecture and decoration, in tracking the evolution of domestic space. Far from being ideal structures, his research finds that Roman houses were subject to unpredictable transformations and informal configurations, including in periods predating Late Antiquity. This leads Tyler to propose a new model for understanding both the life and death of Roman houses."

Well done, Dr. Johnson!