Towers, Refuges, and Fortified Farms in the Late Roman East

Some fortified farms were built later in the settlement history of the eastern frontier. They are represented by Stabl Antar, which, assuming my identification of its function is correct, seems to reflect prominent landownersʼ concerns about major specific threats in the form of enemy raids. Although the date of the building in 577/78 reflects the reaction of the Apamean rural population to the devastating invasion of the Sasanians in 573, the impetus was apparently local and unofficial. In the future, archaeological work on these structures will iron out the issues of frontier settlement and security, but there are a number of other questions that such study will repay, such as the semiotics of elite control as expressed in architecture, and the little explored but probable bridge between the form and expression of these late antique compounds and later architectural expression, such as the Umayyad Desert Castles.