Luke was educated at Durham, Oxford and Nottingham Universities. He joined the University of Kent as a Lecturer in Archaeology in 2007. He came to Kent from the Katholieke University Leuven (Belgium), where he had worked as a Post- Doctoral Fellow on the Sagalassos Project (in modern Turkey). Before that he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Humboldt Foundation, University of Cologne, the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, and the Collège de France in Paris. Luke is particularly interested in the everyday use of space in the Late Antique and Early Medieval city (AD 300-700), drawing on archaeological, textual and epigraphic evidence from across the Roman Empire. Luke is currently responsible for field archaeology instruction, and is co-director of the Kent-Berlin Ostia Project.

Luke is the editor of Late Antique Archaeology.

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Investigating the Mediterranean City in Late Antiquity (AD 300-650)

In 2008-2010, Luke will jointly direct a programme of work at Ostia, the port of Rome, with Axel Gering of the Humboldt University in Berlin. He has been asked to join in refining previous work on the street system of the city in the 4th and early 5th c. A.D. At Ostia we are dealing with a large urban area excavated by clearance, that holds one major advantage over other classical sites: there are a series of universal changes in the level of the city, in the 3rd, mid 4th and early 5th c. A.D., which make changes in the urban fabric uniquely easy to date and interpret. Here small-scale excavation and repair survey will be used to try to develop a comprehensive methodology for re-surveying old clearance excavations, such as are now becoming accessible in Algeria and Libya. The primary focus at Ostia will be on understanding the street system, which Luke has recently studied at a synthetic level across the empire as a whole. The size of the site provides a unique chance to view late antique changes across the urban fabric in a systemic rather than anecdotal fashion. The `project will be open to students who have already some excavation experience.

Click here to visit the web site and blog of the Berlin-Kent Ostia excavations, 2008

Bringing late antique cities back to life

Over the next five years Luke will be undertaking a synthetic study of the topography of the late antique city, focusing on the Mediterranean from A.D. 300-650. The ultimate goal of his research is to produce an illustrated monograph on social and political space, telling the story of everyday life in cities at this time. In association with this work Luke is engaged in a five-year project on the Visualisation of the Late Antique City, with Sebastian Rascon of the University of Madrid, who leads a team of virtual reality designers working on heritage projects in Spain. This work tries to reconstruct behaviour and object use within late antique cities, rather than simply architecture; it brings all types of evidence together, whether artefactual, textual, or epigraphic. The project will result in an illustrated catalogue and a travelling exhibition, run by Sebastian. Their intention is to bring the late antique city to a wider audience, who know little of urban life in this period, and its enduring contribution to western civilisation.

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Books

2007. Editor, with T. Putzeys and E. Swift): Objects in Context, Objects in Use (Late Antique Archaeology 5) Leiden. Brill. 450pp.

2007. Editor, with E. Zanini and A. Sarantis: Technology in Transition AD 300-650 (Late Antique Archaeology 4) Leiden. Brill. 450pp.

2007. Editor, with L. Ozgenel and A. Sarantis: Housing in Late Antiquity: from Palaces to Shops (Late Antique Archaeology 3.2) Leiden. Brill. 450pp.

2004. Editor, with W. Bowden and C. Machado: Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside (Late Antique Archaeology 2) Leiden. Brill. 597pp.

2003. Editor, with W. Bowden: Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology (Late Antique Archaeology 1) Leiden. Brill. 423pp.

2001. Editor: Recent Research in Late Antique Urbanism. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement No. 42. Portsmouth, Rhode Island. 245pp.

Articles

Forthcoming. From Polis to emporion? Retail and regulation in the late antique city, in Dumbarton Oaks Papers.

2009. What killed the ancient city? Chronology, causation, and traces of continuity, in Journal of Roman Archaeology 22.2, 803-12.

2008. The streets of Sagalassos in late antiquity, in C. Saliou et al. (eds) La Rue dans l'Antiquite (Actes du colloque de Poitiers 7-9 Septembre 2006) Rennes. 2009. 201-14

2007. The agorai of Antioch and Constantinople as seen by John Chrysostom, in J. Drinkwater and B. Salway (eds) Wolf Liebeschuetz Reflected, BICS Supp. 157-67.

2007. Jones and the cities: late antique urbanism 1964-2004, in D. Gwynn (ed.) A.H.M. Jones and the Later Roman Empire. Leiden. Brill, approximate length 15 pages.

2007. Technological change in late antiquity: innovation, stagnation and recession, in L. Lavan, E. Zanini and A. Sarantis (eds) Technology in Transition AD 300-650 (Late Antique Archaeology 4), Leiden. Brill. xv-xl.

2007. With T. Putzeys, Commercial space in late antiquity, in L. Lavan, T. Putzeys and E. Swift (eds), Objects in Context, Objects in Use (Late Antique Archaeology 5). Leiden. Brill. 81-109.

2007. Political space in late antiquity, in L. Lavan, T. Putzeys and E. Swift (eds), Objects in Context, Objects in Use (Late Antique Archaeology 5). Leiden. Brill. 111-28.

2007. Social space in late antiquity, in L. Lavan, T. Putzeys and E. Swift (eds), Objects in Context, Objects in Use (Late Antique Archaeology 5). Leiden. Brill. 129-57.

2007. Religious space in late antiquity, in L. Lavan, T. Putzeys and E. Swift (eds), Objects in Context, Objects in Use (Late Antique Archaeology 5). Leiden. Brill. 159-201.

2006. Fora and agorai in Mediterranean cities: fourth and fifth centuries AD., in W. Bowden, C. Machado and A. Gutteridge (eds) Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Late Antique Archaeology 3). Leiden. Brill. approximate length 195-249.

2006. Political life in late antiquity: a bibliographic essay, in W. Bowden, C. Machado and A. Gutteridge (eds) Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Late Antique Archaeology 3). Leiden. Brill. approximate length 28 pages.

2004. With W. Bowden, The late antique countryside: an introduction, i L. Lavan, W. Bowden and C. Machado, (eds) Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside (Late Antique Archaeology 2). Leiden. Brill. xvii-xxvi.

2004. Agorai in Turkey and Greece during late antiquity, Anatolian Archaeology, 9, 31-2.

2003. Late antique archaeology: an introduction, in L. Lavan and W. Bowden, (eds) Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology, (Late Antique Archaeology 1). Leiden. Brill. vii-xvi.

2003. Late antique urban topography: from architecture to human space, in L. Lavan and W. Bowden, (eds) Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology, (Late Antique Archaeology 1). Leiden. Brill. 171-95.

2003. The political topography of the late antique city, in L. Lavan and W. Bowden, (eds) Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology, (Late Antique Archaeology 1). Leiden. Brill. 314-40.

2003. Christianity, the city and the end of antiquity, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 16, approximate length, 7 pages.

2001. Late antique urbanism: a bibliographic essay, in L. Lavan (ed.) Recent Research in Late Antique Urbanism. (Journal of Roman Archaeology supplement 42). Portsmouth, Rhode Island. 9-26.

2001. The praetoria of civil governors in late antiquity, in L. Lavan (ed.) Recent Research in Late Antique Urbanism. (Journal of Roman Archaeology supplement 42). Portsmouth, Rhode Island. 39-56.

1999. Residences of late antique governors: a gazetteer, Antiquite Tardive 7, 135-64.

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Fellowships

2005-7 Katholieke Univ. Leuven

2003-5 Humpbolt Foundation / Univ. Cologne

2002-3 British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara

2001-2 Leverhume Trust / Research associate in the College de France

Service

Founder and Series Editor of international peer-reviewed series, Late Antique Archaeology (5 volumes to date, three more imminent) with Brill.

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Teaching

Luke is teaching a number of courses on late antique archaeology, on the ancient and medieval city, and on everyday life in the Roman world.

Luke is happy to supervise students in topics relating to his broader research interests in the late antique and early medieval archaeology, especially in the archaeology of cities and rural landscapes.

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Helen Moulden (Birmingham), carrying out laser scanning for the University of Kent, on the Temple of Hercules, Ostia.

Aoife Fitzgerald and Solinda Kamani, PhD students of the University of Kent, clean and examine wall plaster excavated at Ostia.

Excavation of the Palaestra of the Forum Baths, Ostia 2011.

John Beale, Patron of the University of Kent Ostia Excavations, holding the photographic helicopter which he bought.

Doug Watson and Jay Ingate excavating a dump layer in the Foro della Statua Eroica, Ostia 2011.

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