Thomas S. Burns

Thomas S. Burns, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, (B.A., Wabash College, 1967; M.A., University of Michigan, 1968; Ph.D., 1974); late ancient and early medieval history and archaeology; the barbarian relationship to the Roman Empire through the sixth century and the subsequent barbarian kingdoms; and the transformation of the urban and rural interactions in late Antiquity. Author of The Ostrogoths: Kingship and Society (1980); A History of the Ostrogoths (1984); coauthor, Rome and the Germans as Seen in Coinage (1987); Barbarians within the Gates of Rome: Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, ca. 375-425 A.D. (1994); coauthur, Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity (2000); Rome and the Barbarians, 100 BC - AD 400 (2003); coauthor, Die römische Siedlung bei Babarc, Komitat Baranya/Ungarn / The Roman Settlement near Babarc, Komitat Baranya, Hungary (2007). Co-Director of archaeological excavations in Passau-Haibach and Manching, Germany and Babarc, Hungary.

At the moment I am engaged in a project designed to illuminate some of the general factors in the decline of the ancient city by comparing the changing relationship between urban centers and their rural hinterlands in two quite distinct regions. I have chosen to compare the frontier provinces of the middle and upper Danube and the province of Pamphylia in southcentral Turkey. The former was highly militarized; the latter extensively urbanized. I am now embarked upon writing a textbook for a redesigned "Western Civilization" that will remove the traditional axis of London-Paris-Rome, replacing it with a much more balanced and geographically diverse approach which truly includes Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and the Moslem world.

Website (including Curriculum Vitae)