Weapon Manufacture and Authority on the Frontier of Late and Post-Roman Italy : Eastern Lake Como and the Insula Comacina

This monograph presents a microstudy of a crucially important and profoundly revealing location: the territory around the modern city of Lecco, which lies on the eastern branch of Lake Como, in Lombardy (northern Italy). Contrary to ‘traditional’ reconstructions that present eastern Lake Como as a marginal region, where no important events took place in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, this book demonstrates that the area functioned as a key point of connection across the Roman Empire (the Rhine–Danube limes) and continued to function long after the political collapse of the Empire in the West. Furthermore, the region was the location of what can only be described as a state arms factory for the Roman Empire, the importance of which only began to fade in the eleventh century. This book represents the culmination of a comprehensive reconsideration of the historical sources and available archaeological evidence, offering a new framework for analysis and insights into the transformations that took place from the late Empire into the Middle Ages.