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 transforma