This article addresses questions relating to the ‘Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site’ and seeks to introduce into this initiative some concepts derived from recent writings on contemporary mobilities and bordering, exploring the possibility of creating greater engagement between the two academic fields of ‘border studies’ and ‘Roman Frontier Studies’. By examining the relationship between the Roman Frontiers initiative and the European Union's stated aims of integration and the dissolution of borders, it argues in favour of crossing intellectual borders between the study of the present and the past to promote the value of the Roman frontiers as a means of reflecting on contemporary problems facing Europe. This article considers the potential roles of Roman Frontier Studies in this debate by emphasizing frontiers as places of encounter and transformation.

The traditional explanation for the presence of Roman artefacts beyond the Roman Empire's frontiers is that these were objects of trade, but this view has been modified in two studies published around the same time. Although they both referred to areas north of the Rhine, each was based on different theoretical premises and presented a different explanation for the presence of Roman artefacts in these areas. One study, based on the concept of world systems theory, concluded that there were uninterrupted and mutually beneficial trade relations across the frontier. The other study was based on a linear culture-historical approach, and it concluded that there were no trade relations between the Empire and the ‘barbarians’, but that Roman artefacts were the result of specific historical events of brief duration. The present article analyses these apparently conflicting outcomes. It focuses on Roman artefacts from the Netherlands, specifically those from the modern province of Friesland, about 150 km north of the Rhine/the Limes.

In the last chapter of What Happened in History, Childe touched on the problematic of Late Antiquity. His pessimistic view of that period was a variation on the theme of decadence. This theme had existed in the Roman Republic and under the Empire, long before there was any Late Antiquity to be decadent. It then persisted throughout the Middle Ages and found monumental expression in Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Childe, however, took it to excessive lengths in his denunciation of the politics, economy, and culture of the Late Roman Empire. Childe based his arguments largely on the work of Rostovtzeff and Heichelheim. Both these eminent historians were exiles: Rostovtzeff from the Russia of the October Revolution and Heichelheim from National Socialist Germany. It is no belittlement to say that their work was influenced by the insights of their political experiences. Childe, however, did not appreciate this and adopted their thinking somewhat uncritically. He further added parallels between the Roman Period and his own time, which resulted in an unduly dark vision of the last phase of the Roman Empire.