This volume, the proceedings of a 2005 conference looks at long-distance contacts and exchange and the collapse and creation of international systems during late antiquity. Broadly the papers posit that the decay of the Roman state lead to more not less long distance contact, with the spread of world relgions and new technologies both indicators of, and causes of this process. There is a theoretical paper from Ken Dark, then a series of more specialised studies which look at trade with China, Ethiopia and India and at the use of bracteates and pottery ampullae as evidence of long-distance exchange.