Late Antiquity is a
periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from
classical antiquity to the
Middle Ages in mainland
Europe, the
Mediterranean world, and the
Middle East. The development of the periodization has generally be accredited to historian
Peter Brown, after the publication of his seminal work
The World of Late Antiquity (1971). Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but Brown proposes a period between the 2nd and 8th centuries AD. Generally, it can be thought of as from the end of the
Roman Empire's
Crisis of the Third Century (c. 235 – 284) to, in the East, the period of early
Islam (7th – 9th centuries), following the
Muslim conquests in the mid-7th century. In the West the end was earlier, with the start of the
Early Medieval period typically placed in the 6th century, or earlier on the Western edges of the empire.