Historiographical trends over the last decade have emphasized that we need to expand beyond the paradigm of the “fall,” or conversely, the “continuity” of the western Roman empire, but we still think and work largely in these frameworks. How can we move beyond this binary viewpoint into the past by re-examining textual, material, or archaeological evidence for how people living in the 5^th-6^th centuries understood the circumstances through which they lived? Papers in this panel will present methodological innovations that let historians ask new questions about the transformation of “post-Roman” cultural practices, socio-political institutions, and/or economies, as well as revisionary interpretations of key texts that serve as windows onto this period in post-Roman Britain and Gaul.