There is a very good case for supposing that not only the idea of late antique art, but indeed of late antiquity itself as a meaningful historical period, was invented in Vienna in the late nineteenth century. The ideological dynamics are significant, and help to explain the usual understanding of a temporal formulation (‘late antiquity’) to determine what is in fact a culturally and geographically specific designation – that is, a European-centred history and archaeology, as opposed to one that looks more globally towards Asia. Indeed, east of Iran, no one uses the term ‘late antique’ for the artistic innovations of the first few centuries AD which led to the rise of distinctive artistic production in the religious cultures that have come to be called Buddhist, Jain and Hindu.