While Roman rural settlements and villas of the Istrian peninsula have a long tradition of research, those of the adjacent Kvarner region (northern Liburnia, province Dalmatia) are less known and have only recently started to be studied topographically and through systematic excavations. In both regions late phases of occupation of these rural residential and productive sites have in the past been neglected and not properly valorised, as greater attention was devoted to earlier, more monumental structures. Thanks to two cases studies – Old Tar in the ager of Poreč and Podšilo bay settlement on the island of Rab – we wish to explore in more depth the changes taking place within the structures of former villas in late Antiquity, explore continuity and/or rupture of habitation, changes in building techniques and use of the villa spaces, and the outcome of these processes in the following centuries. Thanks to data related to craft activities present on both sites we will also explore the setup of new production features and the destiny of earlier production structures. Data derived from these case studies will be placed within a regional north-eastern Adriatic framework and compared to adjacent areas of norther and central Adriatic Italy and Dalmatia, in order to explore possible regional patterns or chronological discrepancies characteristic of each micro-region.