Alaric - 'Roman Officer'?

[Nathan Ross]

cemeteries where every adult had terrible eye and oral health outside the legion camp at Lauriacum

That would suggest things were not so great, yes - although we'd have to ask who these people were, and whether they were the same population as produced the later evidence of improved health and physique.

people like Steve Muhlberger and Benjamin Isaacs who are pretty cynical of the benefits of Late Roman civilization

Interesting post - thanks! Muhlberger answers his own question in the two extracts you've quoted, and I think Ward-Perkins would agree entirely - 'civilisation' is not measured by whatever the rich elites are up to, but by the general standard and complexity of daily life available across a wide spectrum of society - clean drinking water, like solid roofs and access to diverse produce and good pottery and literacy and not-too-insane levels of infant mortality, is all a part of that.

there are people who try to hide the extent to which urban, complex society collapsed in the western provinces in the fifth century, so Ward-Perkins is speaking to them

I'm not sure who they are either! Perhaps Chris Wickham, with his euphemistic 'radical material simplification'? - life didn't get worse in the early middle ages, it just got, y'know... simpler...