Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T03:12:45.515Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Roads to recovery: an investigation of early medieval agrarian strategies in Byzantine Italy in and around the eighth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Paul Arthur ,
Girolamo Fiorentino  and
Anna Maria Grasso
Paul Arthur
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Medieval Archaeology, University of Salento, Via D. Birago 64, 73100 Lecce, Italy (Email: paul.arthur@unisalento.it)
Girolamo Fiorentino
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Palaeoecology, University of Salento, Via D. Birago 64, 73100 Lecce, Italy (Email: girolamo._fiorentino@unisalento.it)
Anna Maria Grasso
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Palaeoecology, University of Salento, Via D. Birago 64, 73100 Lecce, Italy (Email: girolamo._fiorentino@unisalento.it) Dipartimento di Archeologia e Storia delle Arti, Università di Siena, Via Roma 56, 53100 Siena, Italy (Email: grasso13@unisi.it)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The cumulative power of botanical and chemical analysis is demonstrated here by our authors, who succeed in opening a window on Europe's most obscure period, in the south as in the north, the time after the Roman and then the Byzantine empire lost its hold. The emphasis here is on the rise in production and trade of cash crops in the eighth century as detected by survey, pollen, charcoal and residues. Taken together, the new data show a community well on the road to economic recovery after two centuries of recession and monetary failure.

Keywords

ItalyByzantiumeighth century ADeconomic recovery
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 332 , June 2012 , pp. 444 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

References

Arthur, P. 2003. Saraceni, schiavi e il Salento, in Peduto, P. & Fiorillo, R. (ed.) III Congresso nazionale di archeologia medievale: 443–45. Firenze: All'Insegna del Giglio.Google Scholar
Arthur, P. In press. Villages, communities, landscapes, in the Byzantine and medieval Salento, in Galetti, P. (ed.) Villaggi, comunità, paesaggi medievali. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo.Google Scholar
Arthur, P. & Bruno, B. (ed.). 2009. Apigliano. Un villaggio bizantino e medievale in Terra d'Otranto. L'ambiente, il villaggio, la popolazione. Galatina: Arti Grafiche Panico.Google Scholar
Arthur, P., Albarella, U., Bruno, B. & King, S.. 1996. ‘Masseria Quattro Macine’ a Deserted Medieval Village and its territory in southern Apulia: an interim report on field survey, excavation and document analysis. Papers of the British School at Rome 64: 181–238.Google Scholar
Arthur, P., Fiorentino, G. & Imperiale, M. Leo. 2008. L'insediamento in Loc. Scorpo (Supersano, LE) nel VII-VIII secolo. La scoperta di un paesaggio di età altomedievale. Archeologia Medievale 35: 365–80.Google Scholar
Barbiera, I. & Della-Zuana, G.. 2009. Population dynamics in Italy in the Middle Ages: new insights from archaeological findings. Population and Development Review 3-5(2): 367–89.Google Scholar
Bethmann, L. K. & Waitz, G. (ed.). 1878. Pauli Diaconi, Historia Langobardorum, in H, M. G.. Scriptores Rerum Longobardicarum et Italicarum. Hannover.Google Scholar
Brubaker, L. & Haldon, J.. 2011. Byzantium in the iconclast era c. 680-850: a history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Büntgen, U., Tegel, W., Nicolussi, K., Mccormick, M., Frank, D., Trouet, V., Kaplan, J. O., Herzig, F., Heussner, K.-U., Wanner, H., Luterbacher, J. & Esper, J.. 2011. 2500 years of European climate variability and human susceptibility. Science 331(6017): 578–82.Google Scholar
Cappellini, E., Thomas, M., Gilbert, P., Geuna, F., Fiorentino, G., Hall, A., Thomas-Oates, J., Ashton, P.D., Ashford, D. A., Arthur, P., Campos, P. F., Kool, J., Willerslev, E. & Collins, M. J.. 2010. A multidisciplinary study of archaeological grape seeds. Naturwissenschaften 97: 205–17.Google Scholar
De Grossi Mazzorin, J. & De Venuto, G.. In press. L'economia produttiva animale: i risultati delle analisi archeozoologiche, in Arthur, P., Imperiale, M. Leo & Tinelli, M. (ed.) Apigliano. Un villaggio bizantino e medievale in Terra d'Otranto. La cultura materiale. Galatina: Arti Grafiche Panico.Google Scholar
Di Rita, F. & Magri, D.. 2009. Holocene drought, deforestation, and evergreen vegetation development in the central Mediterranean: a 5,500 year record from Lago Alimini Piccolo, Apulia, southeast Italy. The Holocene 19: 295–306.Google Scholar
Fagiolo, V. & Cazzato, M.. 1984. Lecce. Rome-Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Figueiral, I., Bouby, L., Buffat, L., Petitot, H., Terral, J.F.. 2010. Archaeobotany, vine growing and wine producing in Roman southern France: the site of Gasquinoy (Béziers, Hérault). Journal of Archaeological Science 37(1): 139–49.Google Scholar
Grasso, A. M. & Fiorentino, G.. 2009. L'ambiente vegetale: risultati delle nuove analisi archeobotaniche, in Arthur, P. & Bruno, B. (ed.) Apigliano. Un villaggio bizantino e medievale in Terra d'Otranto. L'ambiente, il villaggio, la popolazione: 53–56. Galatina: Arti Grafiche Panico.Google Scholar
Hocker, F. M. 1998. Bozburun Byzantine shipwreck excavation: the final campaign, 1998. Institute of Nautical Archaeology Quarterly 25(4): 3–13.Google Scholar
Margaritis, E. & Jones, M.. 2006. Beyond cereals: crop-processing and Vitis vinifera L.: ethnography, experiment and charred grape remains from Hellenistic Greece. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 784–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Primavera, M., Simone, O., Fiorentino, G. & Caldara, M.. 2011. The palaeoenvironmental study of Alimini Piccolo lake enables a reconstruction of Holocene sea-level changes in southeast Italy. The Holocene 21(4): 553–63.Google Scholar
Terral, J. F., Tabard, E., Bouby, L., Ivorra, S., Pastor, T., Figueiral, I., Picq, S., Chevance, J. B., Jung, C., Fabre, L., Tardy, C., Compan, M., Bacilieri, R., Lacombe, T. & This, P.. 2010. Evolution and history of grapevine (Vitis vinifera) under domestication: new morphometric perspectives to understand seed domestication syndrome and reveal origins of ancient European cultivars. Annals of Botany 105(3): 443–55.Google Scholar
Von Falkenhausen, V. 2007. Tra Occidente e Oriente: Otranto in epoca bizantina, in Houben, H. (ed.) Otranto nel Medioevo tra Bisanzio e l'Occidente: 13–60. Galatina: Congedo.Google Scholar