VII. The Medieval Ager Veientanus

Extract

The time is not yet ripe for a detailed account of the post-classical Ager Veientanus. The excavations at Capracorum (S. Cornelia) await publication and only two of the deserted medieval villages have been so much as sampled archaeologically. What follows can be no more than an interim account, setting out something of the historical and topographical framework within which future research may be expected to develop.

As the preceding chapter has shown, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire did not involve any immediate change in the social structure of the countryside north of Rome. Some properties were abandoned, others no doubt changed hands, but for a long time there does not seem to have been any radical shift in the pattern of settlement. Here and there one comes upon traces of what may have been squatters occupying the ruins of deserted villas and farms as early as the fifth and sixth centuries. But the sites that have yielded the bulk of the recognisably late Red Polished pottery are all the centres of large estates which had been continuously occupied since early Imperial times.