a companion to ostrogothic italy

8/16/2019 A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy

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overcharge grieving family members for his products. Excavations in Classehave uncovered a ceramics kiln and a glass furnace dating to this period.

It was clearly in the royal interest to support commerce and trade in Ravenna,

both for the purposes of catering to the members of the community and forthe provisioning of troops stationed there. Classe continued to function asan important commercial port throughout the Ostrogothic period, activelyencouraged by Theoderic. Excavations at the site of Podere Chiavichetta haverevealed a section of the port city that anked the canal leading to the har-bour. The island in the centre of the canal contained paved roads, shops, andfood vendors, and was linked by a bridge to the city to the south. On the southbank a major street was repaved at the time of Theoderic, and buildings inthis area were modi ed, rebuilt, and systematized with continuous porticos.

A row of large warehouses and public buildings faced the canal through onesuch portico. From the many thousands of ceramic fragments found onthese sites, we can identify imports, especially from North Africa, but also fromPalestine and Syria, the Aegean and Asia Minor, Egypt, Lusitania, and Sicily(mainly wine, but also oil and honey). The imported ceramics are signi cantbecause in much of inland Italy they had almost entirely disappeared by thistime, demonstrating the anomalous status of Ravenna. The harbour itselfhoused Theoderic’s eet of war—and grainships, and thus must have includedsailors, shipbuilders, and their families among its population.

Rome’s administration occupied a central place in the Variae, and we thusknow about many occupations and productive sectors in the city. In large cit-ies food was bought and sold in a variety of contexts. Theodahad’s letter to thepraetorian prefect con rming monopolies for various o cials lists stewardsand merchants of wheat, wine, cheese, meat, wine, grain, and hay, as well asgeneral provision dealers and those who derived revenue from taverns, not justin Rome but also at Ravenna, Pavia, and Piacenza. The praefectus annonae

was in charge of having the grain from the annona baked into bread by the

Variae 3.19. See Bermond Montanari/Maioli, Ravenna e il porto di Classe, Maioli, “Rapporti commer-

ciali”, Augenti, “Nuove indagini”, and id., “Ravenna e Classe: archeologia”. See Cosentino, “L’approvvigionamento annonario di Ravenna”, pp. 415–19 for a detailed

study of this issue.

See especially Augenti, “Nuove indagini”, and id., “Ravenna e Classe: archeologia”. Especially Augenti, “Ravenna e Classe: archeologia”, pp. 201–6. Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 136–41.

Variae 5.16, also 5.17–20. See Mauro, I porti antichi di Ravenna, for more on the eet ofRavenna.Variae 10.28.


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© , , | . / _

Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy

Cam Grey

Introduction

Two fundamental challenges confront the study of the rural economy inOstrogothic Italy. First, and common to almost all elds of agrarian history,the textual evidence available for reconstructing patterns of landowning andstructures of labour is thinly and unevenly distributed, and ltered througha series of legal, political, religious, and cultural lenses that serve to obscure

whatever realities we may imagine to have existed on the ground. Second, wemust engage with questions about temporal resolution, not only as a result ofthe very di ferent time-frames presented by our documentary and archaeologi-cal evidence, but also in seeking to identify legally, socio-economically, cultur-ally, and materially the rather short period of time during which Ostrogothickings ruled over the Italian peninsula. Is it possible to discern anything distinc-tively Ostrogothic about land use, agricultural practices, or labour relations inthis sixty-year period?

In what follows I explore this question by taking a collection of soundingsinto the documentary, literary, archaeological, and environmental evidencefor the period. I take as my starting point the proposition that the impact ofthe Ostrogoths on rural socio-economic structures was in fact rather negligibleand lightly felt—a proposition arrived at on the strength of the thinly scat-tered evidence for distinctively Ostrogothic settlement (insofar as it is even

valid to make such an identi cation on the basis of material culture) and thecontinuation of what we might, with caution, describe as Roman legal catego-ries, structures, and practices. I place alongside this proposition the fruits ofrecent scholarship on Ostrogothic-period agricultural practices together withenvironmental reconstructions of the Italian peninsula during the 5th and 6thcenturies, which may allow us to nuance and expand upon our understandingof the ongoing dialectical interactions between the countrysides of the Italianpeninsula and the various peoples who lived in, settled upon, and exploitedthose countrysides.

Scattered distribution: e.g. Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 145; Moorhead,Theoderic, pp. 68–9.Terminology: e.g. Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, pp. 96–101. Agricultural practices:


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My intention is not to write the Ostrogoths out of the story of the ruraleconomy of Italy in the period. Rather, I will suggest that to impose a simpledichotomy between Ostrogothic and non-Ostrogothic elements or to choosebetween identifying Ostrogothic impacts or averring a complete lack of in u-ence, is to adopt a rather limited and limiting approach. Instead, we should usethe opportunity provided by this tightly constrained time period to explore theexperience of rural populations in the face of a collection of political, military,economic, and environmental pressures, which together do give this perioda particular avour. I return to this proposition in the concluding section ofthis chapter, where I suggest that the concepts of vulnerability and resilienceprovide powerful analytical tools for that project. First, however, I lay out whatis known or can be surmised about the physical, socio-economic, and legalconditions of the rural economy—or, better, economies—of Ostrogothic Italy.

Rural Italy and ‘Ruralization’ under the Ostrogoths

Scholars seem increasingly willing to suggest that the Italian peninsula thatthe Ostrogoths encountered when they arrived in 488 was in the midstof a long-term series of processes that transformed the countryside from a

world dominated by the city and the villa to one characterized by the village. Where disagreement does persist is over the coherence, timing, and causes ofthat transformation. On the one hand, studies of the documentary evidenceappear to suggest that the legal terminology for di ferent categories of exploi-tation and settlement continued largely unchanged into the 7th century atleast, and probably later. On the other, the archaeological evidence seems toattest a breakdown in the agrarian structures and dispersed patterns of settle-ment that had characterized the preceding centuries, and their replacementby agglomerated settlements and (somewhat less clearly) agricultural and

e.g. Forni, “Dall’agricoltura dei Goti”; Kokowski, “Agriculture of the Goths”. Environmental

reconstructions: e.g. Motta, “I paesaggi di Volterra”; Rottoli/Negri, “I resti vegetale carboniz-zati”; Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 484–7.

Most succinctly, Francovich and Hodges,Villa to Village. Also Wickham, “Development of Villages”; Arthur, “Vicus to village”. Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, pp. 93–6, sum-marizes. See also the refocusing of the debate provided by Chavarría Arnau, “Changes inScale”, pp. 123–9.


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pastoral practices that were subtly but fundamentally di ferent from whathad gone before.

In recent scholarship, it has been convincingly argued that this seemingcontradiction can be ascribed to di ferences in the temporal resolution andexplanatory capabilities of these two categories of evidence. As a consequence,it would be unwise to read the evidence of the charters as providing incontro-

vertible support for arguments about the decline of the villa system, aggrega-tion of peasant residences, and the emergence of demesne-style agriculturalmanagement practices. Certainly the documentary and legal evidence dis-plays continuity in the terminology employed to describe areas of land, unitsof production, and modes of labour exploitation, but against this apparentcontinuity must be placed an appreciation of fundamental changes in the waythat the law is functioning in the period, and in the bases upon which legalobligations were enforced. On the other hand, in acknowledging change wemust resist the urge to assume that there was a monumental, unitary shift fromone form of rural lifeway to another, for in reality processes of agrarian changein the period are by no means clear and coherent. Further, it seems overlysimplistic to identify the Ostrogoths—or the Lombards, or indeed any singlefactor—as the fundamental causational factor in any observable transforma-tions of settlement patterns or economic structures.

Nevertheless, there remains a strong sense in the scholarly literature thatOstrogothic Italy was a more ‘ruralized’ society than previously. In what follows,therefore, I o fer a brief and relatively unsystematic account of the archaeolog-ical evidence that has been exploited in the construction of this interpretation.However, since the longer-term fate of rural settlement on the Italian penin-sula is not the principal focus of attention here, I suggest that we should notseek to place the sketchy and incomplete evidence that we currently possessfor rural contexts during the Ostrogothic period within the framework pro-

vided by narratives ofincastallemento , for to do so is to impose a misleading

For synthetic, orienting discussions of changes in agrarian regimes, techniques, and prac-tices, Reigniez, “Histoire et techniques”; Rommelaere/Raepsaet, “Les techniques de tractionanimale”.

Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 102. Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 144–5; Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 98. Koptev,

“Colonate in theTheodosian Code”, p. 263. Compare La ferty, Law and Society, pp. 166–8. Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 427, summarizing arguments developed on the basis

of the eld survey evidence; Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, pp. 103–7, providingfurther references.


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coherence upon what appears in reality to have been a rather incoherent col-lection of micro-regional experiences.

In physical and topographical terms the peninsula of Italy is highly com-pressed, the product of an exceptionally complex set of tectonic interactions,

which continue to be manifested today in the rather active volcanology of thepeninsula. The result of these geological processes is a landscape that com-bines a collection of mountain ridges and slopes of varying height and steep-ness with a series of fertile plains and river valleys. It is the latter which tendto attract both settlement and agricultural exploitation, but our evidence sug-gests that there was episodic and ongoing human presence in upland regionsas well. On the basis of both modern climatic data and the fragments of proxyindicators for late antique conditions, we should expect that this variation inphysical geography was matched by climatic variation over the course of a year,from year to year, and from region to region. Indeed in recent reconstructionsit has been suggested that the 5th and 6th centuries witnessed a particularlyhigh level of variability, manifested primarily (though not solely) in warmersummers and wetter, colder winters.

The relative absence of proxy data sets for environmental conditions inItalian contexts together with a comparable dearth of written sources thatmention climatic phenomena in the period under discussion here make itdi cult to arrive at anything approaching a ne-grained reconstruction ofthe climate of Italy during the Ostrogothic period. However, we do observesome evidence for potential perturbations to that climate. The considerableseismic activity of the peninsula appears to have been manifested in an erup-tion of Vesuvius, on the Campanian plain west of the central Apennines,

For the debate overincastellamento see, brie y but with further references, Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 483–5; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 129–30 withnote 7. Note Wickham’s emphasis elsewhere on micro-regional experiences: Wickham,“Conclusioni”, 353.

Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 476–8; Citter, “Late Antique and Early MedievalHilltop Settlements”; Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 105.

For broad, synthetic treatments drawing on a range of proxy data sets, see Luterbacheret al., “2000 Years of Paleoclimate Evidence”; McCormick et al., “Climate Change”. Also,

for an attempt to parse out local e fects of these broader trends, Del Lungo, “Paesaggio,cultura e vocazioni”, pp. 197–9.

Note the broader methodological and analytical cautions of attempts to extract clima-tological data from the textual sources of Squatriti, “Floods of 589”, pp. 800–3. CompareMcCormick et al., “Climate Change”, pp. 171–2, who remain much more optimistic aboutthe utility of the textual evidence.


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in 472 and subsequent unrest or activity around 512. A massive but thus-far unidenti ed volcanic eruption generally dated to 536 or 537 is also attested,and comparative evidence suggests that eruptive activity of this magnitudeis likely to have impacted upon regional climate by limiting the quantity andquality of sunshine able to penetrate the dense cloud of ne volcanic dust.I return brie y to the possible implications of this phenomenon for agricultur-alists in the 6th century below. For our present purposes it su ces to observethat, given the evidence for physical heterogeneity and climatic variability, weshould not be surprised to discover a comparable diversity in human settle-ment types and patterns across rural Italy before, during, and after our period.

Historically, our capacity to fully appreciate this diversity has been ham-pered by the tendency to accord the Roman villa a privileged position, both inarchaeological survey projects and in the landscape reconstructions that arethe result of those survey projects. In recent decades, with the development ofmore exhaustive survey practices, scholars have come to recognize a multitudeof sites of varying sizes in rural contexts, and the central place of villas as thesocio-economic foci of the countryside has been called into question. In Italya decades-long tradition of archaeological survey has revealed an extraordinary

variety of late antique landscapes undergoing a heterogeneous and messy col-lection of transformations. Several recent accounts have eloquently sketchedthe longer-term trajectories of settlement and exploitation on the Italian pen-insula, so it would be redundant to attempt such a project here. We mightquibble with the tendency in some quarters to produce an over-simplistic nar-rative that renders the con ict between Theoderic and Odovacer a period of

widespread rural instability, equates the political peace of Theoderic’s reign with rural prosperity, and then sees inevitable rural decline attending theGothic-Byzantine War and the subsequent arrival of the Lombards—and Ireturn to this narrative in the concluding section of this chapter. Nevertheless,it seems reasonable on the basis of the survey evidence to suggest that the

Summary accounts of the physical evidence in Albore Livadie et al. “Eruzioni pliniane delSomma-Vesuvio”; Cioni et al., “The 512 Eruption of Vesuvius”.

Hodges, “The Year Merlin (Supposedly) Died”, providing further references. Also theessays collected together in Gunn (ed.),Years Without Summer .

Seminal is van Dommelen, “Roman peasants”. For late and post-Roman contexts see the

crucial discussion of Bowes/Gutteridge, “Rethinking the Late Roman Landscape”. AlsoLewit, “Vanishing villas”; Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 408.

Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 401–96 o fers a masterful survey and summary.See also, for complementary accounts, Cantini, “Aree rurali e centri urbani”; Negrelli,“Le strutture del popolamento rurale”; Vaccaro, “Four river basins”.

Note the cogent account and critique of Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 132–6.


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period between the second half of the 5th century and the second half of the6th century was, on the whole, characterized by stability or a slight increase inthe number of identi able rural sites.

In Apulia, for example, recent work has identi ed something of a settle-ment boom over this period, and a comparable boom appears to have beenunderway on the Campanian plain when it was momentarily interrupted bythe eruption of Vesuvius in 472. In Emilia Romagna and the area around

Venice we observe some decline in numbers of rural sites in the period, butalso signi cantly a reorganization in the distribution of those sites and corre-sponding changes to the character of settlement and exploitation in the region.Likewise in Tuscany the ceramic evidence appears to document a small butnevertheless noticeable redistribution in the number, distribution, and size ofrural sites in the period, largely in favour of agglomerations that we may term

villages—although, as elsewhere, whether this redistribution entailed changesin population numbers is di cult to determine.

In proposing these processes, scholars have become increasingly aware ofthe implications of changing proportions of imported African Red Slip wareand local wares, for these changes may be interpreted as re ecting interrup-tions or perturbations of long-distance trade and a corresponding orescenceof local production and distribution networks. Moreover, in recent scholar-ship the ongoing connections between the rural sites of Tuscany at least andthe urban centres that continued to draw upon their produce and function asnodes for both the purchase and sale of goods have been stressed. Certainly,

we should not assume that any imagined or actual expansion in the rural pop-ulation was necessarily matched by a precipitous decline in the populations or

wealth of the cities of Ostrogothic Italy. When we turn to clear indications of Ostrogothic presence in rural contexts,

the evidence is sparse and unevenly distributed. Depending on how we wish

Volpe, “Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali dell’Apulia”. Albore Livadie et al. “Eruzioni pliniane del Somma-Vesuvio”; Di Vito et al., “Human colo-

nization and human activity”; Mastrolorenzo et al., “The 472 Pollena Eruption”. Vaccaro, “Four River Basins”; Cantini, “Aree rurali e centri urbani”. For explicit discus-

sions of depopulation, La ferty, Law and Society, pp. 217–8 (arguing in favor); Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 492–6 (suspending judgement); Cheyette, “Climatic

Anomaly”, 137–8 (o fering broader geographical and methodological perspectives on theproblem).

Loseby, “Mediterranean Economy”, pp. 608–17 provides an elegant, synthetic discussionof the problem. Also Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 136–41.

Cantini, “Aree rurali e centri urbani”. Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 451; Moorhead,Theoderic, pp. 67–9.


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to interpret the terms on which the Ostrogoths were settled on the land, wemay choose to see a massive in ux in rural contexts as Ostrogothic settlersmoved onto rural estates en masse or a much smaller rural footprint with thebulk of Ostrogoths simply receiving revenues from those estates. It is not myintention here to weigh into that debate, for it is the subject of a subtle andpersuasive chapter elsewhere in the present volume. But, for our currentpurposes we may observe that if the Ostrogoths did settle on the land in largenumbers, they have left little in the way of a distinctive material culture behindthem, and that material culture is rather geographically restricted. A relativelysmall number of tombs have been excavated whose (mostly female) occu-pants have accoutrements that appear to mark them as Ostrogothic. Thesetombs cluster in central and northern Italy and along the Adriatic coast, butare to date entirely absent from southern Italy and Sicily, and from the territory

west of Rome. Similarly, inscriptional evidence containing Gothic personalnames and modern place names with Gothic elements occur almost exclu-sively north of the Po River, leaving the strong impression that Ostrogothicpresence on the Italian peninsula was primarily concentrated in the northernand eastern parts. This proposition brings into high relief questions aboutthe purpose of the Ostrogothic settlements. It does not seem likely that onlythese regions were economically impoverished, so arguments that rest uponeconomic necessity are problematic. On the other hand, attempts to ascribethis distinctive pattern to military factors appear to founder on the predomi-nance of female burials among funerary contexts that have been recognized asOstrogothic. And in any event the extensive estates ascribed to Theodahadbefore his accession as king in Tuscia, for example, raise doubts about anoverly neat equation of the distribution of Ostrogothic material culture andthe dispersal of the human population. At the current state of knowledgethese questions must remain open.

See Halsall, “The Ostrogothic Military” (Chapter 7) in this volume. Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 451, with further references. Bierbrauer, Die ostgotische Grab- und Schatzfunde remains seminal. Note also the recent

discussion of Ostrogothic cemeteries in De Vingo, “Archéologie du pouvoir”. Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 69–70, with further references. Note, however, Christie,

Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 453 with gure 96, arguing strongly in favour of settlement

predominantly in rural areas. Thus, for example, Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 455. See also Halsall and Swain in this volume. Procopius, Gothic War 1.3.2. For Theodahad’s landholdings, Vera “Proprietà terriera”,

pp. 137–8; Vitiello,Theodahad: A Platonic King, pp. 31–7. See, for a comparable argumentabout southern Italy, Noyé, “Social Relations”.


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and barley in the autumn, pulses in late winter or early spring, and a range ofother crops in the summer.

Relatively little analysis of archaeobotanical data of late antique rural con-texts on the Italian peninsula has to date been undertaken, and so we arepoorly placed to advance hypotheses about the combination of environmen-tal, technological, economic, and cultural factors that might have acted uponagricultural decision-making in the period, such as have been produced fornorthern European contexts. The modern-day province of Tuscany providesa fairly rich amount of evidence, although it is di cult to determine the extentto which these results may be used as proxies and analogues for what we mightexpect to nd elsewhere on the Italian peninsula in the period. At the PodereSan Mario farmstead in the Volterra region, for example, we observe autumn-sown wheat and barley, fava beans, and other pulses that can be assigned to

winter or early spring, as well as evidence for a range of grasses, a small butsuggestive sample of olive, and a high proportion of grapes. It has been sug-gested that the bulk of vine cultivation in Italy in this period was undertakenby smaller landowners, and the evidence from Podere San Mario adds some

weight to this hypothesis.Elsewhere in Tuscany, archaeobotanical evidence from the excavations at

the larger villa site of Filattiera-Sorano provides a complementary picture ofthe crops cultivated during the late antique period and of the vegetation of thesurrounding hinterland. The bulk of the analysed material was from carbon-ized contexts, so it is possible that there is some degree of selectivity or biasin the sample. Nevertheless, the volume of remains and the combination of

wood fragments, kernels, fruits, and seeds allow for the development of rela-tively robust hypotheses about cultivation practices and the physical environ-ment during the 5th and 6th centuries . Again, we observe a combination ofcereals and pulses. Wheat predominates and millet is also present, indicatingautumn and late spring sowings at least. Evidence for fava beans, vetch, andpeas suggest that there is likely to have been a winter or early spring sowing ofpulses, which signals perhaps the existence of a three-season sowing regime.Noteworthy is the appearance of small amounts of rye, a grain credited witha relatively high tolerance for cool, wet soil conditions and consequently

Palladius, Opus Agriculturae, 2.4–6; 4.3; 10.2. E.g. McCormick, “Climate Science”, pp. 83–7; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 155–65. Motta, “I paesaggi di Volterra”, p. 258. Also Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 485. Ruggini, Economia e Società nell’“Italia Annonaria” , p. 180; Forni, “Dall’agricoltura dei

Goti”, p. 694. Rottoli/Negri, “I resti vegetale carbonizzati”, p. 207.


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sometimes used as a marker of a change towards a colder, damper climate innorthern European contexts. At our current state of knowledge we should becareful not to place too great an interpretational weight upon this sample, butthe evidence is nonetheless suggestive. Meanwhile, high proportions of oakand in particular chestnut, suggest a certain amount of human interventionin and maintenance of woodland resources in the period—and I return to thisproposition below. A range of animals, exploited variously for their meat, their muscle, and their

milk is attested, too. Again, robust archaeozoological samples are currently fewand far between, but we are served by a small number of suggestive contexts.

At Podere San Mario, for example, the evidence hints at a small ock of sheepand/or goats as well as pigs and cattle. At the somewhat larger site of MonteBarro in the modern-day province of Lecco in northern Italy, young pig, sheep,and goat appear to have been butchered for meat, while poultry and cattle arealso present along with a small sample of horse. It is di cult to move fromthese isolated samples to a systematic appreciation of the relative presence orrole of these various animals in agrarian regimes, and we should not expecthomogeneity either geographically or socio-economically. A rough apprecia-tion of their relative value in the eyes of the law may be gleaned from a chapterin the Edictum Theoderici establishing penalties for rustling of livestock, whichappears to present a set of rough equivalences: one stallion to two mares, twocows, ten female goats, or ve pigs.

This catalogue is clearly in uenced by the estimation of the horse as a sym-bol of wealth and status, but it does re ect the relative value of cattle, whichare undeniably the most versatile of the animals characteristically found in anagricultural context. Bovines can be used to plough elds, exploited for milkand meat, while their hide, horn, and bone can be employed in making tools,household items, ornaments, and clothing. We catch hints of the potentialeconomic value of plough animals from a chapter contained in the EdictumTheoderici that determines a penalty of onesolidus per day for the exploitation

McCormick, “Climate Science”, pp. 83–5; Cheyette, “Climate Anomaly”, p. 163. Rottoli/Negri, “I resti vegetale carbonizzati”, pp. 201–3. Chestnut is also found in signi -

cant proportions at Monte Barro: Castiglioni/Cottini/Rottoli, “I resti archeobotanici”,p. 224. Note also the discussion of Squatriti in this volume.

See, for recent surveys of archaeozoological materials in Italy, Baker/Clark,“Archaeozoological Evidence”; Valenti/Salvadori, “Animal Bones”.

See the table in Baker, “Subsistence, Husbandry and Status”, pp. 252–3. Edictum Theoderici 57. See also Edictum Theoderici 56; 58.


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of a cow belonging to another without that individual’s express permission.Meanwhile, a letter of Cassiodorus to the provincials of Noricum recommendsa programme of interbreeding between their cattle and those of a group of

Alemanni who had been stationed in the region. The stated intention ofthis programme is to improve the stocks of both breeds and consequently theeconomic robustness of the communities in question. We should be cautiousabout taking this single incident as an indication of a wider phenomenon inanimal husbandry. But if there was any follow-through on the suggestion, thisis a striking exercise in economic interventionism. It is also a reminder thatcattle populations might have retained their diversity in Italy in the period, aphenomenon that appears to contrast with contexts further north in Europe,

where skeleton sizes shrank markedly over the course of the early medievalperiod. Certainly, Cassiodorus reminds us that certain regions of Italy con-tinued to enjoy a reputation for particularly robust cattle populations in theperiod, although our attempts to quantify or measure these claims are cur-rently hampered by a dearth of physical evidence—and in any event it isunlikely that the e fects of any intervention or any change would be discern-ible in the short temporal window with which we are interested here. We may imagine a complementary relationship between these animals and

grain cultivation, perhaps as part of an articulated regime of fallowing andeld rotation. It is likely also that we should take more seriously the role of for-

ests in a household or community’s exploitation strategies, as sources of food,fuel, and other resources. Certainly, it would seem that the boundary betweenager and silva in the early medieval period was rather permeable, producingan exceptionally dynamic, multidimensional cultivated landscape. We haveobserved this phenomenon already in the archaeobotanical evidence fromFilattiera-Sorano, and we catch glimpses of the degree to which agriculturalelds and forests might have been integrated in the Ostrogothic period from

a chapter in the Edictum Theoderici concerned with apportioning damagesin the event of a carelessly set re. The text is explicit in identifying the reas having been lit in a eld (ager ), but identi es the neighbouring holdingsas fruit groves or woods as well as the more expected vineyards or grain elds

Edictum Theoderici 150.

Cassiodorus,Variae 3.50. Summarized brie y but e fectively by Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, 152–3. Cassiodorus,Variae 2.39. Squatriti, Landscape and Change, pp. 14 and 80; Christie,Constantine to Charlemagne,

p. 412; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 150–1 o fers a broader European perspective onthe phenomenon.


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(arbores frugiferas, aut sylvas, vineta, vel segetem). While it is di cult to ascer-tain whether this apparent interpenetration of cultivated elds and main-tained woodlands is a novelty of the period, it is nonetheless striking that itis acknowledged so explicitly in the Edictum Theoderici , for as the legislationon agri deserti reminds us the late Roman sources tend to seek to maintaina strict dichotomy between cultivated and uncultivated land. This does notappear to have been the case in the Ostrogothic period, and as a consequence

we should resist the temptation to interpret the dissolution of this distinctionas evidence for a widespread deterioration in cultivation practices or propor-tions of cultivable land. At any rate the mention of a dispute over damage to property invites us to con-

sider who owned the elds and forests being exploited during the Ostrogothicperiod. It is certainly not di cult to nd individuals and institutions possess-ing large and extensive holdings. The widespread holdings of Theodahad inthe territory of Tuscia have already been mentioned, while the holdings of theGothic noblewoman Ranilio seem also to have been considerable. Alongsidethese large landowners, we must imagine small-scale agriculturalists whoseholdings may perhaps be visible in the seeming explosion of small sites inrural Italy over the course of the 6th century. Of course the archaeologicalevidence cannot provide de nitive evidence for ownership of these hold-ings, but we catch occasional glimpses of small landowners in our texts, as forexample, in a letter of Cassiodorus who responds to the petition of two suchindividuals who claim to have been forcibly dispossessed by a more powerfulgure of their rightful property, a small farm, oragellus, known as Fabricula.

This incident has been taken as evidence for the practice ofinvasio, or forc-ible dispossession of small landholders by the powerful, a phenomenon thatreceives a certain amount of attention in the Edictum Theoderici and whichhas as a consequence been identi ed as a particularly pressing problem underthe Ostrogoths.

However, we should not assume uncritically that large landowners com-pletely drove out smallholders in the period, or that forcible dispossession was

widespread, for the legal prominence of a phenomenon is not by any means

Edictum Theoderici 98.

Grey, “ ‘Problem’ of Agri Deserti ”, pp. 362–3; 370–3. Note the contrasting interpretations ofChristie,Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 422–4; La ferty, Law and Society, p. 98.

Ranilio: P. Ital. 13. Fuller discussion in Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 161. Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 427. Cassiodorus,Variae 8.28; cf. 4.44. La ferty, Law and Society, pp. 229–32.


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a straightforward proxy for its pervasiveness in society. Certainly, we observein the chapters of the Edictum Theoderici a keen interest in the maintenanceof property boundaries, and in clearly establishing the ownership of speci celds. Thus, for example, we witness entries forbidding individuals from rais-

ing either their own titles of ownership on property belonging to another orthe name of another on their own property. If boundary markers are tam-pered with, punishments are prescribed, which vary according to whether thedomini of the elds in question are found to be complicit or solely the cultiva-tors (coloni or servi ) who are responsible for working those elds. Forcibleseizure of another’s property—even it would seem in the case of debt—is sin-gled out for particular opprobrium, and assigned a capital penalty, as a case of violentia. Moreover, sales and donations of property are to be publicly trans-acted and acknowledged, and the resulting changes in ownership entered intothe municipal registers ( gesta municipales).

These concerns are entirely in step with the legislation of the 4th and 5thcenturies, where the motivation for prescribing the public transaction oftransfers of property and forbidding forcible expulsion of one’s neighbours

was to maintain the integrity of the tax system, which had come to rest evenmore heavily and explicitly on establishing clear and transparent connectionsbetween particular parcels of land and the individuals who could be heldresponsible for the scal burdens assessed on that land. However, the atten-dant system of recording proved to be unwieldy, and di cult to reconcile withthe rather more exible land management strategies employed by large andsmall landowners alike, for these rested upon a uid and dynamic market inland both for rent and for purchase.

The expectation that responsibility for the tax burden assessed on a par-cel of land would be publicly acknowledged added a scal dimension to thesestrategies that rendered them legally problematic, even in situations wherethe intentions of the landholders in question were not to defraud the state.Moreover, this tension between scal ideals and economic realities also servedto colour the interpretation of a range of other peasant survival strategies in

Edictum Theoderici 45. Edictum Theoderici 104–105. See also, for con icts over land occasioned by changes in the

courses of rivers, Cassiodorus,Variae 3.52; Ennodius, Life of Epiphanius 21–25, and, moregenerally, Squatriti, “Riverains et rivaux”, pp. 138–9. Edictum Theoderici 75. Edictum Theoderici 52; 53. See, for similar interest in public documentation, CassiodorusVariae 5.14.7.

Full discussion in Grey, “Concerning Rural Matters”, pp. 633–4.


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the period. Thus, for example, Augustine remarks upon peasants in early 5th-century North Africa placing boundary markers belonging to their powerfulneighbours on their own elds in order to take advantage of the other’s repu-tation, and the mid 5th-century Gallic presbyter Salvian describes small land-owners seeking to take advantage of the mutual obligations and expectationsthat attended becoming the registered tenants of more powerful landowners.

Each of these phenomena can be glimpsed in the collection of provisionspromulgated during the reign of Theoderic. Further, documentary evidencedetailing landholdings of the church around Ravenna, as well as charters fromthe later 6th century and beyond, reveal an ongoing concern to determine theproductive capacity of particular units of land, using terminology that is redo-lent of the tax system of the late Roman Empire. While we should be carefulnot to rely too heavily upon the impression of continuity that this evidenceprovides, it nevertheless seems reasonable to suggest that the evident concernin the Edictum Theoderici to determine property rights was impelled at least inpart by the need to ensure that the scal obligations assessed on particular par-cels of land continued to be acknowledged by the individuals who had beenentered into the tax rolls as scally responsible for those parcels of land. Itis for this reason that we see such close attention paid to both sale of land andgifts and bequests in wills. The evident inconcinnity revealed here between theinformation entered into the tax rolls and the economic realities on the groundo fers glimpses of a market in land that is no less uid and dynamic than inpreceding centuries.

In such circumstances the maintenance of clear boundaries between prop-erties would seem essential, both for the scal purposes of the state and forthe economic interests of the landowners in question. A letter of Cassiodorusreveals the potential for disputes, ignorance, and confusion over the precise

whereabouts of boundaries when it remarks upon the problems that mightattend impermanent or mobile boundary markers. This letter provides a con-text for the directive contained in the Edictum Theoderici against the raising ofboundary markers belonging to another on one’s own property. The potential

Augustine, Dolbeau 4.2; Salvian,On the Governance of God , 5.8.39–43, with fuller discus-sion in Grey,Constructing Communities, pp. 210–12.

E.g. Cassiodorus,Variae 3.20. See the recent detailed discussion of Costambeys, “Conditionof the Peasantry”, pp 96–101.

Cassiodorus,Variae 3.14; 5.14. For fuller discussion of the particularities of the tax systemof Ostrogothic Italy as it emerges from Cassiodorus’ correspondence, see Bjornlie, “Law,Ethnicity, and Taxes”, pp. 147–9.

Cassiodorus,Variae 3.52.


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for confusion over boundaries is here exploited by small landowners as theyemployed a strategy aimed at protecting themselves against loss or predationby taking advantage of the reputation of a powerful gure—just as in the casesnoted by Augustine. Of course this is not to say that these smallholders wereimmune to the depredations of larger landowners in the period, nor to suggestthat this strategy was viable, or even e fective. Indeed their impulse to take thisaction together with the legal measures against forcible dispossession o ferscompelling evidence that such dispossession was taking place. But we shouldnot interpret the rhetorical force of the legal pronouncement as evidence forthe prominence or extent of the practice as a socio-economic problem. Afterall, legal evidence documents only legal facts, and it is the legal fact of scalresponsibility that seems most important here.

Tenancy, The Labour Market, and Economic Strategies

The labour regimes available to large landowners in exploiting their estatesduring the Ostrogothic period appear, as in preceding centuries, to haveinvolved combinations of slaves, tenants, and wage labourers, sometimes over-seen by a chief tenant or farm manager. A chapter contained in the EdictumTheoderici concerning loans of money to various individuals on an estate iden-ti es procuratores, conductores, coloni and servi . We witness alsooriginarii ,individuals who appear to have been legally registered on a speci c plot ofland, ororigo. As we shall see, the legal relationship that these individualsenjoyed both with that land and with its owner, ordominus, seems to havebeen considered analogous to that ofliberti andservi with their owner or for-mer owners. Finally, in chapters aimed at preventing adominus from takingon another’scolonus or seeking to exercise control over another’srusticus, wecatch glimpses of an active market in casual or seasonal labour. In what fol-lows, I elaborate on these propositions, and explore rural labour relations ofthe period as they can be reconstructed from our rather recondite and patchysources. I will suggest that the labour market of the period continued to be

See, analogously, provisions against the transfer of notices of debt to a more powerful

individual so as to collect the debt more easily: Edictum Theoderici 122. For vilici , Cassiodorus,Variae 5.39, with Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 160.

Edictum Theoderici 121, which re ects and responds toCTh 2.31.1 and 2.31.2: La ferty, Lawand Society, p. 221. Edictum Theoderici 48. Edictum Theoderici 89; 150.


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accessed by both the powerful and the relatively powerless as part of their cus-tomary economic regimes.

The frequent incidence in the Edictum Theoderici of the termoriginarius todenote agriculturalists invites a connection with the tax system instituted inthe late 3rd century under Diocletian and his colleagues in the Tetrarchy. Theintricacies of this tax system need not detain us here, although it seems likelythat as in other post-Roman kingdoms it continued under the Ostrogoths, atleast in some form. Scholars generally agree that as a consequence of thisnew tax system there developed over the course of the 4th and 5th centuries alegal category of registered tenancy that placed obligations on both thecoloni and thedomini of the land upon which thecoloni were registered, theirorigo.On the strength of this, an historical narrative has developed whereby there

was progressive decline both in independent small landowners or tenants andin rural slaves in the period, and the rise of a form of dependent, obligatedtenancy, the so-called “colonate of the late Roman Empire”. It is temptingto interpret rural labour relations under the Ostrogoths with reference to thishistorical narrative.

This temptation should be resisted. In recent scholarship, the coherenceand centrality to the scal process of this phenomenon have been questioned.It has been proposed that registered tenancy may be best interpreted not as anend in itself for the late Roman state or aristocratic landowners, but rather asa product of the heavy weight placed upon theorigo as the cornerstone of thescal system of the period. The project of legal codi cation itself has come

under scrutiny and it has been observed that the decisions made by the com-pilers of theCodex Theodosianus and theCodex Justinianus to include consti-tutions or fragments of constitutions under particular headings has given animpression of unity of purpose that might only be valid in hindsight or in thecontext of the codi cation process. It has in addition been argued that our

view of the 4th- and 5th-century legislation concerning the position ofcoloni has been further coloured by the later Interpretationes that were attached

For elaborations of these principles, Grey,Constructing Communities, p. 54; Grey,“Concerning Rural Matters”, pp. 636–7.

Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity, and Taxes”, p. 148 o fers brief comments. Also Costambeys,“Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 109. For continuation of the tax system under the

Visigothic realm in Gaul see Grey, “Two Young Lovers”, pp. 296–7, with note 49. Carrié “Roman des Origines” remains seminal. Grey, “Contextualizingcolonatus”, pp. 156–

61, explores the debate since Carrié. For an application of the concept in the Ostrogothiccontext: Schipp, weströmische Kolonat , pp. 272–310.

Grey, “Contextualizingcolonatus”, pp. 170–5. Humfress, “Cracking theCodex”, p. 243.


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proactive. Moreover, the perspective they take is arguably more limited, fortheir objective is not to extend the scope of the law, but rather to interpret thelegal implications of the socio-economic phenomena they encounter. With particular reference to rural socio-economic relations, there are both

apparent continuities and evident departures from the legal constructs of thepreceding centuries. In the Edictum Theoderici, originarii appear to occupy alegal position with reference to the owners of the land upon which they wereregistered that is analogous to that of freedmen and slaves. Likeliberti andservi , they could not be heard in a legal case against theirdomini or the chil-dren of theirdomini . They were associated withservi when punishments

were mandated for various crimes against property and persons. There isa clear conceptual slippage here between a public law arrangement (origi-narius and dominus) and a private law relationship (servus and dominus).Butoriginarii were notservi , and the concern in this collection to maintaina juridical distinction between the two may be compared with that found inthe Interpretationes of the Breviarium. Elsewhere in the Edictum Theoderici great care is taken to distinguishservi from freeborn men (ingenui ), who werenot to be taken by solicitation, stolen, sold, or kept as a slave, nor were theyto be enslaved for debt or claimed as slaves. It seems therefore reasonableto conclude, with caution, that the position oforiginarii lay in some kind ofmiddle space between freedom and slavery, but was neither intermediate nortransitional between the two.

The basis upon which this legal position was grounded is di cult to estab-lish. We might expect it to have been theirorigo, the land upon which they

were registered, which would be in keeping with the legal position of regis-tered tenants during the late Roman period. However, this impression is com-plicated by a chapter of the Edictum Theoderici which grantsdomini the libertyto move bothservi and originarii between their estates. This chapter builds

See the recent exposition of Schipp, weströmische Kolonat , p. 277. Edictum Theoderici 48.

E.g. Edictum Theoderici 56; 63. For the continued separation of slavery and freedom in the Breviary: Koptev, “Colonate in

the Theodosian Code”, pp. 267–8. For juridical distinctions in Ostrogothic Italy, see Vera,

“Proprietà terriera”, pp. 143–5, and compare the detailed exposition of Schipp, weströ-mische Kolonat , 277–88 who sees somewhat more slippage. Note also the briefer com-ments of La ferty, Law and Society, pp. 171–2. Edictum Theoderici 78; 79; 96.

Thus Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 145–6. Note the contrasting but not necessarily contra-dictory position of Koptev, “Colonate in theTheodosian Code”, p. 282.


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somewhat by the Ostrogothic period. But it is no less di cult to determinethe extent to which di ferences in terminology re ect di ferent legal categories,still less the relationship between whatever legal categories might have existedand socio-economic realities. In the Edictum Theoderici the wordcolonus seems not to function explicitly and universally as an indicator of registeredtenancy. What, then, does it denote: tenancy or simply agricultural activity?Cassiodorus’ generalizing observation that “coloni sunt qui agros iugiter col-unt” would seem to indicate the latter, but we should be cautious about assum-ing congruence in the vocabulary employed in a letter and a legal text. While

we appear to be on rmer terminological ground in regardingoriginarius asan indicator of registration on anorigo, it seems unnecessarily reductive toassume that this legal category excluded the possibility of these individualsalso appearing in other guises in our texts. That is, we should be careful not toassume that legal categorizations re ected, still less determined, the economicstrategies open to small agriculturalists.

In this context, too, provisions forbiddingdomini from inducing a slave ororiginiarius of anotherdominus to leave their estate place this tension betweenlegal- scal ideals and socio-economic realities in high relief. Consequently, it

would appear that the provisions of the chapter concerning theoppositio origi-nis hinge on claims about where the tenant or labourer in question is legallyregistered. Evidently, the act of registration continued in the Ostrogothicperiod to present a certain security for small agriculturalists but also to act as apotential impediment to long-standing practices of labour exploitation, whichrested upon a exibl

a companion to ostrogothic italy

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