Chapter 1:
The Survival of the Ancient World

Laws for the protection of monuments

The Romans of the Empire were especially interested in
decorating their cities with monumental structures, and
sometimes sought to preserve or restore buildings which evoked
their own past: the impetus for both actions was broadly
political, not aesthetic. Respect for the past had, indeed, been
one of the proclaimed strengths and virtues of Periclean Athens
and, when the Romans ruled that city, their concern for old
structures is clearly evoked in the restoration of about eighty
sanctuaries, as proclaimed in a long inscription (IG 2/3.2 1035,
itself a re-used metope, probably from a flank of the
Hekatompedon: Culley 1973, xvii). Nor was this Augustan
restoration unique, for there are examples of others up to AD 220
(ibid., xiiff.).


In classical Rome there is conflicting evidence on the
preservation of old monuments: the Lapis Niger had no place in
the later Forum, for it was partly buried in various
heightenings of the pavement; when the Temple of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus burned down (thrice: in 83 BC, and 69 and 80 AD) it was
rebuilt in modern style (in one case using spolia from Athens)
rather than re-erected in its original form. Yet the First
Tetrarchy did reconstruct buildings in and around the Forum
Romanum in their original styles, some of which went back to the
early Empire; one later example is the reconstruction of
Hadrian's Temple of Venus and Rome. Such restoration, of course,
follows a venerable Roman tradition: they had always kept the
Aedes Romuli - a hut on the Palatine - in good repair and
thatched. It kept burning down because it was treated almost as
a temple. Generations of the family saw to the upkeep of the
Basilica Aemilia; and the Temple of Bellona, founded by Appius
Claudius in 296 BC, was also kept up.


But such concern for the past went hand in hand with the
destruction of its remains for building materials (cf.
Rodocanachi 1914, 14ff.), especially in centuries of declining
population, prosperity and, perhaps, skill. It may be that the
Romans protected monuments only when the culture they embodied
seemed preferable to their own: this was the case with Greek
structures (and perhaps with Byzantine sixth-century revivalism:
Cameron 1975) but, given the self-confidence of the Empire,
emphatically not the case regarding most native structures of earlier
centuries. The decrees discussed below can be read in the same
light, as protective mechanisms by a society which sought to
preserve monuments it could not equal, whether for `stylistic',
economic or political reasons (cf. Heres 1982, 34f., 74ff.). The
destruction of the temples has, for the cynical, more to do with
economics than religion - they needed the materials for re-use
(Deichmann 1976, 141).


Tiles provide hints about protected buildings: S. M. Maggiore
which, like all large structures, needed regular attention (and
therefore has tiles of several periods covering it), has nearly
one quarter of its identifiable tiles (i.e. with known stamps)
from Theodoric's reign (Steinby 1973-4, 122). Bricks with his
name are also found in the walls of Rome (Della Valle 1958,
167f.). To this may be added documentary evidence of the annual
supply of 25,000 tiles from one source alone to repair the
public buildings of Rome; but since it has been estimated that
the average output per man per day was 220 tiles, this is not
very many (Della Valle 1959, 135ff.). So precisely what weight
should be given to Theodoric's efforts it is difficult to say.
Steinby's lists of the tiles on S. M. Maggiore (which includes
material from the neronian period up to that of Eugenius IV)
could be read as a reflection of the numbers of earlier
buildings which had their coverings taken to serve on the
Christian basilica; and she believes that a Severan building was
sacked for the purpose (Steinby 1973-4, 122f.); many of the
tiles certainly came from Rome itself (ibid., 115). Furthermore,
we know that the supply of new bricks was deficient from as
early as the third century (Heres 1982, 78). But it would
require special pleading to see such destruction as a
continuation of the policy of Constantine as interpreted by
Eusebius of allowing pagan temples to become dilapidated -
although know that the gilded bronze covering of the Pantheon
was robbed in 663, and that the bronze tiles of the Temple of
Venus and Rome (the cellae of which were never used as a church)
went to cover the Vatican basilica (Cecchelli 1959, 117).


Given the natural tendency to liberate stone and brick from
disused buildings rather than go to the trouble of quarrying or
baking it, we might expect rules for the protection of monuments
to have been promulgated as soon as these began to degrade.
Emperors from the fourth century onwards struggled to protect
the remains of the city (cf. generally Rodocanachi 1914, 17ff.;
Deichmann 1975, 96ff.) and, with the promulgation of the
measures in the Theodosian Code and its successors, sought to do
so by means of laws. We can read the various kinds of
prohibition listed therein as indications that practices which
needed legal sanction were rife. Such laws therefore become a
kind of mirror of contemporary attitudes, in the sense that they
prove `the well-known mediaevalist's maxim that the more often
something is forbidden the commoner it tends to have been'
(James 1977, 163).


From a reading of the various promulgations and their dates,
it is clear that Constantine and his successors were much more
concerned to do away with the worship of idols than they were to
demolish the buildings containing them; but also that, from the
oft-repeated laws against the filching of building and
decorative material from monuments, the despoilers led and the
law was forced to follow.


When examining the evidence of these laws, we should also
remember that the emperors had to employ a certain delicacy
because, in both West and East, a good proportion of the
population continued to espouse pagan practices. These even
impinged on Christian worship for, in spite of the proclamation
that `Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image'
(Deuteronomy 27:15), it is known that a cult statue of Christ
himself was worshipped by Alexander Severus along with those of
other gods; and that Constantine donated silver statues of
Christ and the Apostles to the Lateran (Hearn 1981, 19, note 7).
The business of the destruction of paganism provoked much
bitterness and persecution between Christians and pagans, as a
reading of authors like Libanius, John Chrysostom or Rufinus
makes clear; and accounts of the vigorous destruction of `idols'
(which are plentiful) help us to understand why no more than
fragments of any cult statues (or reductions of them, or
reproductions on coins) have survived.


According to Eusebius, Constantine allowed temples to become
dilapidated in order simply to rebuke the heathen; and `as soon
as he understood that the ignorant multitudes were inspired with
a vain and childish dread of these bugbears of error, wrought in
gold and silver, he judged it right to remove these also, like
stumbling blocks in the path of men walking in the dark, and
henceforth to open a royal road, plain and unobstructed, to all'
(Oration in praise of Constantine, 8.i, cited from Huttmann
1914, 81-2). To help the process of decay, Constantine is also
supposed to have removed doors and roofs from some structures,
and sometimes razed temples to their very foundations (VC 3.i).
There is, unfortunately, no evidence of the intention behind
such deeds, and Eusebius may have exaggerated the effect as well
as misconstruing the cause (Cecchelli 1959, 112f.; Bonamente
1978, 35ff.).


Two examples from the Life of Constantine will illustrate
the ambivalence - or even duplicity? (Maksimovic 1975) - of the
Emperor's policy in Constantinople. On the one hand, `he
determined to purge the city from idolatry ... henceforth no
statues might be worshipped there in the temples of those
falsely reputed to be gods; nor any altars defiled by the
pollution of blood' (VC 3.xlviii). On the other, he had taken
from temples `the venerable statues of brass
exposed to view in all the public places of the Imperial City:
so that here a Pythian and there a Sminthian Apollo excited the
contempt of the beholder; while the Delphic tripods were
deposited in the Hippodrome and the Muses of Helicon in the
palace itself. In short, the city which bore his name was
everywhere filled with brazen statues of the most exquisite
workmanship which had been dedicated to every province and which
the deluded victims of superstition had long vainly honoured as
gods with numberless victims and burnt sacrifices' (VC 3.liv).
Here we may accept the fact but can question the construction
placed upon it: the Christian interpretation is that the emperor
flaunted before the pagans `the very objects of their worship to
be the ridicule and sport of all beholders'. A similar account
is also given by Socrates (Hist. Eccl. 1.xvi: Huttmann 1914,
108). Both are somewhat coloured by Codinus' account of how
Constantine embellished even the church of S. Sophia with pagan
statues (ibid., 108-9). But balanced interpretations are
possible: William of Malmesbury, for example, suggests a greater
concern for ornament than for ridicule: `He brought triumphal
statues of men from Rome, and placed in the Circus images of the
gods for the ridicule of the viewer, and Delphic tripods, to be
at the same time a spectacle and an ornament for the city'
(Gesta Regum Anglorum 4.355).


Imperial decrees were sometimes effective: in Athens,
Justinian's edict of 529 closing the pagan schools on the Agora
spelt that areas's final consignment into oblivion. There had
been little prosperity since the sack of 267, and it has been
deduced from the evidence of pottery lamps that the area was
abandoned until about 400, whereas other sections of the city
recovered more quickly (Frantz 1965, 189). Justinian's decree
meant that it was abandoned, as the sparsity of coinage until
the twelfth-century revival clearly shows. In addition, the
later buildings `were separated from the ruins of earlier
structures by deep deposits of silt that had gathered during the
Middle Ages' (Thompson 1972, 213ff.). Nevertheless, there is
evidence of some rebuilding in the Agora in the early fifth
century (including the Academy), although whether this reflected
a simple contraction of population from the outlying districts
is not clear (Frantz 1965, 190).


In the West, Imperial decrees seem sometimes to have been
evaded. At least, the archaeological evidence can be interpreted
both ways: for example, at the theatres of Vaison and Arles were
found deep holes, filled with broken statues not simply of gods,
but also of imperial figures (which may have had some part in
cults). The care with which this had been done has suggested the
possibility that, rather than being destroyed in response to
decrees of 399, the statues may have been concealed in the hope
of eventual re-erection (Martroye 1921; cf. Le Blant 1890; cf.
the deliberate breaking of statues, below, p.00). At Ostia, in
the time of Theodosius and in the first years of the fifth
century, the Temple of Hercules was restored, as were the Forum
baths (Calza 1953, 169): was the former still used for the cult?
Given that, as early as the fourth century, a `curator
statuarum' had been appointed whose task `was to prohibit the
removal of statues from empty houses and palaces, and to watch
over the lime kilns' (Heres 1982, 78), it is clear that lovers
of statuary (whether for idolatry or aesthetics) had plenty to
worry about.


The decrees relating to the violation of tombs responded to
obvious abuses. The general offence was to re-use the material
from untended tombs for building, as in fourth-century Ostia
(Becatti 1948, 199f.). One not mentioned is the destruction of
pagan tombs by Christians which appears to have happened in one
case on the Via Domitiana near Nîmes (see below, p.00); surely
its destruction cannot have had anything to do with wall
building, partly because it lies 1.5km from the city, and partly
because it was dismantled rather than destroyed; a large altar
which it contained was, however, ruined, perhaps in response to
the spirit of the decrees described above.


Sometimes, however, literary evidence indicates that the
letter of the law was followed almost as little as its spirit.
At Ilion, it is recounted that Julian, the future emperor, saw
statues of Achilles and Hector, amongst others, still housed in
their temples; and Bishop Pegasius, in response no doubt to the
wishes of the people, had dressed the statue of Minerva in rags
rather than riches to give the impression of disuse, and had
taken down but a few stones from her temple for the same effect
(Le Blant 1890, 392f.). Works were the more likely to survive,
the further from the centre of Imperial power they were situated.

Introduction: town and countryside

One of the obvious problems in assessing any historical
period concerns the question of continuity versus change, but
the matter is particularly important for us because we wish to
know to what extent the monuments and antiquities were protected
or indeed destroyed as the result of new ways of life. We should
not be too ready to assume that urban life possessed, in the
eyes of mediaeval men, advantages over the countryside: for a
majority, towns and their monuments must have remained outside
their sphere of interest (Picard 1973), just as they had under
the Roman Empire. Indeed, Harmand (1961, 7f.) has suggested
that, although there are signs of violent destruction on many
farm sites in Gaul from the Rhine to the Pyrenees c. 450, it is
reasonable to assume four or five centuries of continuous use of
some rural locations until the destructions wrought by the
Vikings which began in the ninth century - a continuity
difficult to prove for towns in the area.


When considering what might have happened to towns in Italy,
Gaul and Britain, there are therefore two general points to bear in mind.
The first is that different parts of the Empire changed in
differing ways, so that what holds good for Gaul is not
necessarily true for Britain or Italy - let alone the East (on
which cf. Hodges 1983, 54ff.). The second is that regard for the
monuments of Rome remained high: for although we should bear in
mind the theory of a continuing disjunction (in Italy as in
France) between the `native' tradition and the more official
`Roman' art (cf. Bonicatti 1964; Lombard-Jourdain 1970, 1122ff.)
as a way of explaining changes of style and types of art, we
should shun the old chestnut that barbarians in the West
destroyed whatever they came across - for there are sufficient
examples of the barbarians' `stupefaction before the grandeur
and magnificence of antique creations', and of their desire to
collect or imitate Roman works (Müntz 1887, 638f.). Thus Cramp
(1971, 63) can write of the eighth- (or ninth-) century Otley
crosses as providing an insight `into the continuance of
classical standards of sculpture in the remote barbarian west'.
Nevertheless, monumental building in the West appears to have
gone into a natural decline from the third century, and there is
little hard evidence for violent destruction - as opposed to
dismantling - of either temples or towns: `the burning of villas
and villages is one thing; the destruction of masonry buildings
another' (Blagg 1981, 182-3).


Italy differs from the rest of the Empire in the longevity
of her urban centres: Wickham (1981, 80) estimates that, of 100
Roman municipia in northern Italy and Tuscany, three-quarters
`survived as functioning cities' - a fact reflected in both
materials and names, as well as in the more important survival
of Roman institutions (Wickham 1981, 39ff., 68ff. for the
Lombard state) and town layouts, especially the forum area
(Ward-Perkins 1984, 179ff.). While cities like Brescia are still graced by
large quantities of Roman monuments, in others only the names
(and fragments) remain: S. Maria foris Portam at Lucca, so
called since the eleventh century, when the gate was the Roman
one; or those many other appellations of `in Foro' applied to
churches in, for example, Lucca, Piacenza, Rimini, Brescia and
Benevento (where two are so named). At the same time,
unfortunately, mediaeval names proclaim the destruction which
occurred - such as the rue Chauffour at Valence, on the site of
a lime kiln (Blance 1953, 26); and archaeology turns up
histories of sad decline, as at Luni or indeed
Ostia, where we find no new public building from the later third
century, but rather sumptuous villas, some built with spolia,
and a pagan temple used as a depot for scavenged marble and
columns (Becatti 1948, 214, 222).


In Gaul, the survival of towns was much more tenuous (cf.
Weidemann n.d., 220), as in some areas was respect for the
fruits of Roman civilisation: `the case for the discontinuity of
urban life is very strong indeed' (Hodges 1983, 84) - although
this view is disputed (Lombard-Jourdain 1970, 1125ff.). But if
accepted, this probably meant a higher rate of survival for
antique materials: thus Crozet, in his study of antique
influence in Poitou, the Angoumois and the Saintonge (1956, 11),
sketches a picture of the landscape at the beginning of the
Romanesque period which would have been familiar to any Gaul of
the late Empire: milestones surviving along the roads;
necropoleis, with their stelai and cippi; buildings dotting the
countryside, some with mosaics; and `a kind of Roman suburb with
great buildings' around Saintes and Poitiers. Although not
susceptible to proof, this vision is perfectly possible for, in
the course of this survey we shall find centres where even Roman
floor levels appear to have been preserved throughout the Middle
Ages. The best example (but only, perhaps, because so few other
locations have been dug) is from outside our area - namely
Corinth, where both floor levels and floors (some of the latter
robbed out) in the Lower Agora and the Lechaion road area were
sometimes preserved: in the former, twelfth-century coins found
on the floors help prove the point (Scranton 1957, 31f.).


It is frequently sites associated with burials which have
the longest `afterlife', with a series of adaptations to the
setting which also amount to destruction of most of the original
material. This can be seen in, for example, the site now
occupied by the church of S. Martin at Angers, the church being
`only the final chapter in the mortuary history of the site'
(Forsyth 1953, 10). A Roman monumental building with a
colonnaded portico gave way in the Merovingian period to a
`villa' (precision is impossible) which used the Roman walls
where it could; there is evidence that its builders dug down to
3.13m to verify solidity before re-building on top of them.
Squatters - who had lived in the remains of the Roman structure
before the Merovingian one was built - appeared again when the
`villa' was abandoned, but went when an oratory was built in the
seventh century, re-using its substantial remains, including
floor-levels and wall plaster; this was destroyed in the
ninth-century invasions, indicated by strata of debris. And from
the Gallo Roman period onwards, burials appeared on the site - a
roadside ruin which changed into a necropolis (Forsyth 1953,
22ff.).

Changes in mediaeval settlement patterns

The pattern of settlement in any landscape large or small is
difficult to determine for much of the Middle Ages, because
contemporary descriptions are lacking and modern surveys or
excavations can only be partial - so partial that sometimes no
agreement can be reached on the implications of the evidence.
Suffice it to say that, as elsewhere (Athens: Setton 1955,
238f.), the disintegration of the Roman landscape - however long
that took in various areas - was certainly aided by the
disrepair of drainage systems, by changes in farming patterns,
and possibly by wide climatic variations; so that, in Central
Italy at least, it may well be that `natural processes played a
significant part in burying Roman civilisation' (Ring 1972, 17,
and ch. 1, passim).


To replace hard evidence, we are usually thrown back on
gloomy accounts such as Gregory the Great's reaction to
Agilulf's assault on Rome in 593, proclaimed in a homily on
Ezechiel: `Our cities are destroyed; our buildings are gutted;
the countryside is depopulated. The land has become a veritable
wilderness. There are no longer inhabitants on the farms, and
there are almost no more city dwellers ... Where are they who
once rejoiced in its glory? Where is their pomp? Where is their
pride? Where is their incessant and immoderate pleasure?'
(McNally 1978, 18f.). However, that such tones may not be
exclusively Old Testament, but have some foundation in fact, is
suggested by a study of the general context of urban decline as
reflected in both literature and archaeology: thus S. Ambrose's
reference to Bologna and neighbouring cities as `semirutarum
urbium cadavera' (PL 16.2, ep. 8) can be matched by the
discovery of alluvial deposits blocking Roman drains and
covering Roman floors - deposits which would have been cleared
had public works and their organisation continued (cf. Fasoli
1960-3, 315f.). Indeed, Gregory's lament is echoed by Choniates'
lament for the state of Athens in the twelfth century (Setton
1944, 202f.).

The South Etruria Survey

Broad surveys of settlement patterns after the fall of the
Empire have not been written for Gaul, and scarcely even for
Italy. Exceptions are Toubert's work on Lazio (1973), and the
work of the British School at Rome on South Etruria. Some of
Toubert's conclusions for Lazio (1973, 303ff.; 662f.) are that
mediaeval communities set up walled centres, using Italic and
Roman enceintes where possible; but, perhaps as early as the
seventh century, the process known as `incastellamento' took
place - that is, the desertion of low-lying areas, often along
the great Roman roads, in favour of high and more easily
defensible sites which might go back to pre-Roman days. The work
of the British School, which is important because it allies
excavation and survey to documentary evidence, changes some of
Toubert's conclusions because it is more detailed.


A discussion of the South Etruria Survey follows, because it
forms the best available conspectus of Italian landscape
history. The results have been published in the Papers of the
British School as work progressed; and T.W. Potter and R. Hodges
have recently produced summaries of the work, with tentative
conclusions concerning periods from the earliest settlers to the
later Middle Ages (Potter 1979; Hodges 1983, 36ff.). In both
articles and books, most attention has naturally been focussed
on the Etruscan and Roman periods, partly because of the
interests of those concerned (including a tendency to undervalue
the later in favour of the earlier periods), but also because of
the greater abundance of classical material and the contentious
issues to be faced when dealing with the mediaeval centuries
(cf. Ring 1972, ch. 2; Hodges 1983, 42ff.). The main issue in
question here, as elsewhere in Europe, is what happened to
patterns of settlement after the fall of the Empire, and the
time-scale over which fundamental changes operated. But first a
brief description of earlier settlement patterns is necessary,
against which we can then set later changes.


There is general agreement that the countryside was very
heavily populated during the Roman Empire (Potter 1979, 120); at
a level, perhaps, which was not exceeded until our century. It
is clear from specialist studies that there was a build-up from
Republican to Imperial times, for example in the Ager Veientanus
(Kahane 1968, 149). Prosperity was maintained throughout the
second century, but subsequently there seems to have been a
movement toward larger units, itself followed (sometime between
the mid-third and mid-sixth centuries: ibid., 153) by evidence
of squatters on some sites, and by a tendancy to keep habitation
well clear of the main roads. What was the place of towns and
villages in this system? In terms of population, Rome must have
remained the biggest centre: during the period between Augustus
and Trajan, for example, it may well have sheltered one million
people (Luzzatto 1961, 5). Elsewhere, towns seem to have been
formed principally as administrative centres which could also
serve the surrounding countryside as markets. During the Empire,
their location was frequently designated at strategic points on
the various consular roads, the construction of which was as
important for the military control of the expanding Roman State
as it was for civilian communications. These `road stations'
were very abundant, and a good number of them have survived to
our own day. Indeed, their very importance as staging-posts and
supply-centres (Potter 1979, 116-20) helps explain the
relatively small number of settlements of town size in the
region, and the tenuous if persistent survival of these during
the Middle Ages, when the open countryside became a far from
secure and pleasant environment in which to reside.


With the various waves of invasion and the concomitant
pillaging, the road-stations were abandoned, as the very
circumstances which had promoted their growth now militated
toward their decline, for the roads provided easy passage for
enemies as well as clients and friends. `Of all the features
that distinguish the mediaeval from the classical pattern of
settlement within the Ager Veientanus', writes Ward-Perkins
(1961, 79), `none is more striking than the almost total
abandonment of the countryside immediately adjoining the main
roads. The first village out of Rome along the Cassia is
Monterosi, 40km from the city.' But with the exception of the
strips bordering the great highways, the Roman estates seem to
have survived for some considerable time, sometimes under the
control of squatters. To place a number of years on that
survival would be hazardous without campaigns of excavation, but
the collection of surface pottery provides some indications for
certain sites. Unfortunately, a gap in the dating sequences
(which will no doubt be filled as more mediaeval sites are
excavated) means that pottery cannot help us between the
extinction of the very latest Roman wares, called African Red
Slip, which appears to have reached the peninsula until about
600, and the first of the mediaeval wares, a pottery with thick
green glaze called Forum Ware (from its first identification on
that site where, indeed, it may well have been manufactured).
The dating of this pottery is fiercely fought and not yet
agreed, so much so that one Roman museum brackets it between the
sixth and the twelfth centuries. The diggers want it to be early
in date, to help in sequencing sites: at Santa Cornelia, for
example, Forum Ware appears in layers once thought to be about
900, but now dated much earlier by its excavators (Whitehouse
1980), thereby giving a sequence of occupation from Roman times,
beginning with an agricultural set-up, then moving to a farmyard
with church and baptistery, and finally to a monastery. Is this
pattern of help in understanding the changes in land use in the
mediaeval centuries? Some believe the big estates did survive
into the ninth century, others that the break-up began one or
more centuries before (Kahane 1968, 161; summary in Potter 1979,
147f.). We urgently need reliable pottery evidence so that the
process can be fixed in time.


To whichever century the first movements are ascribed, it can
be argued that the low-lying countryside was a very dangerous
place by the mid-ninth century - especially when we remember
that the borgo of Rome itself was looted by an Arab army in 846.
The response to insecurity was the settlement of easily
defensible promontories on high ground - incastellamento - many
of which were in their turn abandoned with the arrival of more
settled times in the fifteenth century, but of which a
sufficient number survive and almost prosper to be a
characteristic feature of the region. We may take as exemplary
the conclusions reached after a brief dig at Castel Porciano
(Mallett 1967, 145-6): about the year 1000, the site must have
been occupied by people who had lived in the great papal
domusculta of Capracorum. The thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were ones of expansion, after which its defences
perhaps made it of strategic importance. It was probably
abandoned completely about 1520. A feature of this site, as of
countless others, is the strengthening of defences in the
mid-fourteenth century, making them able to withstand the
recently introduced siege artillery (ibid., 123-5). The
fourteenth century was a time of great insecurity in comparison
with the prosperity of the previous one: as Petrarch's account
of conditions around Capranica in 1336 shows: `the shepherd,
with arms at his side, keeps watch among the woods, fearing not
so much wolves as robbers. The ploughman in his cuirass uses his
spear in place of the usual rustic rod to prod the reluctant ox.
The fowler protects his net with a shield. The fisherman
suspends his bait on deceptive hooks from a rigid sword point'
(Luttrell 1976, 10, 15). At other sites there is evidence of
some stone fortifications dating from the tenth century,
although the succeeding two centuries saw the erection of most
examples (Lawrence 1964, 113).


From the fifteenth century onward, the development of the
landscape is clear: not only are we almost in our own world, so
to speak, but that world did not begin to change at all until
the eighteenth century, and then somewhat more radically with
the train and the motor car. Despite these recent changes, the
landscape and distribution of population cannot be far different
today from that of around 1500, except in quantity.
Clarification of the period between the fifth and the tenth
centuries must await further research, but it does seem that a
change in population focus had set in before the sixth century,
and Hodges (1983, 40ff.) offers several possible explanations.


Lack of knowledge about this period also prevents our
building a thorough picture of the fate of antiquities which is
always so dependent upon population movements. How many
settlements were completely abandoned, and how early? Total
neglect could ensure survival, perhaps underground; but did new
defences on new sites make use of antiquities, as is the case
with late Imperial walls? Some sites (such as Capena and Lucus
Feroniae) appear to have been in decline from the end of the
fourth century (Potter 1979, 144); and Tuscania, near Viterbo,
had its Roman streets and buildings abandoned by that period -
followed by an indeterminate stretch of time until completely
new roads and houses were built on the same site, but not using
the original pattern. This in its turn appears to have declined
from about 1300 in favour of an adjacent hill, on which the town
of Tuscania still stands (Garzella 1980); indeed, its abandonment
was perhaps assured by its exclusion from the fortifications of
the town. Is Tuscania an accurate model for what happened
elsewhere?

Possible conclusions from the South Etruria Survey

It has recently been shown, however (Wickham 1979), that the
available evidence will not support any one easy explanation to
cover all types of sites. The road network may well have been of
continuing importance in the eighth and ninth centuries (ibid.,
84), and there is insufficient evidence of large-scale
depopulation and wasteland in the region (ibid., 80). From the
above sketch, then, what conclusions can we draw? First, that
there is no evidence of a continuous occupation of the great
Roman estates in the eighth and ninth centuries. Secondly, that
the movement from open land toward defensible villages may well
have begun in certain places earlier than the tenth century.
Thus the site at Mazzano Romano (Potter 1972, 142; Potter 1979,
146ff., 164ff.) has Forum Ware in its foundation trenches,
presumably meaning that the site was occupied at least as early
as the mid-ninth century. Thirdly, that the defensible villages
were occupied for reasons of defence, and abandoned as and when
conditions in the lower-lying areas became safe again. As far as
the survival of antiquities is concerned, there seems little
reason to believe that, given the low levels of population
between the fifth and tenth centuries, that period saw any
massive destruction. The Roman villas were certainly either
abandoned and gradually fell down, or were transformed into
domuscultae. But it was a growing population, with a voracious
appetite for building materials and ploughed land, which
destroyed settlement sites.


Whether the bare bones of the history of settlement patterns
in Central Italy are applicable (even in part) to other regions
of the Empire must await more excavation.