Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy 271
and barley in the autumn, pulses in late winter or early spring, and a range of
other crops in the summer.32
Relatively little analysis of archaeobotanical data of late antique rural con-
texts on the Italian peninsula has to date been undertaken, and so we are
poorly placed to advance hypotheses about the combination of environmen-
tal, technological, economic, and cultural factors that might have acted upon
agricultural decision-making in the period, such as have been produced for
northern European contexts.33 The modern-day province of Tuscany provides
a fairly rich amount of evidence, although it is difficult to determine the extent
to which these results may be used as proxies and analogues for what we might
expect to find elsewhere on the Italian peninsula in the period. At the Podere
San 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 but
suggestive sample of olive, and a high proportion of grapes.34 It has been sug-
gested that the bulk of vine cultivation in Italy in this period was undertaken
by smaller landowners, and the evidence from Podere San Mario adds some
weight to this hypothesis.35
Elsewhere in Tuscany, archaeobotanical evidence from the excavations at
the larger villa site of Filattiera-Sorano provides a complementary picture of
the crops cultivated during the late antique period and of the vegetation of the
surrounding hinterland. The bulk of the analysed material was from carbon-
ized contexts, so it is possible that there is some degree of selectivity or bias
in 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 AD. Again, we observe a combination of
cereals and pulses. Wheat predominates and millet is also present, indicating
autumn and late spring sowings at least. Evidence for fava beans, vetch, and
peas suggest that there is likely to have been a winter or early spring sowing of
pulses, which signals perhaps the existence of a three-season sowing regime.36
Noteworthy is the appearance of small amounts of rye, a grain credited with
a relatively high tolerance for cool, wet soil conditions and consequently
32 Palladius, Opus Agriculturae, 2.4–6; 4.3; 10.2.
33 E.g. McCormick, “Climate Science”, pp. 83–7; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 155–65.
34 Motta, “I paesaggi di Volterra”, p. 258. Also Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 485.
35 Ruggini, Economia e Società nell’“Italia Annonaria”, p. 180; Forni, “Dall’agricoltura dei
Goti”, p. 694.
36 Rottoli/Negri, “I resti vegetale carbonizzati”, p. 207.