286 Grey
While the supply and availability of grain is the most compelling proxy
for pressures on rural populations, it is by no means the only one. The so-
called Justinianic Plague, which began in the mid 6th century, is likely to have
impacted on population levels in some way, although the extent and acute-
ness of those effects in Italy (and elsewhere) remain hotly debated.103 A pair
of earthquakes is attested around Ravenna in the early 6th century, and while
the textual evidence is slim and our archaeological evidence non-existent (or
at the very least unpublished), nevertheless it seems likely that agricultural-
ists in the region experienced both short- and longer-term disruption.104 The
unknown volcanic eruption of ca. 536–37 noted above appears to have resulted
in the widespread diffusion of a dust veil, which as described in the evoca-
tive and rhetorically coloured account of Cassiodorus produced anomalous
weather conditions and interrupted sowing and growing seasons.105 Ice core
evidence suggests that this event was of a level of magnitude greater than the
massive eruption of Tambora in 1815—the largest eruption in recorded his-
tory—so it should not surprise us that its effects on human populations in the
vicinity could linger for several years.106 In addition, archaeological evidence
for the movement of sites upslope and out of river basins may imply increased
flooding events in the period, either as a result of climatic disruptions caused
by this eruption or as a consequence of the increase in climatic variability that
has been posited for the period.107
Scholars have tended to account for the experience of the rural inhabitants
of Italy in the face of these and other pressures with reference to convenient or
conventional explanatory paradigms. Thus, for example, the period is taken to
have witnessed a widespread and inevitable depression in the socio- economic
position of agriculturalists, who came to be dependent on the large and pow-
erful landowners who now exploited their labour for their own purposes.108
Alternatively, famines and food shortages caused by warfare, environmental
pressures, and economic inefficiencies led to depopulation and an increasingly
103 Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, 277–94 collects references. Christie, Constantine
to Charlemagne, pp. 500–4 outlines the scholarly debate. Note also the account of Sarris,
“Justinianic Plague”.
104 References collected and discussed by Guidoboni, Catalogue of Ancient Earthquakes,
p. 310.
105 Cassiodorus, Variae 12.25.
106 Hodges, “The Year Merlin (Supposedly) Died”, p. 75; Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 151 with
notes 71–2, discusses a famine dated to this period in Italy 535–36.
107 See, for example, Hodges et al., “Vacchereccia”, 158–65; Neboit, “Les basses terrasses allu-
viales”, 404.
108 Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, pp. 155–6.