396 Squatriti
as urban Italy was. It is still impossible to measure the extent of this empti-
ness precisely (particularly for small farms) or its chronological patterns in any
detail, yet the trend looks robust.
Thus, whether one accepts as canonical the numbers of Beloch, Russell,
or McEvedy, or the newer figures of Lo Cascio, scholars largely agree that
from a high point around 150, Italy’s population curve sagged during the
first millennium.20 The downward trend across Late Antiquity locates
the most severe reduction in the 6th century, leading towards a 7th-century
demographic nadir.21 Such orthodoxies might be nuanced, for example with
regional chronologies, and divergences among demographers reveal that con-
sensus is far from complete, but compared with either the classical period or
the central Middle Ages, late antique Italy was underpopulated.22
More productive than debates about the precise extent of this depopula-
tion are some recent demographic studies based on skeletal evidence. In 2001
Giovannini published a bold analysis of the birth and death rates prevalent
in several medieval communities between the Alps and Aspromonte, whose
cemeteries archaeologists had uncovered in the preceding decades.23 Since
a half dozen of Giovannini’s case studies date to the 5th and 6th centuries,
his findings are relevant here. Giovannini eschewed absolute numbers and
avoided the urge to fit demographic findings into received chronologies and
historiographic models. In tune with contemporary historical demography,
Giovannini sought above all to establish micro-demographic patterns that
age-at-death, treated statistically for both genders, might reveal.24 Among
the surprises that looking at small population samples intensively effects
is the possibility, championed by Giovannini, that the low population levels in
Italy after the 4th century were a desired outcome, a deliberate strategy to bal-
ance mouths, arms, and natural resources so as to keep living standards high
over the long run.
20 See note 9 above; McEvedy/Jones, Atlas, pp. 106–7, where 3.5 million is the figure for
AD 600. Mordant reflections on scholars’ tendency to imagine pre-modern patterns as
graphs are in Stiner et al., “Scale”, pp. 242–6.
21 LoCascio/Malanima, “Cycles”, p. 207 calculate that pre-industrial Italy had a long-term
average population of about 10 million, and a carrying capacity of about 15 (pp. 213–14).
22 Even LoCascio/ Malanima, “Cycles”, pp. 205–7, who argue basic stability 1000 BC–AD 1900
with soft fluctuations coming in cycles of about 300 years, accept a reduction from ca. 16
to 8 million between AD 100 and 600.
23 Giovannini, Natalità.
24 For reviews of traditional and contemporary trends in historical demography, Livi-Bacci,
“Macro versus Micro”, pp. 15–17, 21–3; Del Panta/Sonnino, “Introduzione”, pp. xxiii–xxvi,
focuses on Italy.