400 Squatriti
Of course, some Italian landscape change seems congruent with the ‘aver-
age’ image of 5th- and 6th-century coldness and dampness. Grains like rye,
whose popularity grew in the period, can tolerate colder, wetter (but also
drier) conditions than wheat. The swamps that Theoderic’s administration
claimed to dry are not attested in earlier times. Some alluviation seems to date
from the late Roman period (on which, see below). Still, such signs of ‘bar-
barization’ or ‘worsening’ also exist for earlier periods considered florid.36 At
the mouth of the Arno, for instance, stratigraphic excavation shows the river
was just as turbulent, liable to flood, and erosive in the 2nd century as it was
in the 5th.37 North of the Arno, unlucky Luni flooded in the latter 300s, after
an earthquake, but was rebuilt and revived during the 6th century, despite
a clogged port.38 Further south, two Campanian streams were most active
in the 3rd century, not the 6th.39 At Reggio on the Ionian coast, 5th-century
reconstruction of the artificial outlet of the S. Lucia torrent after a flood sug-
gests builders expected less volume and flow than had the original Hadrianic
channel-makers.40 And on the Adriatic coast, centuries before ‘Venice proper’,
several small settlements arose on islets in the lagoon precisely at the time
(400–600) when the sea invaded and streams flooded the area: the syner-
gies between late antique climate, flooding and population were not always
negative.41 Especially in the Po delta, one community’s flood was anoth-
er’s opportunity, and this story of resilience successively raised up different
places throughout the first millennium, before Venice emerged.42
The climatic conditions of the 5th and 6th centuries were at most one of
several catalysts of change in the period. Together with demographic trends
and other ecological forces they affected, but did not cause, socio-economic
change, producing an array of outcomes dissimilar in the Lombard or Apulian
plains, the Po estuary, the Tuscan hills, or the east coast of Sicily.
Barbarians and Hippies: The Gothic Ecological Footprint
Despite the venerable tradition of environmental determinism in post-classical
studies, demographic determinisms do not suit Ostrogothic Italy. Still, fewer
36 See Luterbacher et al., “A Review”, pp. 108–11.
37 Mariotti Lippi et al., “Pollen Analysis”, pp. 462–3.
38 Christie, The Fall, p. 198; Murialdo et al., “La Liguria”, p. 29.
39 Russo Ermoli et al., “Human-Environment Interactions”, pp. 224, 228–30.
40 Raimondo, “Le città”, p. 522.
41 Gelichi, “Venezia”, pp. 164–8; Hoffmann, Environmental History, pp. 75–8.
42 Squatriti, “I pericoli”, pp. 616–17.