404 Squatriti
One much-discussed development in the late antique landscape—erosion
of topsoil—is obviously related to this fluctuating marginality.54 In some river
estuaries on the Italian coast late antique strata of deposits seem anomalous,
and Vita-Finzi famously postulated that this “Younger Fill” was part of a gen-
eral (climatically induced) trend. Other scholars indict the collapse of Roman
authority and infrastructure, but agree with Vita-Finzi that late Roman allu-
vium is a sign of the times, of specific late antique conditions. As it turns out,
thick alluvial deposits in river valleys and deltas have built up (and eroded)
throughout Italy’s history, and there are several rivers and deltas that seem
to have been unaffected by any late antique paroxysm.55 It seems that the
re-marginalization of some landscapes caused by the abandonment of
erosion-controlling techniques (a labour-saving strategy in the novel demo-
graphic conditions) was only partial. Some terraced hillsides continued to
make a certain sense, while others needed more work than they were worth.
Similar heterogeneity prevailed in low-lying zones in river valleys, where
the daily grind of fixing and dredging drainage canals might seem too bur-
densome in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, when nearby alterna-
tive sites offered usable land that stayed dry of its own accord. The view from
the top was different of course. Sidonius in the 5th century and Cassiodorus
in the 6th wondered at the tremendous swamps of the Po valley, and their
descriptions have become emblematic of a land in disarray.56 The Amal regime
in fact displayed its Roman credentials by intervening in swamp control, a tradi-
tional arena of imperial activity.57 By presenting the mixture of land and water
at Ravenna and near Spoleto as dire, and the government’s solicitude as active,
Cassiodorus gave Theoderic an aura useful in the political negotiations of the
time. Theoderic’s claims to tame nature or re-create (economically profitable)
order stimulated late Roman elite compliance with his state. Marshes with
deep symbolic pedigree, like the Pontine marshes south of Rome, became the
targets of joint ventures between central and local potentates. The hydraulic
success of these drainage schemes was a fraction of their ideological returns.58
54 Hoffmann, Environmental History, pp. 35–6, 55, 172.
55 Lucid summary of the debate in Horden/Purcell, Corrupting Sea, pp. 314–28.
56 See Squatriti, “Marshes”, pp. 1–16.
57 Ruggini, “Graduatorie”, pp. 77–83 explains the intellectual history behind Mediterranean
rulers’ drainage projects.
58 Giardina, “Pubblico e privato”, pp. 35–50, nicely discusses the evidence (mostly epigraphic
and literary: he argues Cassiodorus composed the famous inscription recording the drain-
age project) on Theoderic’s Pontine scheme, but exaggerates the project’s early medieval
afterlife. See Variae 2.21, 2.32–3, with Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 10.1, 6850 and
Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 8956.