410 Squatriti
created a less humanized landscape and impressed a lighter footprint.76
Admittedly, rural sites in Italy varied in size and complexity (unlike north-
western Europe), thus modulating their footprint: for instance, castra along
the Adige attracted local surplus without producing much. But in rural
areas removed from cities, natural ecological processes grew more evident,
biomass removal attenuated, and although hunting, gathering, and fish-
ing practices fashioned human-influenced biological communities, still the
human ecological footprint formed by agrarian pursuits was shallower than
near cities. Even in the more prominent rural sites linked to military inter-
ests, archaeologists find in trash heaps the carbonized traces of an astounding
variety of foods, for polyculture and flexibility were prudent strategies when
recourse to outside resources was sporadic.77
Rural dwellings, often simply made of wood and wattle as at Supersano, or
mud brick as at Colle S. Giovanni di Atri (Teramo), are so slight that they are
hard to detect, and the use of pottery seems to have been optional.78 The meta-
bolic processes of such communities did change the surrounding land, as waste
was disposed of in the most immediate vicinity of habitation and enriched the
soil in archaeologically detectable ways.79 Overall, however, a simplified mate-
rial culture and reduced number of cultivators meant not just more resources
for each household but also less modification of the ecosystem, even when
a movement toward village formation and therefore more concentrated foot-
printing began in some places (Tuscany) in the late-6th century. In the late
antique countryside, a robust and biodiverse environment mirrored a smaller
and more scattered human population that supplied itself locally.
The World of Wood
Because of the enormous cultural significance that forests and trees have in
European culture, and in narratives of post-classical history, some comments
76 Wickham, Framing, p. 517, also argued for the AD 400–800 relevance of local constraints
on peasantries.
77 Castiglioni et al., “I resti”, pp. 233–4: at Monte Barro there were five kinds of grains, six
of legumes, four of nuts, olives, and several fruits. Likely other foods with soft seeds and
flesh went unrecorded. Other examples might be S. Antonino in Liguria (Murialdo et al.,
“La Liguria”, pp. 60–2) or S. Maria del Mare in Calabria (Raimondo, “Le città”, pp. 546–53).
78 Arthur, “Italian Landscapes”, p. 117.
79 “Dark earth” was once the stuff of debates on urban continuity, but “terreno carbonioso”
is now found in rural sites: Gelichi et al., “La transizione”, p. 65. Both reflect new garbage
disposal practices.