414 Squatriti
as places to graze cattle or pigs, to trap game, to gather fruits, as reservoirs of
fodder, or most especially as suppliers of fuel, late antique woodlands were
meticulously exploited. Although harvesting for timber was rarer, both the
Liber Pontificalis and Gregory I’s letters show that the roofs of basilicas needed
frequent repairs in the 5th and 6th centuries and therefore required long wood
beams.98 Overall, the heavy human traffic among the trees significantly modi-
fied the forests, determining which kinds of trees flourished and which instead
floundered. The strikingly unnatural composition of tree cover implied by the
pollen cores and carbonized remains demonstrates that the woods we know
about were anything but a fearsome and unregulated natural forest. They were
instead a managed resource, the result of precise selection processes.
The most impressive case of woodland management in post-classical Italy,
and the clearest proof that the ‘return of nature’ in that period was actually
unnatural, is the chestnut.99 From the 8th century Castanea sativa was a regu-
lar feature in charters and by the 700s chestnut prevailed in Italian landscapes
from the foothills of the Alps to Etna. Palynological studies have conclusively
shown that the species existed in Roman Italy, although its diffusion was lim-
ited. This is ecologically understandable, for Castanea sativa is a tree that
requires very specific conditions (warmth, humidity, acidic soil) to do well.
Without some human assistance, the range of the tree is restricted to a few
niches in the northern Apennines. It also competes ineffectively with other
species, like beech or oak, in primis because its seeds do not scatter easily and
need much sunlight to germinate and survive as seedlings.
The pollen of Castanea sativa increased its presence at numerous sites along
the peninsula in Late Antiquity; so, too, the frequency of use (or archaeologi-
cal detection) of chestnut wood. In 6th-century Naples, for example, large
beams of chestnut were used to build a raised walkway near the tomb of
St Januarius. In the 600s, at Trezzo on the Adda River in Lombardy, three
affluent gentlemen were buried enclosed in solid, well-joined coffins made
of chestnut planks, the size of which reveals old trees growing at least from
the early 6th century.100 The nuts themselves, rare in classical sites, are rela-
tively numerous in excavated late antique sites like Brescia or Monte Barro. In
sum, the palaeo-botanical evidence suggests that chestnut greatly expanded
its presence in Late Antiquity both in northern and southern Italy. Yet the tree
would not have succeeded if left to its own devices, and in fact the colonization
98 Liverani “Camerae e coperture,” pp. 13–28; Camerlenghi, “Interpreting Medieval
Architecture,” pp. 259–76.
99 On chestnuts see Squatriti, Landscape.
100 On the Trezzo burial see Castelletti et al., “Legni e tessuti”, pp. 264–5.