266 Grey
coherence upon what appears in reality to have been a rather incoherent col-
lection of micro-regional experiences.7
In physical and topographical terms the peninsula of Italy is highly com-
pressed, the product of an exceptionally complex set of tectonic interactions,
which continue to be manifested today in the rather active volcanology of the
peninsula. The result of these geological processes is a landscape that com-
bines a collection of mountain ridges and slopes of varying height and steep-
ness with a series of fertile plains and river valleys. It is the latter which tend
to attract both settlement and agricultural exploitation, but our evidence sug-
gests that there was episodic and ongoing human presence in upland regions
as well.8 On the basis of both modern climatic data and the fragments of proxy
indicators for late antique conditions, we should expect that this variation in
physical geography was matched by climatic variation over the course of a year,
from year to year, and from region to region. Indeed in recent reconstructions
it has been suggested that the 5th and 6th centuries witnessed a particularly
high level of variability, manifested primarily (though not solely) in warmer
summers and wetter, colder winters.9
The relative absence of proxy data sets for environmental conditions in
Italian contexts together with a comparable dearth of written sources that
mention climatic phenomena in the period under discussion here make it
difficult to arrive at anything approaching a fine-grained reconstruction of
the climate of Italy during the Ostrogothic period.10 However, we do observe
some evidence for potential perturbations to that climate. The considerable
seismic activity of the peninsula appears to have been manifested in an erup-
tion of Vesuvius, on the Campanian plain west of the central Apennines,
7 For the debate over incastellamento see, briefly but with further references, Wickham,
Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 483–5; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 129–30 with
note 7. Note Wickham’s emphasis elsewhere on micro-regional experiences: Wickham,
“Conclusioni”, 353.
8 Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 476–8; Citter, “Late Antique and Early Medieval
Hilltop Settlements”; Costambeys, “Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 105.
9 For broad, synthetic treatments drawing on a range of proxy data sets, see Luterbacher
et al., “2000 Years of Paleoclimate Evidence”; McCormick et al., “Climate Change”. Also,
for an attempt to parse out local effects of these broader trends, Del Lungo, “Paesaggio,
cultura e vocazioni”, pp. 197–9.
10 Note the broader methodological and analytical cautions of attempts to extract clima-
tological data from the textual sources of Squatriti, “Floods of 589”, pp. 800–3. Compare
McCormick et al., “Climate Change”, pp. 171–2, who remain much more optimistic about
the utility of the textual evidence.