Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy 267
in AD 472 and subsequent unrest or activity around 512.11 A massive but thus-
far unidentified volcanic eruption generally dated to 536 or 537 is also attested,
and comparative evidence suggests that eruptive activity of this magnitude
is likely to have impacted upon regional climate by limiting the quantity and
quality of sunshine able to penetrate the dense cloud of fine volcanic dust.12
I return briefly to the possible implications of this phenomenon for agricultur-
alists in the 6th century below. For our present purposes it suffices to observe
that, given the evidence for physical heterogeneity and climatic variability, we
should not be surprised to discover a comparable diversity in human settle-
ment types and patterns across rural Italy before, during, and after our period.
Historically, our capacity to fully appreciate this diversity has been ham-
pered by the tendency to accord the Roman villa a privileged position, both in
archaeological survey projects and in the landscape reconstructions that are
the result of those survey projects. In recent decades, with the development of
more exhaustive survey practices, scholars have come to recognize a multitude
of sites of varying sizes in rural contexts, and the central place of villas as the
socio-economic foci of the countryside has been called into question.13 In Italy
a decades-long tradition of archaeological survey has revealed an extraordinary
variety of late antique landscapes undergoing a heterogeneous and messy col-
lection of transformations. Several recent accounts have eloquently sketched
the longer-term trajectories of settlement and exploitation on the Italian pen-
insula, so it would be redundant to attempt such a project here.14 We might
quibble with the tendency in some quarters to produce an over-simplistic nar-
rative that renders the conflict between Theoderic and Odovacer a period of
widespread rural instability, equates the political peace of Theoderic’s reign
with rural prosperity, and then sees inevitable rural decline attending the
Gothic-Byzantine War and the subsequent arrival of the Lombards—and I
return to this narrative in the concluding section of this chapter.15 Nevertheless,
it seems reasonable on the basis of the survey evidence to suggest that the
11 Summary accounts of the physical evidence in Albore Livadie et al. “Eruzioni pliniane del
Somma-Vesuvio”; Cioni et al., “The 512 AD Eruption of Vesuvius”.
12 Hodges, “The Year Merlin (Supposedly) Died”, providing further references. Also the
essays collected together in Gunn (ed.), Years Without Summer.
13 Seminal is van Dommelen, “Roman peasants”. For late and post-Roman contexts see the
crucial discussion of Bowes/Gutteridge, “Rethinking the Late Roman Landscape”. Also
Lewit, “Vanishing villas”; Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 408.
14 Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 401–96 offers a masterful survey and summary.
See also, for complementary accounts, Cantini, “Aree rurali e centri urbani”; Negrelli,
“Le strutture del popolamento rurale”; Vaccaro, “Four river basins”.
15 Note the cogent account and critique of Marazzi, “Destinies”, pp. 132–6.