Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy 273
of a cow belonging to another without that individual’s express permission.42
Meanwhile, a letter of Cassiodorus to the provincials of Noricum recommends
a programme of interbreeding between their cattle and those of a group of
Alemanni who had been stationed in the region.43 The stated intention of
this programme is to improve the stocks of both breeds and consequently the
economic robustness of the communities in question. We should be cautious
about taking this single incident as an indication of a wider phenomenon in
animal husbandry. But if there was any follow-through on the suggestion, this
is a striking exercise in economic interventionism. It is also a reminder that
cattle populations might have retained their diversity in Italy in the period, a
phenomenon that appears to contrast with contexts further north in Europe,
where skeleton sizes shrank markedly over the course of the early medieval
period.44 Certainly, Cassiodorus reminds us that certain regions of Italy con-
tinued to enjoy a reputation for particularly robust cattle populations in the
period, although our attempts to quantify or measure these claims are cur-
rently hampered by a dearth of physical evidence—and in any event it is
unlikely that the effects of any intervention or any change would be discern-
ible in the short temporal window with which we are interested here.45
We may imagine a complementary relationship between these animals and
grain cultivation, perhaps as part of an articulated regime of fallowing and
field rotation. It is likely also that we should take more seriously the role of for-
ests in a household or community’s exploitation strategies, as sources of food,
fuel, and other resources. Certainly, it would seem that the boundary between
ager and silva in the early medieval period was rather permeable, producing
an exceptionally dynamic, multidimensional cultivated landscape.46 We have
observed this phenomenon already in the archaeobotanical evidence from
Filattiera-Sorano, and we catch glimpses of the degree to which agricultural
fields and forests might have been integrated in the Ostrogothic period from
a chapter in the Edictum Theoderici concerned with apportioning damages
in the event of a carelessly set fire. The text is explicit in identifying the fire
as having been lit in a field (ager), but identifies the neighbouring holdings
as fruit groves or woods as well as the more expected vineyards or grainfields
42 Edictum Theoderici 150.
43 Cassiodorus, Variae 3.50.
44 Summarized briefly but effectively by Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, 152–3.
45 Cassiodorus, Variae 2.39.
46 Squatriti, Landscape and Change, pp. 14 and 80; Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne,
p. 412; Cheyette, “Climatic Anomaly”, pp. 150–1 offers a broader European perspective on
the phenomenon.