ABSTRACT
The influence of Bloch’s thought on this subject, even today, is such that a summary of his main positions is worth making. The great French medievalist traced the orderly stages of the diffusion of the water-powered mill after its invention in the eastern Mediterranean region in late Hellenistic times. Although the declining Roman state no longer maintained sophisticated milling technologies like those of the geared vertical-wheeled type, other water mills, better suited to the new, more rural economies of Italy remained popular. Bloch’s underestimation of the degree to which Roman societies exploited water to mill grain is thus related to his forced reliance on a literature that was prone to overlook such mundane technicalities even as it built agrarian myths of virtuous and tidy countrysides. The history of the distribution of water milling technologies in Italy in the early Middle Ages is therefore a regional history determined by the twin constraints of ecology and cultural expectations.
