ABSTRACT
The Italian countryside is extremely varied, from the fertile coastal plains and rolling volcanic hills of Campania, Latium and Etruria (the centre), to poorer areas of heavy intractable soils or shallow soils barely covering the bedrock (some of the peripheries). Together with a varied hydrography, and the uplands and lowlands with their climatic inconsistencies, this makes for an extremely complex agrarian pattern now, as also in Roman times. One thing, however, was the local, often empirical, response to local conditions, and quite another the, at times, myopic dictates of centralised administrations, whether state, ecclesiastical or lay. Political and economic decisions often outweighed the natural vocations of the countryside. Furthermore, over the 600 years that this study considers, Italy could hardly be considered a political unity. Romans and Ostrogoths aside, shortly after the Justinianic reconquest of the peninsula (AD 555), a good part of the land was conquered by the Lombards (AD 568-595). Nevertheless, much of the south, including Sicily, remained in Byzantine hands, as did large pockets of territory in other areas between Ravenna and Naples. Some of these lands eventually gained independent status or were to fall into the hands of invaders. The net result was a gradual fractioning of power throughout the peninsula (see, in general, Wickham, 1981).
