Campagna di Roma olim Latium: A historical landscape archaeology of Tyrrhenian southern Lazio from late Antiquity to incastellamento

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Campagna di Roma olim Latium

Satijn, Olaf

DOI:

10.33612/diss.125947886

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Publication date: 2020

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Citation for published version (APA):

Satijn, O. (2020). Campagna di Roma olim Latium: A historical landscape archaeology of Tyrrhenian southern Lazio from late Antiquity to incastellamento. University of Groningen.

https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.125947886

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Campagna di Roma olim Latium

A historical landscape archaeology of Tyrrhenian

southern Lazio from late Antiquity

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English text editing: Chris Wanders

Cover design: Roelf Barkhuis

Front cover: view towards Sermoneta and the Pontine plain - Alban Hills from the Lepine Mountains.

Photo: Tymon de Haas

Back cover: view over the Pontine plain towards Circeii from Sermoneta. Photo: Tymon de Haas

Book design: Hannie Steegstra

ISBN printed book: 978-94-034-2629-7 ISBN digital book: 978-94-034-2628-0

All images are the author’s unless otherwise indicated. No part of this publication or the information contained herein may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.

Although all care is taken to ensure the integrity and quality of this publication and the information herein, no respon-sibility is assumed by the author for any damage to property or persons as a result of operation or use of this publication and/or the information contained herein.

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Proefschrift

ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

op gezag van de

rector magnificus prof. dr. C. Wijmenga

en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties.

De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op

donderdag 4 juni 2020 om 16.15 uur

door

Olaf Petrus Nicolaas Satijn

geboren op 29 februari 1972

te Maastricht

Campagna di Roma olim Latium

A historical landscape archaeology of Tyrrhenian

southern Lazio from late Antiquity

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Copromotor

Dr. C. Corsi

Beoordelingscommissie

Prof. dr. C. Citter

Prof. dr. E.M. Moormann

Prof. dr. C. Smith

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List of tables

Table 3.1. A list of all sites on which opus vittatum has been attested. ... 76

Table 7.1. Foundation dates of bishoprics within the study area. ...319

Table 7.2. The earliest records on monastic activity in southern Lazio. ...319

Table 7.3. Church ownership, authority and interests in the 4th century. ...319

Table 7.4. 4th century functioning churches or chapels. ...320

Table 7.5. (early) Christian burials / cemeteries. ...320

Table 7.5 continued. (early) Christian burials / cemeteries.._...321

Table 7.6. Evidence for defensive activity 5-7th century. ...327

Table 7.7. Large settlements-villages-towns in the research area between the 3rd and 7th century AD. ...337

Table 7.8. Secular (non-ecclesiastical) and civic activities, 8-10th century. ...433

Table 7.9. 10th century feudal arrangements and examples of incastellamento processes in the research area. ...451

Table 7.10. The number of (possible) incastellised settlements per century. ...536

Table 7.11. Possible ‘viable’ castra. ...540

Table 7.12. (Semi) autonomous communes in the research area. ...553

Table 7.13. 10-14th century feudal arrangements in the research area. ...555

Table 7.13 continued. 10-14th century feudal arrangements in the research area. ...556

Table 8.1. Sites with further study potential ...619

Other tables are found in the Appendices:

Appendix 4.1 holds a list of all found historical toponyms. Appendix 6.1 holds a basic catalogue of sites.

Appendix 6.2 contains all relevant queries from the main site database.

Appendix 6.3 holds a list of infrastructure and hydrography mentioned in the text.

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First of all, my deepest appreciation goes out to Peter Attema, who inspired me to deepen my interest in land-scape archaeology during the Lanuvio survey of 1995 and SIBA 2000. Eventually these two experiences helped con-vincing me to leave the field of Greek archaeology and to full-heartedly start pursuing a PhD in Italian archaeology. I want to sincerely thank him for his positivity, patience and, yes indeed, true grit over the better part of the last 20 years. I want to thank my colleagues and friends at the Groningen Institute of Archaeology as well, especially Bert, Elisabeth, Erwin, Frits, Gijs, Jasper, Luca, Martijn, Rik, Sander and Tymon. I benefitted a lot from all the dis-cussions and good times we shared, be it in Groningen, in Italy or anywhere else.

Furthermore, I am ever so grateful to my co-promotor Cristina Corsi, whose invaluable suggestions enabled me to update my thesis, thus bringing it further up to standards.

Special thanks are send to the members of my PhD com-mittee: Carlo Citter, Eric Moormann, Daan Raemaekers and Christopher Smith. I want to thank them for their enthusiasm to be committee member, investing their time and efforts to review my PhD thesis, and for their invalu-able suggestions that helped improve my thesis.

I am also very grateful to the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR), for giving me the opportunity to stay at the Institute. Throughout my three scholarships at the KNIR I was allowed the opportunity to explore an array of archives and institutes in order to unearth essential contemporary and retrospective data. And it was there that I found the peace and quietness to come up with the appropriate structure for the analysis of this thesis’ long research period and its diverse database. Yet, more than anything, my time in Rome allowed me to fully appreciate this magnificent City, which to me was at its most striking whenever I was roaming around.

I was so privileged to have been able to discuss various aspects of my study with a horde of scholars, who were so kind to share their insider views and as such helped me in finding my way into post-Roman Italy: Paul Arthur,

Gert-Jan Burgers, Margherita Cancellieri, Neil Christie, Herman Geertman, Marijke Gnade, Cristina Leotta, Marco Maiuro and John Moreland. Thank you all! The conducted ceramic study was made possible by the kind permission of Arnaldo Liboni to study the collection of post-Roman pottery of the Antiquarium Comunale of Nettuno. I am especially grateful to Cristina Leotta, with whom I executed this pottery study. I would like to thank Marijke Gnade and Reno Raaijmakers for the opportun-ity to conduct a short study of the medieval pottery found at the villa of Satricum. And I would like to thank Sonia Pomicino for her collaboration on the toponymic study. Special thanks go out to Gijs Tol and Tymon de Haas for sharing their pottery and GIS-data. Tymon, I am very grateful you agreed to become my paranimf, thank you for your support in the final phases of this project. For the lay-out of this book I am very grateful to Hannie Steegstra, who over the past months helped me to trans-form the mush into a butterfly.

The completion of my study would not have been possible without the aid and moral support of my parents, Peter and Anja, my sister Iris and my brother-in-law Donné, who all stood by me throughout all of these long years. Thank you! Indispensable too was the influence of Chris, who by means of his wit and his inherent grasp of lin-guistics helped me circumvent some of the ever present cliffs of Dunglish. Thank you! Thanks Jasper, for all the hard fought heroic tennis matches we played in empty sta-diums. Thank you Hans of the KFF Ljouw and his muses, I am grateful for our mutual understanding of sense and nonsense. And thank you Isja and Sidhi and their AML, thank you for the music, our travelling and your warmth. There it is!

And most of all, thank you, my dearest Shirley, Marente and Lucas. Thank you for your unwavering support, your patience, your inspiration and your sweet ways of putting things in perspective. I am fully aware that the creation of this book has not always been easy for you. It is to you that I dedicate this book. Now, finally, the time has come to do something different, so let’s start planning together!

Acknowledgements

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Reading guide

Structure of the book

I have chosen the way of dividing the book into three parts. Part I includes six chapters addressing the back-ground, context and methodology of the study, part II treats the data analysis, and part III the conclusions. The datasets resulting from this study can be consulted on the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure). One of these datasets is the comprehensive cata-logue of all the sites treated in the study, sites that consti-tute the backbone of the executed spatial analysis.

Short introductions

This thesis looks at the period under scrutiny from a var-iety of perspectives. It touches upon a broad range of sub-jects and involves a wide range of disciplines. Not every angle on the subject matter will be self-evident for every reader. That is why I have incorporate short introductions

on a number of subjects. These introductions summar-ise the status quo of research on the subject and do not involve any new conceptualisation.

Repetition

This research has to deal with an inherently imbalanced dataset, with obvious biases in the available sources; some periods, areas and sites are better documented than others. In order to cope with the imbalanced evidence, I made a number of methodological choices. Among these are the cutting up of the research area into 10 key areas and subdividing the research period into three dif-ferent periods. In the analysis of the difdif-ferent key areas and study periods repetition is inevitable, as overlapping angles and themes will have to be (shortly) re-introduced if the analysis requires it.

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A glossary of periodisation

early Christian

A much debated term. When used here, the term refers to processes/developments and material culture (archaeo-logy, art) dating until late 6th century.

early, middle and late imperial

When used here, these terms are used according to the periodisation set up by the RPC/PRP:

- early imperial: 27 BC to 100 AD - middle imperial: 100-300 AD - late imperial: 300-late 5th century AD

late Roman

A term scholars use to described the final phases of the Roman Empire. When used here, the term refers to the period between the 3/4th century and the late 5th century.

“early middle ages” vs. “late Antiquity”

In traditional scholarship, the term “late Antiquity” was generally and still is often used to describe aspects of con-tinuity with the Roman Empire, while “early middle ages” was and is used to put emphasis on developments charac-teristic of the earlier medieval period. As such the terms overlap. “Late Antiquity” was used for the era up to 6/7th century, while “early middle ages” used to denote the period from roughly 5/6th century onwards up until the 10th century. In many instances neither the denotations of the terms nor their chronology completely did justice to the attested developments.

Research in past 25 years, the current study included, shows that if one wants to use these terms, the following division works fine for the current state of evidence: Late Antiquity = 4th-7th century, early middle ages = 8th-10th century. The argumentation for this divison was recently summarised by Andrea Augenti (2016), and has since almost universally been accepted by Italian scholarship1_.

In view of the strong case made for it by other scholars and by the data themselves, I have chosen to adopt this new periodisation of the first millennium AD. Therefore, when the phrases “late Antiquity” and “early middle ages” are used here, this “new” periodisation should be read.

high middle ages

In most studies the term denotes the period from roughly 1000 AD onwards until around 1250/1300. When used here, this period should be read as well, complying to “i secoli centrali del medioevo” in the periodisation summa-rised by Augenti.

Dark Ages

A term that the majority of modern scholars avoid due to its negative connotations, finding it inaccurate and mis-leading. When used here, the term refers to (earlier used characterisations of) the period between 5/6th century and the 9/10th century.

Note:

1. The argumentation can be summarised as follows, Augenti 2016, 5 (earlier Delogu 1999): late Antiquity describes a world that began in the 4th century, with the affirmation of Christianity, and is different from the previous one, but despite the obvious changes taking place, preserves some of its essential features until the end of the 7th century, most importantly the continued trade across the Mediterranean. It is with the early 8th century that the real transformations became visible, as for example is clearly demonstrated in the contexts of Rome: In the early 8th, Rome had ceased to receive imports from across the Mediterranean. The origin of the imported pottery found is restricted to the city’s hinterland and, to a lesser extent, southern Italy, see in the current thesis 2.I.4 and Saguì 1998, 305, Panella & Saguì 2001, 804–15 and Wickham 2006, 735. In the course of the 8th and 9th century, a significant economic and demographic recovery could be seen, not just in Rome. From that period onwards the political and economic landscape changed significantly. See also 2.II.1 Introduction.

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Part I

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1.I Backgrounds to the study

Of all the research themes in Italian archaeology, the tran-sition from the late Roman world to that of the middle ages, embodied in the development of incastellamento hilltop settlements, is one of the most discussed but at the same time one of the least archaeologically documented. In earlier research, aspects of this transition were dealt with, but most of these studies have been hindered by a limited use of the available data of other disciplines. As shall be explained below, this PhD thesis will combine archaeology with other disciplines to study this period in the landscapes of Tyrrhenian southern Lazio, central Italy. It shall be made clear how the current research fits in the recent paradigms for the study of late Roman to late medi-eval landscapes in Italy and how it is complementary to earlier conducted research in the research area.

1.I.1 The changing fortunes of research on medieval landscapes in central Italy

Until fairly recently, regional archaeological projects mostly failed to identify the post-antique rural land-scape in Italy. The main archaeological explanation for this failure lies in an intrinsic lack of empirical data for the period. Late Antique / early medieval material culture was mostly simply undetectable, due to a combination of negative factors. Amongst these are the poor understand-ing of the ceramics of the post-antique period, the break-down of imports and the less durable built environment that impedes recognition of any vestiges there might have been in the rural landscape. These factors have been sum-marised by Arthur and Patterson specifically on ceramics1

and by Barker in more general terms2_.

The most crucial impediment for analysis of the

transi-tion3_{, however, appears to have been methodological.}

In fact, it has been a lack of interdisciplinary enthusi-asm that hindered investigating the long period of tran-sition. In much earlier research aspects of the transition were dealt with, but those studies were mostly either archaeological or historical in nature. This dichotomy has

been acknowledged by Moreland4_{and Francovich and}

Hodges5_{. Moreland cleverly showed how these}

contrast-ing viewpoints of conventional wisdom are determined by the kind of evidence one is focussed on, and by the

methodological traditions of the different disciplines6_:

Traditionally, archaeological research was focussed on the well-known datasets and stratigraphies of the Roman period. Archaeological study often ended with the pro-posed breakdown of Roman structures, while avoiding the period afterwards. The incastellamento phase was left to the historians who were perceived to be the only scholars to have a good hold on this phase, through the bulk of written sources which becomes available from the 9/10th century onwards. Constructing their ideas along the lines of their disciplines, analysis of the late Roman to medieval landscape yielded contrasting views: Some his-torians, like Pierre Toubert (1973, Les structures du Latium

médiévale) tended to see a continuation of classical

settle-ment patterns until the 10th and 11th century7_{. Toubert’s}

influential vision stood in sharp contrast with the trad-itional view of some archaeologists, who upheld the idea that the classical settlement pattern already had met its end during the downfall of the Roman Empire (for exam-ple Potter 1979, Hodges & Whitehouse 1983). The archaeo-logical field survey projects in central Italy, that had been conducted since the 1940s, after all had shown a sharp decline in the number of sites from the second century onwards8_{. This, as was understood, was the result of an}

early severe urban and rural demographic breakdown. These results moreover self-enhanced the idée fixe of the remaining people taking refuge in hilltop settlements, which was caused, as was fairly generally believed, by the insecurity of the ‘Dark Ages’.

Nowadays it is considered imperative to let go of the his-torical and archaeological divide to effectively study the medieval landscape. Indeed, it is a necessity to exploit all available resources to fill the common information gap found in the 6/7th and 8/9th century, generally referred to as the Dark Ages. Two decades ago, the publications of the Biferno Valley9_{and Liri Valley}10_{projects were among the}

first projects to reconstruct the medieval archaeological landscape using all sources available.

Next to the new interdisciplinary zeal, a second fac-tor is rapidly changing our understanding of the post-Roman Central Italian landscape: progressing coarse ware typologies show that material culture indeed can shed light on the Dark Ages. Since the end of the 1980s,

Campagna di Roma olim Latium: A historical landscape archaeology of Tyrrhenian southern Lazio from late Antiquity to incastellamento

Campagna di Roma olim Latium

Satijn, Olaf

Campagna di Roma olim Latium

A historical landscape archaeology of Tyrrhenian

southern Lazio from late Antiquity

Proefschrift

ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

op gezag van de

rector magnificus prof. dr. C. Wijmenga

en volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties.

De openbare verdediging zal plaatsvinden op

donderdag 4 juni 2020 om 16.15 uur

door

Olaf Petrus Nicolaas Satijn

geboren op 29 februari 1972

te Maastricht

Campagna di Roma olim Latium

A historical landscape archaeology of Tyrrhenian

southern Lazio from late Antiquity

Copromotor

Dr. C. Corsi

Beoordelingscommissie

Prof. dr. C. Citter

Prof. dr. E.M. Moormann

Prof. dr. C. Smith

Table of Contents

List of tables

Acknowledgements

Reading guide

A glossary of periodisation

Part I

Chapter 1 Backgrounds, sources and methodology