Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

ural settlement (villages, farmsteads and villas) 327
post-Roman times: cataclysmic collapse, followed by painfully slow recovery
up to around 1,000 (when real economic and demographic growth, as
well as decent documentation, begin).
The archaeological evidence available at present, therefore, cannot prove
dramatic demographic decline, while the Carolingian evidence shows that
the rural population could well have been large in the ninth century.
However, there is still plenty of room within the archaeological record and
within the four centuries between 400 and 800 for a substantial fall in population
in post-Roman times. Indeed, on balance I believe that the population
did drop, perhaps even dramatically (i.e. to half – or even less – of its
previous, Roman levels). My reasons for thinking this have got less to do
with the evidence directly relevant to population levels (whose unreliability
I have stressed) than with my understanding of the workings of the
Roman and post-Roman economies, as set out in the next chapter. There I
argue that many Roman and late Roman farmers were involved in commercialized
and specialized production, and that this both opened up marginal
land for exploitation and settlement and allowed other land to be exploited
in a more specialized and efficient way. If so, the land in the Roman period
is likely to have produced more, and in consequence the population is likely
to have risen. Equally, if, as I believe, these conditions did not persist into
post-Roman times, then the population supported by the land is very likely
to have dropped substantially.
iii. rural settlement (villages, farmsteads and villas)
Both the archaeological and the documentary evidence are rather fuller
when it comes to another fundamental aspect of rural life: the pattern of
settlement. But even here the evidence is by no means entirely satisfactory.
The written record consists mainly of incidental references to settlements,
sometimes very obscure because we no longer know precisely what contemporaries
meant by some of the terms they used. Did ‘villa’ in sixthcentury
Frankish usage, for instance, mean an estate, a luxurious country
dwelling, a farmstead, a village or any one of the four in different contexts?
21 Meanwhile, the archaeological record, at least until recently, has
been heavily weighted towards sites that are likely to produce beautiful and
impressive results. Fortunately, in the near east this weighting has included
the magnificent mosaic pavements of village churches in modern Israel
and Jordan, and the wonderfully preserved stone village churches and
village houses of regions like the Negev, the Hauran and the north Syrian
limestone uplands. 22 But in most of the empire, archaeological interest has
21 See, for instance, Heinzelmann (1993).
22 See p. 321 above, n. 12. For the mosaics and churches of Jordan and Israel: Piccirillo (1985) and
(1993); Ovadiah (1970).
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