Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

egional and local variation 363
Roman boom followed by the even more dramatic post-Roman crash seen,
for example, in Britain. In Ireland it is the post-Roman period, the fifth
century a.d. onwards, that produces evidence (through pollen-analysis, and
in church buildings, metalwork and a huge number of fortified enclosures)
of increasing exploitation of the land and of a rising complexity in economic
life. Similarly, beyond the eastern frontier, in Armenia, although the only evidence
we have so far comes from church building, the seventh century (the
very period that saw the collapse of the Byzantine economy in neighbouring
Asia Minor) is a high point in innovation and construction. 26
The evidence from Ireland calls into question the model I have proposed
so far, of a movement in economic complexity exclusively southwards and
eastwards. Possibly a movement outwards in general is a more appropriate
image: from a rich Italy in the first century b.c. and the first century a.d.;to
Gaul and Spain in the second and third century; to Britain and Africa in the
third and fourth; to the eastern provinces in the fifth and sixth; and finally,
beyond the old frontiers, to Ireland and Armenia in the sixth and seventh
century. As Randsborg has rightly pointed out, the slow and steady growth
of the Scandinavian economy raises even more fundamental questions,
about the long-term benefits of romanization. 27 Southern Britain, as we
have seen, lost in the fifth century a.d. much more than its Roman
economy: it reverted to a pattern of economic life simpler and more basic
than that of the pre-Roman Iron Age. Without the Romans, might not
Britain’s economy have developed in a more sustained, if slower, way, like
that of Scandinavia? Viewed in the very long term and with the benefit of
a perspective from beyond the frontiers, the economic history of Roman
Britain can be portrayed as a blind alley, before the population settled back
to a pattern of steady growth comparable to that of the pre-Roman Iron
Age.
v. regional and local variation
The surveys I have given above are very generalized, in order to bring out
and illustrate the broadest underlying trends within the economic history
of this period. For this purpose, it is, I hope, excusable to lump together
vast areas, like the whole of Gaul, Spain and Italy, and to illustrate their economic
history with a few choice examples drawn from Italy alone (indeed,
primarily from the north of Italy). But it is also important to realize that
the process of generalization and simplification necessarily ignores very
important local variation.
In both Gaul and Spain, for instance, there was probably a major
difference between the experiences of the south and of the north, where
26 Scandinavia: Randsborg (1991) 72–81; Randsborg (1992). Ireland: Mitchell (1976) 136–7 and
159–71; Edwards (1990) 6–33; Mallory and McNeill (1991) 181–225. Armenia: Mango, Byzantine
Architecture 180,91. 27 Randsborg (1992).
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