Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

settlement and society 547
various parts of the Po valley, for instance, extensive tracts of Roman centuriation
have survived into modern times. As this entails the maintenance
of both drainage ditches and land divisions, its persistence probably indicates
the continued vitality of agricultural life in these zones. Many of these
rural survivals occur close to towns and cities where Roman street grids
were conserved into the Middle Ages and beyond, suggesting that urban
and rural continuity were interdependent. 107 As in so much else, the picture
varies from region to region. Moreover, such changes cannot always be
blamed on social decline: natural phenomena also played a role. At
Aquileia, the silting up of the river Natiso rendered the city’s harbour more
and more unusable after the fourth century. 108 Likewise, stagnation set in
much earlier than the sixth century at some places: the Gubbio basin in the
central Apennines, for example, began its decline in the third century. 109 At
Luna (Luni) on the Tyrrhenian coast, a flourishing early imperial agricultural
system had been abandoned long before the start of our period. 110
Recent archaeological survey in the Biferno valley in southern Samnium
shows a similar pattern of decline, retrenchment and disappearance of settlements.
111 Often it is difficult to attribute these changes to specific events,
emphasizing the extent to which such results derived from survey represent
a picture of the historical longue durée. Indeed, some places may have
experienced little change at all: Sicily, spared most of the fighting which disrupted
the rest of Italy, seems to have remained prosperous into the early
Middle Ages. 112
The pattern of entrenchment throughout Italy extends to what can be
elucidated about inter-regional trade in the fifth and sixth century.
Cassiodorus once boasted that Rome ‘was fed by supplies furnished even
from far off regions, and that this imported abundance was reserved for
it’. 113 Despite the disruption caused by the Vandal conquest, long-distance
trade seems to have been maintained in the coastal cities of Italy in the later
fifth century: deposits of African red-slip ware are found at Rome, Naples
and Luna, as well as in their immediate vicinities. 114 Inland, however, the
situation shows a marked change, particularly in the sixth century.
Excavations in central Italy have shown a marked increase of coarse ware
fragments in pottery assemblages, while African red-slip ware is found less
frequently and in smaller quantities. This does not represent a drop in
demand for non-local goods, however, since at precisely the same time
local potters in southern Italy started producing vessels which imitated
African designs. Rather, it seems that the supply was no longer penetrating
107 Ward-Perkins (1988) 23. 108 Schmiedt (1978) 236–42.
109 Malone, Stoddart et al.(1994) 181. 110 Ward-Perkins et al.(1986).
111 Barker et al. (1995) 236–40; cf. Staffa (1995) 317–18, 322.
112 Brown, Gentlemen and Officers 27–8. 113 Cass. Var. xi.39.1.
114 Hodges and Whitehouse (1983) 36–42; Moreland (1993) 95–6, 99–101; Staffa (1995) 326.
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