Agriculture and the Environment of Republican Italy (original) (raw)
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Modelling the Agricultural Landscapes of Republican Italy
In this paper, we review two recent models of Roman agriculture presented by Nathan Rosenstein and Paul Erdkamp. Firstly, we identify the similarities and differences between these models in terms of starting assumptions and variables, and evaluate the impact of these differences on their interpretation and significance. We then take these models and locate them within a ‘real world’ environment. This involves confronting theoretical ideals with the complexities of a specific landscape and, in particular, with the evidence of archaeological field survey. We take a small case study area in the ager Veientanus and outline a flexible Geographical Information System (GIS) methodology for modelling agricultural production, with broad implications for Roman demography and economy. We suggest our preliminary model raises questions for further consideration. The assumed existence of Mid Republican ‘proto-villas’ emphasizes the issue of agricultural productivity – in particular, the parity of Mid Republican and Early Imperial productivity, and the Late Republican productivity decline. Neither of these observations sits comfortably with the conventional narrative of Republican agriculture (in which under-developed Mid Republican agriculture is replaced by Late Republican capitalist ‘agro-business’), but nor have such issues been explicitly recognized within emerging revisionist narratives. Such trends may or may not lend support to these interpretations. Another question concerns how farms were able to access increasingly better land, whilst villas occupied poorer land. We argue that the emergence of tenancy is one way to explain these trends. In turn, this requires us to define a new socio-economic category – the tenant farm – and to model the implications. One effect is likely to be greater agricultural output and, therefore, higher productivity and larger supported population. In turn, this encourages us to reflect on the relationship between rural production and Early Imperial urbanization, particularly the intensification of monumental building by local landowners. Finally, we note that a crude productivity measure of one (‘rural’) food-producer supporting four other (‘urban’) persons is the reverse of the widely-cited figure of an urban population rate of 10-20%. Are our modelled estates too productive? Was there a large non-food producing rural population? Were urban populations higher?
The history of agriculture and the countryside in Italy has a long tradition of studies. The deep historical and environmental diversity that characterizes Italian history, the wealth of archival sources and the cooperation above all with archeology have addressed studies on the medieval countryside, with a focus on regional specificities and the relationships between agrarian history and economic history: urban-rural relationships, agricultural structures and the countryside, reclamation and cultivation techniques, forms of farm management and work, animal breeding and transhumance, diet and the movement of goods. In recent years, the need has been felt for a comparative overview of the entire peninsula, able to highlight common traits and diversified paths precisely during the Middle Ages with different methods of agricultural rationalization and development, or the use and management of resources such as transhumant pastures. The investment in agricultural land and the different forms of land use represent a significant step in the economic history following the 14th-century crisis that affected individuals, cities and rural communities, and such public enterprises as charities. This interest in the comparison, in Italy and Europe, also featured various overview studies dedicated to the environment and landscapes, seeking to incorporate new kinds of research coming from the modern world.
Agrarian spaces in Roman Italy: society, economy and Mediterranean agriculture
This article aims to explore some of the wealth of evidence for the diversity of agrarian landscapes in Roman Italy. It takes as it starting point, several recent contributions to the debate about the history and ecology of the Mediterranean and Rome's position within it. In particular, it explores several aspects of Horden and Purcell's Corrupting Sea (2000) and relates these to the archaeological evidence. Horden and Purcell question three concepts of Mediterranean agriculture – subsistence (autarky), self-determination (social independence) and immemorial stability (successful resistance to change). This paper relates these arguments to the archaeological record, particularly the results of recent field survey in the form of land division, settlement classification and the exchange and consumption of material culture. Keywords: Roman Italy, agriculture, Mediterranean, peasant studies, archaeological survey
The history of agriculture and the countryside in Italy has a long tradition of studies. The deep historical and environmental diversity that characterizes Italian history, the wealth of archival sources and the cooperation above all with archeology have addressed studies on the medieval countryside, with a focus on regional specificities and the relationships between agrarian history and economic history: urban-rural relationships, agricultural structures and the countryside, reclamation and cultivation techniques, forms of farm management and work, animal breeding and transhumance, diet and the movement of goods. In recent years, the need has been felt for a comparative overview of the entire peninsula, able to highlight common traits and diversified paths precisely during the Middle Ages with different methods of agricultural rationalization and development, or the use and management of resources such as transhumant pastures. The investment in agricultural land and the different forms of land use represent a significant step in the economic history following the 14th-century crisis that affected individuals, cities and rural communities, and such public enterprises as charities. This interest in the comparison, in Italy and Europe, also featured various overview studies dedicated to the environment and landscapes, seeking to incorporate new kinds of research coming from the modern world. The present text is the revised version of the speech presented at the International Conference Old and New Worlds: The Global Challenges of Rural History (V Encontro Rural RePort – XV Congreso de Historia Agraria de la SEHA, Lisbon 2016), in the Session Old and New Challenges for Rural History of Middle Ages coordinated by Antoni Furió.
Archaeological Approaches to Breaking Boundaries: Interaction, Integration and Division. Proceedings of the Graduate Archaeology at Oxford Conference 2015-2016, ed. Rebecca O’Sullivan, Christina Marini, Julia Binnberg, BAR International Series 2869, Oxford, 2017
This research focuses on the territories of south Apulia, Italy, during the Middle Ages. A diachronic study was carried out into the transformation of agrarian landscapes in an area east of Taranto and south of Oria that measures about 401 km². The emergence of an economic basin centred on Manduria appeared from the fifth century BCE, from which point the soil substrate can be used to infer the locations of settlements and agricultural choices. Throughout history, a correlation between the presence of limestone and settlement location is observed and explained by the occurrence of fertile soils, limestone quarries, suitable substrates for building and water availability Examination of arid and rocky soils located on the hard limestone substrate with no settlement history found that these poor soils were also exploited by humans. This included use as a grazing area for sheep and goat in a really ‘marginal’ position next to better soils, as well as exploitation for specialised crops, at which times these soils became part of the main (central) economic space. This paper explores relevance of the notions of ‘central’ and ‘marginal’ landscapes in historical perspective, suggesting that their conceptualisation as either perpetually central or perpetually peripheral is deterministic. I prefer to highlight the fact that poor soils in Apulia seem to have been in a variable position, i.e. its role as centre or periphery changed depending on factors such as agricultural processes, the participation of the region in larger markets, increases in population, and periods of agricultural abandonment.
" EVOLUTION OF THE DISCIPLINE OF AGRICULTURAL GEOGRAPHY AND ITS RELEVANCE TO THE ITALIAN CASE "
This paper proposes a reflection on the current state of the discipline of agricultural geography. To do so, I provide a brief overview of its historical development, to then delve into the current debate upon the saliency of a political economic approach in agricultural geography. The core of the debate questions the political economic approach on its capacity of providing an adequate toolkit to understand a rural reality, in its social, cultural, and economic existence. Specifically, the paper reflects on how a country's imbrication in the international market and its placing within a wider and complex network may be appealing to other variables " beyond the farm gate " , as well as a performing scenario for diverse micro and macro developments. This paper is by no mean exhaustive on the subject, but may serve as an initial theoretical reflection on the role of agricultural geography, relying on the argument that such discipline, as the work of the researcher altogether, holds great potential if receptive of ever-changing trends.
URBAN AGRICULTURE IN ROME: A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH
2012
The present research focuses on the typical agricultural Italian landscape, and how agriculture can evolve and adapt to modern concerns. My proposal consists primarily in a study of the evolution of the Roman agricultural landscape, with a basic approach to the Italian Landscape.