Neil Christie. From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy AD 300-800.

Brogiolo, Gian Pietro

NEIL CHRISTIE. From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy AD 300-800. xviii+586 pages, 101 illustrations. 2006. Aldershot: Ashgate; 1-85928-421-3 hardback 55 [pounds sterling].

Neil Christie is without doubt one of the most productive amongst British archaeologists concerned with the Migration period, either as editor or as author of monographs. This new volume belongs to the latter genre, and enlarges the horizons of an earlier synthesis dedicated to the Lombards (Christie 1995). Christie's quite voluminous book, over 500 pages long excluding notes and bibliography, aims to analyse the transformations the Italian peninsula went through between AD 300 and 800 by focusing on four distinct aspects: Christianisation, towns, countryside and fortifications. Notwithstanding the title that announces An Archaeology of Italy, the author makes full and competent use of written sources, particularly up to the seventh century, integrating them with the material data. It is unfortunate that Christie was not able to use the outcomes of two important conferences, held in 2004 but not published until 2006; these have produced much new data and interpretations of the urban and rural landscape of Italy between the late empire and the early middle ages (Volpe & Turchiano 2006; Augenti 2006).

After a useful introduction which summarises the historical course of the period under study, the first chapter, devoted to Church and society, synthesises a large number of historical questions: the affirmation of Christianism in the fourth century in relation to pagan resistance and the effects of the closing and reuse of temples; the Christianisation of urban spaces (with extensive digressions on Rome and Milan) and the countryside; the structure of cult buildings, the role of the Church in Gothic and Lombard times, burials, relics and pilgrims, monasticism and the use of writing on the part of the Church.

Christie's second chapter deals with towns, analysing the reorganisation of the urban space: the reinforcing of the defensive systems, Christianisation, the survival of the Roman fabric, private dwellings, burials, unused spaces and new foundations (through the examples of Grado and Cencelle) are all considered. The dwellings recovered by archaeology represent 'life in former towns' rather than 'urban continuity' (p. 195); they are symptoms of lesser wealth, technological decline, crisis in the infrastructure, in particular that of the aqueducts; they embody the ruralisation of architecture (country people settling in towns), the adoption of extraneous (Gothic and Lombard) models, and militarisation of many urban centres (p. 245). This evidence, though it can be read as decline, does not in itself imply the disappearance of an urban identity, but rather 'a redefinition, an ideological modification in the previous conception of "towns" or urbanism' (p. 185).

The chapter on defences provides a very detailed framework for the development of the systems of defences and military strategy, arranged in periods (second half of the third century to fourth century, fifth century, Gothic, Byzantine and Lombard defences).

The volume's fourth part is concerned with the countryside, from the evolution of the late Roman villae, to the construction of cult places, to processes that led to population concentrations (often on elevated sites, whose analysis takes up themes and sites encountered in the chapter on defences), and to the choice of marginal settlements (in caves and marshes). The archaeological data seem to indicate changes that are more profound than those suggested by the written sources. These Christie attributes, though cautiously, to the climate of insecurity and to the settlement of incomers, which would have led, in the second half of the sixth century, to a chaotic model, proposed by Valenti and Francovich for Tuscany, but which could be 'valid for much of northern and central Italy' (p. 462).

The volume is rich in information, though for some sites new investigations have been undertaken and others (for example the Lombard sites of Mombello, Collegno, the perched site of Miranduolo in Tuscany, Venice and Comacchio amongst the new town foundations) have recently entered the historical debate and are fundamental for the reconstruction of the Migration period in Italy. A summing up, bringing out the relationships between the data presented in the four chapters would also have been useful: beyond the political events that were to lead to the fragmentation of the peninsula and the natural catastrophes as agents of change in a period in which the Church emerged as 'a new focus to a Roman society undergoing transformation' (p. 505), factors that can certainly not be neglected, it would have been opportune to propose, or at least discuss, other interpretative keys, such as those recently proposed by Chris Wickham (2005), reasserting the central role of the economy, of the aristocracy and of taxation in the transformation of the Roman world.

Reference

AUGENTX, A. (ed.) 2006. Le citta italiane tra la tarda Antichita e l'alto Medioevo (Ravenna 2004). Firenze.

CHRISTIE, N. 1995. The Lombards: the ancient Longobards. Oxford: Blackwell.

VOLPE, G. & M. TURCHIANO (ed.) 2006. Paesaggi e insediamenti rurali in Italia meridionale fra Tardoantico e Altomedioevo. Bari.

WICKHAM, C. 2005. Framing the Early Medieval Ages. Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. Oxford.

GIAN PIETRO BROGIOLO

Department of Archaeology, University of Padua, Italy (translated from the Italian by Reviews Editor)