Fouracre P. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700

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The Mediterranean economy 623

Whilst only a lucky few presumably needed to heed the warning against eating

too many dates offered to a sixth-century Frankish king, neither the extent of

such trafﬁc nor its economic importance should be unduly minimised.

The quantity of oil stipulated in the Corbie diploma nevertheless suggests

that the real weight of interregional Mediterranean exchange lay elsewhere, and

involved the shipment of staple commodities. The scale of this trafﬁc is now

abundantly conﬁrmed by the masses of excavated fragments of the amphorae

in which oil, wine, ﬁsh-sauce and other items were transported. Much research

remains to be done, for example in further reﬁning the classiﬁcations of better-

known amphora types to tie them more closely to particular regions of pro-

duction or to speciﬁc periods, or in identifying the signiﬁcant proportion of

‘unknowns’ present in some sixth- and seventh-century assemblages.

How-

ever, the continuing accumulation of amphora data already gives crucial new

insights into the range and complexity of the networks by which foodstuffs

were distributed around the early medieval Mediterranean, and some broad

trends emerge with growing clarity. Like pottery, some types of amphorae

appear to have circulated primarily within local or regional orbits, but others

achieved Mediterranean-wide distributions in the sixth and seventh centuries.

Signiﬁcantly, these were exported either from Africa, or from the coasts of

the eastern Mediterranean, in an arc circling from the Aegean (LRA 2 and

3)round Asia Minor (LRA 1), Syria and Palestine (LRA 4, 5 and 6)toEgypt

(LRA 7)(Map16 and Fig. 8).

The evidence of these containers is thus broadly

consistent with that of ﬁne-ware pottery in emphasising the dominance of

African and eastern Mediterranean production within the interregional tier of

the exchange-system.

In the case of Africa this hegemony goes back at least to the third century,

but the rise of eastern exports is more recent; amphorae from this area begin to

reach the western Mediterranean in quantity only from the later ﬁfth century.

As such, the sixth- and seventh-century pattern represents what would turn

out to be the ﬁnal phase in a sequence which dates back to the days of the

Roman republic, and which had seen different regions – Italy, south/central

Gaul, Spain, Africa, the Near East – supersede each other as the dominant

force within the wider Mediterranean economy. In this respect, as in others,

Dangers of dates: Anthimus, c.92.Documentary references to fruits, nuts and spices: Claude (1985),

pp. 81–4, and, more widely for the spice trade, Miller (1969).

For the high proportions of ‘unknowns’, Arthur (1986), pp. 655–6,Panella (1993), pp. 662–3, with

Arthur (1998) for some of the general problems and possibilities of amphora data.

Among sundry studies, see e.g., Keay (1984) and (1998) for African amphorae; Empereur and Picon

(1989); Panella (1993), pp. 662–72.For eastern Mediterranean amphorae, Reynolds (1995), pp. 38–85,

gives an overview of the data.

Panella (1993), pp. 625–48.

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our period is more redolent of the last hurrah of the ancient economic system

than the dawning of a new era. The extraordinary vitality of the countryside

in the late antique Near East was ﬁrst emphasised by Georges Tchalenko in

his pioneering survey of the stunningly well-preserved villages of the Syrian

limestone massif.

Similar evidence of a burgeoning rural economy has since

been emerging from the rugged coast of Lycia and neighbouring Cilicia on the

southern shores of Asia Minor, from the basalt outcrops of the Haur south of

Syria, and from the wadis of the Negev in southern Palestine.

Most of these

areas are agriculturally marginal in one way or another, and could have been

cultivated only with considerable determination and investment. But by the

start of our period they were supporting settlement unprecedented in extent,

intensity and prosperity, which in some cases has never been repeated, helping

to explain why the evidence is relatively well preserved.

It is tempting to think that it was the integration of their surplus produc-

tion into the Mediterranean economic-system via centres such as Antioch and

its outport at Seleuceia (for the limestone massif), or Gaza (for the Negev),

which made exploitation of these marginal lands not just viable, but positively

proﬁtable. The coincidence between the escalating prosperity of these rural

areas and the appearance on overseas markets of LRA type 1, emanating from

workshops in the north-eastern corner of the Mediterranean around Antioch,

Cilicia and Cyprus, and LRA 4,predominantly from the vicinity of Gaza, is

striking. LRA 1 is the most commonly found, and widely distributed, of all late

antique eastern amphorae, and was probably used to transport both oil and

wine.

LRA 4 is plausibly associated with a speciﬁc item periodically high-

lighted in the texts: Gaza wine. The widespread presence of these amphorae

in western Mediterranean deposits conﬁrms that references to this commodity

in the works of Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville and others represent more

than literary conceit or poetic licence.

This evidence is wholly consistent with

the earlier Roman pattern, whereby growth in rural settlement and investment

within a region is paralleled by evidence of signiﬁcant exports from that region

to other areas of the Mediterranean.

Tchalenko (1953–58), with the important reconsiderations of Tate (1992), and Sodini et al.(1980)

for the speciﬁc case of D

es.

Overviews: Sodini (1993); Foss (1995) and (1997). Lycia: Foss (1994); Cilicia: Eyice (1988); Hauran:

Dentzer (1985) and Sartre (1985); Negev: Shereshevski (1991), with comments in Foss (1995).

Van Alfen (1996); Decker (2001).

Gregory, Hist. vii.29,Gregory, Glory of the Confessors, 64, trans. Van Dam, pp. 70–1;Isidore,

Etymologiae xx.3. Bonifay and Villedieu (1989) for eastern amphorae in Gaul, Guti

errez-Lloret

(1998a), pp. 165–7 for Spain, Arthur (1998) for Italy. Mayerson (1985) and Gatier (1988), for the texts,

with Kieslinger (1999)onthe wine-trade in general.

E.g. North Africa: Mattingly (1988), with Vera (1983)oninvestment strategies.

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The Mediterranean economy 625

There are several aspects of this phenomenon that are likely to remain

mysterious. Much interregional exchange was probably not strictly necessary.

Archaeology cannot tell us why Antiochene oil, Gaza wine or, for that matter,

ARS should have been more prized than the pressings, vintages or wares which

must normally have been readily available to eager Mediterranean consumers

from producers closer to home (and which, in the case of ARS, local potters

speciﬁcally sought to imitate). Texts of our period only offer ﬂeeting hints of

qualitative distinctions. Gregory of Tours describes the wines of Gaza as poten-

tiora (‘more powerful’), seemingly by comparison with local vintages, possibly

in reference to their body or ﬂavour, perhaps even suggesting that, then as

now, alcohol could be sold on the basis of strength as well as reﬁnement.

But

what our sources never mention, sadly, is just how big a premium these prod-

ucts carried. Some mark-up must have been essential to reﬂect transport costs

and, presumably, scarcity value, but was it sufﬁcient to take them beyond the

reach of all but the elite? The exceptional market penetration of ARS, although

declining by the sixth century, suggests that some of this interregional trade

had once catered for a less exclusive clientele, but its real volume remains frus-

tratingly elusive. Ceramic assemblages can reveal the evolution over time of

the relative proportions of imports from different regions, but it is extremely

difﬁcult to use them to assess changes in absolute quantities of interregional

exchange within our period.

Even so, rural survey data and ceramic distri-

butions combine to suggest that participation in the interregional tier of the

economy, so far from being epiphenomenal, is closely associated with mass

specialist production, staple items and regional prosperity. They also show

that the shores of the Mediterranean remained integrated into an overarching

economic system for much of our period. What drove this economy, and for

how long did it continue to exist?

means and ends: the fate of the interregional

mediterranean exchange-network

The biggest player in the sixth- and seventh-century Mediterranean econ-

omy was obviously the Byzantine Empire, which alone maintained the means

and the motive routinely to encourage the bulk transportation of staple items

between regions. Part of the agricultural surplus from the wealthiest of all

the lands around the Mediterranean, Egypt, had long been diverted to assure

Gregory, Hist. vii.29.

Fentress and Perkins (1987) for an innovative attempt to do this for ARS, suggesting a steady decline

setting in from the early ﬁfth century and reaching oblivion in the mid-seventh; the approach has

to date been pursued only by Zanini (1996).

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supplies of grain for the imperial capital at Constantinople. A proportion of

African production was also clawed back into the state sector after the Justini-

anic reconquest of 533, establishing a regular trading axis between Carthage

and Constantinople.

Across the East more generally, the needs of the impe-

rial military and administrative apparatus continued to drive the ﬁscal cycle of

coin circulation, tax-collection and expenditure, which, as we have seen, was

an important incentive to production and distribution. In the interior of Asia

Minor, for example, Justinian’s scaling-down of the imperial transport-system

along the main road from Constantinople to the eastern front and his with-

drawal of military units is said to have brought ruin to neighbouring landown-

ers by depriving them of the opportunity both to pay their taxes in kind, and

of consumers who might enable them to turn their surplus into cash.

The

anecdote neatly illustrates how the state stimulated economic activity, but it

also conﬁrms the continuing advantages of access to the Mediterranean. Like

Gregory of Nazianzus before him, John Lydos makes this point clear: ‘the tax-

payer was ruined...since he could not sell his crops, living far from the sea’.

Further south in coastal Lycia and Cilicia settlement was, as previously noted,

still ﬂourishing in this period. The Mediterranean afforded wider opportuni-

ties for coastal producers to market their surplus, whether in dealings with the

state or independently of it.

In the western Mediterranean, however, the state sector of the economy

had collapsed in the ﬁfth century, for good in some regions, temporarily in

others; some of its ﬁscal and physical infrastructure may have survived, but in

an ever-disintegrating state of repair.

Much interregional exchange here must

have been commercial in nature. The secular elite had engaged in so-called

‘tied trade’, the shuttling of their own resources between regions or the sharing

of them with others on a non-commercial basis, but this must also have greatly

diminished as a result of the political fragmentation of the West and the demise

of that class of super-rich aristocrats with lands in several provinces.

Major

churches, however, continued to be blessed with extensive landed resources and

regular international contacts. Gregory the Great’s correspondence shows how

the papacy was extremely active in Mediterranean exchange at the end of the

sixth century, not only in soliciting imperial food-supplies for the Roman poor

(or, increasingly, replacing the state as the main organiser of those supplies),

Panella (1993), pp. 655–7.Textual conﬁrmation is scant, but see Theophanes, AM 6100, i.296,

2–3, for the failure of the grain-ships to set out from Africa as a result of the revolt against Phokas.

John Lydus, De Magistratibus iii.61;Procopius, Secret History 30, 1–11 (with slight differences of

emphasis, but similar hostility to Justinian). Discussion in Hendy (1985), pp. 295–6.

See e.g. Hendy (1988) and (1993), for western coinages, and Blackburn, chapter 24 below.

Whittaker (1983) for the importance of ‘tied trade’ in the later empire (in my view exaggerated).

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The Mediterranean economy 627

but also in redistributing the produce of its own extensive landed patrimony.

It was potentially convenient for churches to exchange these resources on a

non-commercial basis, though in practice this was not always as easy as it

sounds. Gregory spent eight summers struggling to arrange the shipment of

shipbuilding timber from southern Italy to Egypt in response to a request

from Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria; we never ﬁnd out if he eventually

succeeded.

All ‘tied trade’ was presumably not as entangled as this, but exchange of this

nature seems likely in any case to account for only a fraction of ecclesiastical

involvement in the interregional tier of the Mediterranean economy. In one

of his letters to Eulogius, Gregory wryly quotes the phrase ‘trade till I come’

from Christ’s parable about making the most of one’s talents;

the church of

Alexandria was certainly an especially active participant in overseas exchange, as

the traditions surrounding St John the Almsgiver, who became patriarch in 611,

four years after Eulogius’ death, make abundantly clear. Its direct interests were

ensured through the maintenance of a substantial seagoing ﬂeet, but equally

signiﬁcant was its role as a silent partner, underwriting with cash, cargoes and

even ships the trading ventures of the city’s merchants, whose recurrent misfor-

tunes were often set right by displays of divine power. Presumably these favours,

human and providential, came at the price of a share of the proﬁts, though this

is a subject upon which our sources choose not to dwell. It is evident, however,

that these church-backed merchants also enjoyed considerable discretion in

how they went about their business. Some specialised in interregional trade,

to judge from the story of how ‘one of the so-called Gallodromoi’, men whose

enterprises were presumably concerned primarily with Gaul, refused to repay

his loan.

Other tales of John’s charity evoke connections with Palestine, the

Adriatic, Sicily, Africa and even Britain.

One simple reminder of how these

traders will have dealt in a variety of commodities (and that not all of them

made it home again) is provided by the epitaph of one Peter, a linen-merchant

of Alexandria, who died at Palermo in 602.

Marazzi (1998a).

Gregory I, Registrum vi.58, vii.37, viii.28, ix.176, x.21, xiii.43 (596–603).

Luke 19.13.Gregory I, Registrum vii.37.Gregory notes that he cannot trade (presumably in reference

to the political situation), but that he rejoices in Eulogius’ successes.

Leontius, Life of John the Almsgiver c.36. The association of the term with underhand dealings later

became proverbial: Claude (1985), 185,n.137. There were also Spanodromoi at Alexandria in the ﬁfth

century: Palladius, Lausiac Hist. 14.

Leontius, Life of St John the Almsgiver c.18 (Palestine; cf. Anon., Life of St John the Almsgiver c.9);

c.28 (Adriatic), c.11 (Sicily), c.25 (Africa) (cf. John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, 76), c.8 (Britain).

Discussion: Hollerich (1982) and, more generally, Wipszycka (1972).

CIL x.2.7330.

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Few hagiographers were as prepared to associate their heroes with merchants

as those who celebrated the virtues of John the Almsgiver, and nor were many

cities as ideally situated for trade as Alexandria, the port where the Mediter-

ranean and Indian/Arabian exchange-networks naturally overlapped.

It can

only be wondered, therefore, how far eastern churches of similar wealth and

standing, such as Antioch and Constantinople, may have supported inter-

regional exchange to a similar degree. Pope Gregory I certainly had regular

dealings with merchants on behalf of the Roman church, though it is doubtful

whether the papacy ran its own ﬂeet, and some of Gregory’s problems were

forced upon him by the contemporary political situation and the particular

history of Rome’s institutionalised food-supply.

Other western churches –

and rulers – seem to have been more inclined to deal with individual merchants

on an ad hoc basis. Quite a number of merchants are incidentally mentioned in

sixth- and seventh-century western sources, several of whom are said to be of

eastern origin. There were many eastern merchants in Carthage, for example,

even before the Byzantine reconquest, and others in sixth-century Italy and

Sicily.

Greek merchants arriving in Spain from the East journeyed upriver to

erida and ‘according to custom’ presented themselves to the bishop, another

easterner named Paul.

In Paris, the Syrian merchant Eusebius beat the priestly

brother of the former incumbent to episcopal ofﬁce (by bribery, sneers Gregory

of Tours), and promptly staffed his household with fellow-Syrians.

The rise of the likes of Eusebius to prestigious positions is intriguing, as is

the coincidence between the heyday of eastern exports to the western Mediter-

ranean in the archaeological record and the cameo appearances of easterners,

some of whom are identiﬁed as merchants, in western sources of ﬁfth- to

early seventh-century date. But the temptation to infer too much from the

chequered careers of a handful of individuals should be resisted.

Our docu-

mentary information is too meagre and nebulous to tell us about the precise

origins of many of those who engaged in overseas trade in this period, or to

enable us to build up a picture of their activities which could convince as typ-

ical rather than particular. It seems clear (albeit not very surprising) that some

individuals did specialise in interregional trade, especially from the eastern

Mundell Mango (1996).

E.g. Gregory I, Reg. i.70, iv.43, ix.10, ix.40.

Procopius, Wars iii.20.5 (Carthage). For Italy and Sicily, cf. ibid. iv.14.7 (Syracuse); v.8.21 (Naples);

Gregory I, Reg. iv.43 (Sicily); note 69 above.

Vita Patrum Emeretensium iv.3.Paul had previously been a doctor, a useful reminder that not all

Syrians or Greeks mentioned in western sources (still less Jews) should be automatically identiﬁed

as traders; cf. Ruggini (1959).

Gregory, Hist. x.26.Eusebius and his cronies may not have come from Syria itself; Syrus and, less

often, Graecus seem to be used generically by western writers for all easterners.

Evidence: Claude (1985), pp. 167–200.Devroey (1995) for a critique of exaggerations by Pirenne and

others of the number and potential signiﬁcance of foreign merchants in Francia.

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The Mediterranean economy 629

Mediterranean to the west. Jacob, whom we met earlier, is one of them. But

their mercantile strategies seem to have been as varied as their relationships

with lay and ecclesiastical patrons. In our period, the majority were probably

tied neither to the service of the state nor to a speciﬁc church or monastery,

but nor could they be entirely independent. At the simplest level, members

of these wealthy institutions were the merchants’ likeliest customers; the cus-

tomary visit of the Greek merchants to the bishop on arrival in M

erida was a

matter of common-sense as well as courtesy. More fundamentally, mercantile

ventures involved substantial risk; all but the richest merchants needed backers

with capital, commodities and ships (or at least cargo-space) to spare, or who

might bail them out when things went wrong.

In the eastern Mediterranean, meanwhile, by far the most signiﬁcant source

of this ﬁnancial backing remained the Byzantine Empire. The annona system

may have tied shippers into the regular transport of Egyptian grain to the

imperial capital, but not so tightly as to preclude them from the simultaneous

pursuit of private proﬁt.

To compensate them for supplying the state at a

loss, it appears that these navicularii enjoyed a series of ﬁscal advantages. Some

of these privileges offered highly desirable exemptions from common burdens

such as the land-tax and service on town-councils, but others conferred more

immediate commercial advantages, including the ofﬂaying of much of the cost

of building ships, and the transference of the risk of loss to the state (with

all the concomitant opportunities for fraud). Most importantly, as long as

they fulﬁlled their obligations to the state, navicularii were allowed, subject to

certain restrictions, to conduct their own business on the side, free from the

assorted customs-dues for which merchants were ordinarily liable. The massed

Egyptian annona ﬂeet in full sail made the Mediterranean look like dry land

and, once it had reached Constantinople, its captains could stock up with

cargoes on their own account, their return voyages effectively subsidised by the

state.

Oneofthese return cargoes must have been the variant of Red Slip ware

manufactured at Phocaea, in the immediate vicinity of the imperial capital, and

widely distributed around the eastern Mediterranean and, to a lesser extent,

across to the west.

The restoration of imperial control over Africa in 533

was probably also instrumental in a renewed ﬂow of ARS into the eastern

Justinian’s attempt to ﬁx the maximum interest rate on nautical loans at 12% per annum seems to

have been unpopular precisely because the risk of loss was greater: Jones (1964), pp. 868–9.

McCormick (1998), esp. pp. 65–93, for a ﬁne analysis of the beneﬁts to trade of the annona, ﬂeshing

out the suggestions of Wickham (1988). Durliat (1990) takes a more pessimistic view.

For the scale of the ﬂeet, Theophylact Simocatta, History ii.14.7 (of the late 580s); for return cargoes,

Procopius, Buildings v.1.11.

Abadie-Reynal (1989), esp. pp. 150–7, with the works cited at n. 38 above.

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Mediterranean.

In both cases these pottery exports will have travelled as

secondary cargoes alongside other goods, and so indicate general currents of

exchange, but the ceramic evidence suggests that the impact of state interests

on distribution is hardly consistent in its effects. In the West, it seems to have

encouraged exports from the main annona-supplying region, Africa; but there

is no comparable overseas dissemination of local amphorae or ﬁne-ware pottery

from Egypt, the eastern equivalent, nor the signiﬁcant imports of PRS, which

one might expect to ﬁnd there if trafﬁc between Egypt and Constantinople was

simply reciprocal in nature.

While the ﬂows of trafﬁc generated around Con-

stantinople, and probably other major centres such as Antioch and Alexandria,

certainly helped to structure the interregional tier of the economy in the east-

ern Mediterranean, the relative importance of state and commercial shipping

within these exchange-networks is extremely difﬁcult to assess.

Tw o frag-

mentary inscriptions recording the fees payable by vessels entering the ports

of Abydos, controlling the Hellespont outside Constantinople, and Seleucia,

serving Antioch, offer rare textual conﬁrmation of the varied provenances of

shipping and the assortment of goods drawn towards major centres, but there is

nothing to show whether these concern state or private trafﬁc.

State interests

alone seem insufﬁcient in any case to account for all the manifold ramiﬁca-

tions of interregional exchange suggested by the archaeological evidence, which

shows how all the coastal regions of the eastern Mediterranean continued to

trade foodstuffs in amphorae not only with each other, implying the existence

of several interlocking regional systems, but also across to the West. Here the

rising proportions of eastern amphorae present in some ﬁfth- and sixth-century

assemblages can only stem from commercial exchange, and probably represent

the discovery of new and lucrative markets by private shippers.

The same

surely goes for much interregional exchange within the more dynamic eastern

economy, especially given the scope for private enterprise and the commer-

cial advantages enjoyed by those involved in the annona.The classiﬁcation

of exchange as ‘state’ or ‘tied’ (and so non-commercial) on the one hand, or

‘private’ (commercial) on the other, is too inﬂexible; it neglects the extent to

which these various types of transaction were interdependent.

Panella (1993), pp. 658–61.

Abadie-Reynal (1989) for the likely difference in eastern and western distribution-systems. Local and

Cypriot ﬁne wares seem far more common in Egypt than PRS: Ballet and Picon (1987), pp. 26–8.

Besides Constantinople, there is limited evidence for state-supply systems at Alexandria and Antioch,

esp. Justinian, Novels vii.8, but their existence elsewhere is conjectural: see Carri

e(1975) and Durliat

(1990).

Abydos (of c.492): Durliat and Guillou (1984); Dagron (1985), pp. 451–5.Seleucia (probably dating

from early in Justinian’s reign): Dagron (1985), pp. 435–51.

Eastern circuits: Abadie-Reynal (1989); Panella (1993), pp. 657–73; Kingsley and Decker (2001).

Eastern exports to the West: Reynolds (1995), pp. 70–83.

The Mediterranean economy 631

The entwining of public and private interests means that the patterns of

sixth- and seventh-century interregional Mediterranean exchange defy easy

synthesis.

Butabasic distinction must be drawn between the eastern Mediter-

ranean, where, as we have seen, all the evidence points to a widespread late

antique boom in the rural economy, closely associated with exports to overseas

markets, and the western Mediterranean, where interregional exchange had

been declining in volume and complexity for some time, and was dominated

by African goods. If producers in Spain, Gaul or Italy regularly marketed their

surplus overseas, they rarely did so by transporting their agricultural surplus

in amphorae or shipping ﬁne-ware pottery alongside it, and although African

ceramics continued to be distributed widely around the Mediterraneanthrough

the sixth century and on into the seventh, even here there are signs of a sim-

pliﬁcation of production before the end of the ﬁfth century.

Of the three

main categories of ARS only one, the D ware produced in northern Tunisia,

was still manufactured by c.550, and the number of forms of this ware in circu-

lation diminished considerably over the next century.

Late antique African

amphorae cannot yet be classiﬁed and dated with similar precision, but the

evidence implies a similar contraction in variety and complexity of production.

The data from African ﬁeld-surveys around Segermes and Kasserine and in the

Libyan valleys further suggest that rural settlement was already past its peak by

our period, but that this decline began to accelerate from perhaps the mid-sixth

century.

In the eastern Mediterranean, by contrast, patterns of production and over-

seas exchange remained far more diverse and polycentric, and the late antique

settlement boom was probably sustained throughout the sixth century. The

preceding period of dramatic expansion and investment may have been over

in some regions, such as the Syrian limestone massif, but this is perhaps better

seen in terms of consolidation rather than stagnation, especially since similar

areas, such as the interior of Palestine, exhibit continuing prosperity. In any

event, there is little sign of any widespread crisis of production or distribution

in the eastern Mediterranean before 600.

The scale of production and the

Best for the archaeology is Panella (1993), but the characterisation of the seventh century is now too

pessimistic. For a wider overview of ﬁfth- and sixth-century exchange, see Ward-Perkins (2000b).

Precisely when this begins, however, is a moot point; its origins may precede the Vandal conquest:

Panella (1993), pp. 641–5.

Reynolds (1995), pp. 12–14, 28–34, citing a fall from ﬁfteen forms in 533 to only three a century

later. This may be too precise, but the trend is clear. Cf. Mackensen (1998) for seventh-century ARS

production.

Helpful overview (and further references) in Mattingly and Hitchner (1995), esp. pp. 189–96, 209–13.

For‘stagnation’ in the limestone massif c.550–610,Tate (1992), pp. 335–42,inmyview overstated;

cf. Orssaud (1992) for ceramic continuity. The lively debate about the general state of Syria and

Palestine in the later sixth century lies outside the scope of this chapter. For overviews see Foss

(1995); Kennedy (2000), and also Louth, chapter 4 above.

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complexity of exchange-networks here is especially evident in the bewildering

range of eastern amphora manufactures and the heterogeneity of their distri-

butions. Although many of these amphorae fall into broad categories which

can be associated with particular regions of production, these major classiﬁca-

tions conceal a plethora of sub-groups, and a signiﬁcant proportion of types

are as yet not closely provenanced; all of this implies the existence of a host of

independent producers and distributors involved in overseas exchange.

The overlapping distribution-networks of African and eastern ceramics con-

ﬁrm that the economic interdependence of the Mediterranean lasted well into

the seventh century. Beneath this veneer of a shared material culture, however,

the cracks were beginning to appear. The signs are most obvious in the slow but

inexorable retreat of ARS, the epitome of late antique interregional exchange,

ﬁrst from inland sites, then from some coastal areas of the Mediterranean

(see

Maps 17a and 17b). This development should not be viewed from the wrong

end of the telescope; the economic integration implicit in the availability of

ARS to peasants in the Italian Apennines or on the Arabian desert margins is

more remarkable than its eventual disappearance. But this era was drawing to

an end. In Italy, for example, where the evidence is both relatively abundant

and well studied, ceramic assemblages recovered from inland rural sites remain

similar to those found in cities until the early sixth century; imports then

progressively disappear from all but urban or coastal centres. In some Italian

regions, this is but one aspect of a more radical transformation in material

culture manifested in very basic forms of pottery production and even the use

of wooden dishes, implying not merely the decline of overseas exchange but

the disintegration of regional production- and distribution-systems. Elsewhere

in Italy, the manufacture and distribution of ﬁne-ware pottery suggests that

economic involution was less drastic, but here too imports become increas-

ingly rare.

In general terms the pattern is similar in other western regions.

In Mediterranean Spain and Francia the ceramic evidence increasingly permits

the identiﬁcation of local or regional exchange-networks of variable extent

and sophistication, but by the seventh century these regions show increasingly

sporadic integration with the wider Mediterranean economy.

Although the diminishing reach of ARS is a particularly valuable indicator

of the steady contraction of interregional exchange, recent excavations suggest

that the ﬁnal crisis came only in the seventh century. The prolonged political

turmoil which engulfed the territories of the Byzantine Empire as a result of

Overviews in Panella (1993), pp. 673–80;Reynolds (1995), pp. 31–4.Regional updates: Tortorella

(1998)(Italy); Guti

errez-Lloret (1998b) (Spain); Bonifay et al.(1998), esp. pp. 361–5 (southern Gaul).

Arthur and Patterson (1994), esp. pp. 425–9, and Fontana (1998) with other papers in Sagu

ı(1998b)

and review by Wickham (2000b) for regional variation in Italy.

See note 91 above, with CATHMA (1993) for Languedoc, Pelletier (1997) for Provence.