The project’s results indicate that a landscape once dominated by small, family-run, farms, each cultivating small plots of land, gradually transformed through the three phases of the Roman imperial period (Early, 30 BC-AD 120: 205 sites; Mid, AD 120-260: 174 sites; Late, AD 260-440: 146 sites) into one featuring large agricultural estates involved in extensive farming practices. In light of historical records it seems likely that affluent investors bought up much of the land of failing smallholders, expanding the capacity of their own agricultural enterprises and leasing out properties to poorer farmers. Local wealth, power, and influence became concentrated in the hands of a limited number of elite landowners. Yet despite this process, small low-status sites remained the most abundant class of rural habitation even in the Late Imperial period and many middle-ranking sites endured without a break in occupation even into Late Antique times (AD 440-700: 77 sites in total). The resilience of wide sections of the rural community, even in the face of external threats from Longobards and others, should not be underestimated, but significantly a considerable proportion of Tuscania’s hinterland of cultivated fields had reverted to scrub and woodland by the Late Antique period.

Early medieval Italy was the most densely urbanized part of western Eurasia until the eleventh century. This chapter examines the practices of urbanism in the Italian peninsula, considering the social and political implications of living in cities and how they shaped the ways of life and patterns of governance in Latin- and Greek-speaking areas of the Italian peninsula. Special consideration is paid to how the Carolingian conquest and Frankish control of parts of Italy might have challenged the roles played by cities in economic and political life in those areas. Urbanism and investment in cities were tools for Carolingian rulers of Italy and their contemporaries.

The chapter investigates why the Carolingian conquerors were unable to give their kingdom in Italy a name able to represent its original political identity.