From Mainland to the Coast: New Island Settlements in the Early Medieval Upper Adriatic

Abstract

The upper Adriatic rim offers one of the most interesting cases of settlement pattern transformation during the critical shift from the Roman to Early Mediaeval period. This process has often been described as the results of the desegregation of the western part of the Roman Empire, which had produced a strong political division between the coastline and the mainland. According to consensus, the coastline became the space where ancient roman groups found sites from which to protect themselves against the political and military crisis of the Venetia et Histria inner part. The invasions and subsequent formation of the barbarian kingdom increasingly stressed this separation, creating two regions: the Byzantine provinces and the Lombard/Carolingian mainland. Historians generally agree that the last evidence of these changes was the birth of Venice, the byzantine emporium city that bridged west and east, and connected late antique trade and social systems and the nascent medieval Europe. 

Archaeological studies and geographical approaches have more recently drawn a completely different picture, rendering a physical border between Barbarian and Byzantine areas as implausible. Moreover, settlements in the lagoon area show little evidence of defensive structure as illustrated in the past. Archaeology describes these island sites as open areas devoted to trade. Early Medieval “Venice” was an emporium; however, trade was only possible thanks to sophisticated systems of harbours, artificial channels, arsenals and warehouses. These infrastructures required a substantial labour force of skilled people for their construction, maintenance and implementation. Therefore, the movement of people from the mainland to the marshy environment appears to be connected with the need for trained workers, more than for security, as previously posited. 

Furthermore, environmental changes, most significant in the area during the Early Middle Ages, hastened the process in a very specific way. The Roman harbour areas between the 1st and the 2nd century AD became impracticable. At the same time, lack of regular maintenance of the system of Roman roads became evident from the 3rd – 4th century AD. From the late antique onward the only effective system of communication was provided by water-ways. Once again, populations appear to have moved to the coastlines to find new trading locations, rather than for ideological reasons. 

This presentation focuses on a large group of island sites from the Po delta to northern Istria (Torcello, Rialto-Venice, Malamocco, Brondolo, San Basilio, Comacchio, Jesolo, Caorle, Cittanova, Grado, Koper, Izola, Piran, Novigrad, Porec). The aim of the paper is to present integrated GIS, archaeological and environmental approaches for the reconstruction of the early medieval coastal landscape.