Carolingian and Byzantine Entanglements Around the Origins of Venice: An archaeological perspective

Abstract

The upper Adriatic rim offers one of the most interesting cases of settlement pattern transformations during the critical shift from the Late Antiquity to Early Medieval period. This process has been described because 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 secluded locations from which they could protect themselves against the political and military crisis of the Venetia et Histria inner part. The invasions and subsequent formation of the barbarian kingdoms increasingly emphasized this separation, creating two regions: the coastal 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 linked late antique trade and social systems with the nascent medieval Europe. Venice has been depicted as a Byzantine city: its birth and prosperity depended on the Byzantine legacy. The pillars on which early Venice rested were the Byzantine protection, the self-government, and the ability to have stopped the Carolingian army in its attempt to control the lagoon.

A massive historiographical tradition has concealed the Venice’s past with a standardized truth. The birth of Venice, the Barbarians’ destructions, and the self-determination of the Roman/Byzantine fugitives have become parts of a dogmatic narrative. Scholars feel that they don’t need to quote the sources about it: it is a statement that doesn’t need to be supported. The storylines about the Venice’s origins have been severely politically oriented. The 11th century Venetian chronicles were self/celebrating; equally the studies about Serenissima undertaken after the Italian unification in the 19th century presented the city as a model of democracy. What did the Lombard symbolize in the works of Paolo Diacono in the 8th cent.? Or in Giovanni Diacono in the 11th cent.? What did the Germans represent for the Italian academics after the WWII? What does it mean the adjective ‘Byzantine’ for the modern Venetians? 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 do not demonstrate evidence of defensive structure, as illustrated in the past. Archaeology shows these island sites as open areas, devoted to trade.

Early Medieval Venice was an emporium. Trade was possible due to sophisticated system of harbors, artificial channels, arsenals and warehouses. This infrastructure required massive investments, and a significant labor force for their construction, maintenance, and implementation. Therefore, the movement of people from the mainland to the marshy coastal environment appears to relate to the need for skilled 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 harbor sites between the 1st and the 2nd century AD became impracticable. At the same time, lack of regular maintenance of the Roman roads system became evident since the 3rd century AD. From the Late Antiquity, onward the only effective system of communication was provided by waterways. Once again, populations appear to have moved to the coastlines to find new trading locations, rather than for ideological or military reasons.

The Venetian origin is an issue of long processes. Both international and regional elements influenced the formation of the city. The archaeological perspective on one hand is diverting the attention on different geopolitical areas (Islamic World and the Central/Northern Europe), and on the other hand is forcing the scholar to reconsider the lagoon settlement from a new perspective. Instead of fear, protection or seclusion, we should take economic opportunities, network strategies, and work force diaspora as pivotal directions of research.

The material culture evidence implicates archaeologists in reconsidering the ecological impact of communities. In fact, the past research focusing on churches, palaces and power structures have not been effective enough to explain the formation of the early medieval Venetian social structures. As scholars, we need to re-analyze in a global scale the material entanglement between people, water, wood and diseases. An anthro-ecological approach to the material past of the Adriatic seems to be a constructive methodology. It can help us to exceed the political dichotomy between Byzantine and Germanic world. The ecological relevance of the excavated material should be re-read considering the specific archaeological agenda, rather than trying to employ archaeological elements to answer, or worse, to prove, historical questions.