Markets in Early Medieval Europe

by Tim Pestell

  To judge from the material culture of the eighth-century monastery and other sites within the Terra Sancti Vincentii (Hodges 1984; Wickham 1985), the makers of San Vincenzo were not native to the territory ceded to the monastery at its foundation c. 700 by Gisulf I, duke of Benevento. The author of the abbey’s twelfth-century chronicle, the Chronicon Vulturnense (i, 221), describes how the monastic community co-operated with lay workers during the construction of San Vincenzo Maggiore. In pursuing the makers of San Vincenzo, the importance of other sites of different kinds became apparent (Hodges 1997a, 199) – particularly the settlements of the monastery’s lay familia referred to in documents contained in the Chronicon Vulturnense. This awareness was among a number of factors that prompted two short seasons of survey and excavation on the east bank of the River Volturno, opposite the site of the Early Medieval monastery, in 1996 and 1997.

  A production site in the making

  Survey of the east bank of the River Volturno was carried out in 1980 and 1986, and again in the period 1989–97 (Hodges and Mitchell 1985). Geophysical survey was undertaken in 1993 (Fig. 19.2). Surface collection survey identified a broad scatter of Vernice Nera pottery dating between the third to first centuries bc, in fields immediately to the east of a Late Roman bridge on the Volturno, the Ponte della Zingara, and in an arc extending approximately 300m to the south. Together with a number of fragmentary inscriptions, marbles, sculptures and roofing tiles, this material was associated with an Iron Age (Samnite) and Republican vicus (Hodges 1993, 7).

  FIGURE 19.2. Site plan, showing the surveyed and excavated areas, and prominent archaeological features, on the east bank of the Volturno.

  Furthermore, two widespread scatters of Imperial period material were located, one in the area south of the medieval abbey’s twelfth-century enclosure ditch, the other in a field to the north, beneath an ancient terraced olive grove known locally as ‘il vignetto’. This material from both areas, dating between the first to fourth centuries ad, is interpreted as evidence of a high-status villa associated with one of the Decuriones of Isernia (J Patterson 1985). In addition, fragments of glass-working crucible were picked up over a large area to the north of the excavated area, opposite the Ponte della Zingara. Similar material was identified in soil disturbed by the digging of a service trench along the access road to the south of the excavated area. Analysis of this material pointed to the presence of an extensive production site in this area in the eighth and ninth centuries.

  Geophysical survey identified structural remains in a low-lying area to the west of the New Abbey, immediately north of ‘il vignetto’. Excavations in the summer seasons of 1996 and 1997 (Fig. 19.3) identified a multi-period site with a discontinuous settlement sequence from the sixth century bc to the end of the ninth century ad (Gilkes and Moran 2001; Gilkes, Moran and Tremlett forthcoming). The latest occupation deposits were associated with an eighth-to ninth-century production site, which partly occupied the levelled remains of a Samnite-Roman vicus. Together, the evidence of survey and excavation suggests that productive activity once occupied a large area of the east bank of the Volturno, opposite the Early Medieval monastery.

  FIGURE 19.3. Plan of the 1996–7 excavations.

  A single (hypothetical) Early Medieval structure, of timbered or pisé construction, was identified during the excavations. The building had a mortar floor which was separated from an external cobbled yard by a beam slot or eaves-drip gully. While the building was in use, the floor of a room in the adjacent Roman complex was cut by a rubbish pit, subsequently filled with sherds of glass-working crucibles. Contemporaneously, a well was used for dumping waste from a ninth-century pottery kiln. The cobbled area adjacent to the Early Medieval structure was covered by a trample layer, incorporating iron-working waste, fragments of burnt tile and travertine, and glass-working crucibles. The quantity and homogeneity of the artefactual evidence strongly suggest that the material originated in the immediate vicinity of the excavated area, in workshops active on the east bank of the Volturno during the late eighth and ninth centuries.

  FIGURE 19.4. Early Medieval red-painted pottery from the excavations.

  The ceramic sequence from the site mirrors that of the Early Medieval monastery, comprising a large assemblage of red-painted wares of San Vincenzo fabric 4.5 (H Patterson 1985; Arthur and Patterson 1994) (Fig. 19.4). The presence of pottery wasters, and misshapen sherds of imperfectly fired vessels, strongly suggests that a pottery kiln was active in this area in the ninth century. Given the homogeneity of the assemblage, it seems likely that this material was redeposited from a nearby production site, either when the kiln, or kilns, was periodically swept out, or during demolition. A small quantity of possible kiln debris (burnt travertine fragments, and burnt and vitrified tile) was identified in Early Medieval deposits on the site.

  In addition, forty-three sherds of glass-working crucible were recovered from Early Medieval occupation levels, of a wheel-thrown ware belonging to San Vincenzo fabric 4.3, which is attributed to a clay source at Colli al Volturno (Hodges 1991; Patterson 2001) (Fig. 19.5). The material compares closely with the diagnostic forms of glass-working crucibles recovered from tips and fills associated with an early ninth-century glass workshop excavated beneath the atrium of San Vincenzo Maggiore (ibid.; Stevenson 1997) (San Vincenzo crucible forms C2 and C8) (Fig. 19.5:8). Most of the crucible sherds retained thick glassy residues, a deep deposit of dark green glass adhering to one sherd of a broad-based glass crucible (form Ci0d), of a kind associated with the working of window glass (Dell’Acqua 1997). Some evidence of iron-working was also recovered, superficial examination identifying a number of ferrous objects as bloom and slag. Carpentry nails excepted, no finished glass or iron artefacts were recognized during excavation.

  FIGURE 19.5. Early Medieval glass-working crucibles from the excavations.

  The identification of this extensive production site on the east bank of the Volturno raises a number of questions. How were these structures related to the workshops identified within the monastic precinct west of the river, alongside the Carolingian-era abbey-church, San Vincenzo Maggiore? How do these discoveries affect our understanding of the topography of the Early Medieval monastery? What were the economic and socio-political contexts of the production site east of the Volturno? And what was the relation of the technologies (and technologists) located within and without the monastery?

  The structure identified with the production site on the east bank belongs to a vernacular tradition of service and storage buildings, such as those set up alongside temporary workshops ahead of construction of San Vincenzo Maggiore, c. 790 (Fig. 19.6). Between 1986 and 1998, excavation on the west bank of the Volturno revealed that prior to the construction of the church atrium, a complex of partly timbered, clay-bonded or pisé buildings with mortar floors and adjacent cobbled yards stood to the south of a sequence of temporary structures for tile-making, bronze-casting and glass-working (Francis and Moran :997, 377; Moran 2000, 171–5). The complex comprised two large spaces (7 X 9m and 11 X 19m), possibly unroofed yards, with two smaller structures in the west. No evidence of productive activity was found, and the building was interpreted as storage space for fuel, tools, raw materials and finished products, and possibly as shelter or living quarters for artisans or builders. Subsequently, part of the clay-bonded artisanal complex was used for glass production (Moreland 1985). Use of the building ceased with that of the temporary workshops, when the atrium of San Vincenzo Maggiore was built, in the second or third decade of the ninth century.

  Of necessity, temporary workshops of this kind were located on or alongside the building site. However, neither survey nor excavation suggests that prestige monastic buildings occupied the east bank of the Volturno in the eighth and ninth centuries. Rather, it seems the extramural production site already described was established on the east bank of the Volturno once construction of San Vincenzo Maggiore was close to completion. Numismatic evidence from the latter building suggests this h
appened no sooner than the 830s, while the ceramic series from the site east of the river can be attributed to the period c. 830–80 (Gilkes, Moran and Tremlett forthcoming).

  In inland Early Medieval Italy, commerce and patronage depended upon largesse and the wealth of landownership (Wickham 1981, 84–6; Albertoni 1997). San Vincenzo’s expansion coincided with numerous gifts of lands from private Beneventan donors (Wickham 1995, 138–52). Between 800–19, nineteen private charters of gift are recorded from followers of the Beneventan princes, involving nearly sixty estates and a dozen lesser properties and marginal lands, from Venafro to Apulia (Chronicon Vulturnense 34–51 and i, 275). There were fourteen donations of property in the immediate vicinity of the monastery, especially around Venafro and at Vairano and Isernia; others in the countryside around Alife, Benevento, Telese and Salerno; four or five in the plain of Capua; one in the Salernitano; and a string of thirteen properties in Apulia (Lesina, Siponto, Lucera, Canosa, Acerenza, Taranto and Oria) (Wickham 1985, 19–22; 1995, 144). Many of these properties were in or close by the political centres of the Lombard south, and thus were subject to the control of powerful gastalds (at Capua, Venafro, Telese, and Acerenza) (Marazzi 1996). Others were close to production and trading centres in Apulia (Arthur and Patterson 1998).

  FIGURE 19.6. Plan of Early Medieval clay-bonded structures, showing their relation to the temporary workshops, prior to construction of the atrium of San Vincenzo Maggiore.

  There has been much debate about precisely how the monastery translated its immense agricultural revenues into prestige artefacts and buildings (Wickham 1995; Marazzi 1996). Some information is given in the laws of Liutprand (Leges, i, col. 177 No. 4), which stipulates prices that could be charged by the builders’ federation, the magistri commacini. Under the terms of the code, the patron was to provide artisans and labourers with food and wages in coin. However, given the function of coin in late eighth-and ninth-century Italy, builders may not always have demanded payment in cash, even when their patrons were able to provide it (Arslan 1994 and 2000; Rovelli 1994). Thus, during the rebuilding of the walls of Rome under Gregory III (731–41), the workers received materials and their rations from the pope himself, and no mention is made of payment in coin (Davis 1992, 27).

  In ninth-century Italy, ecclesiastical institutions ceded lands to specialist artisans in return for materials for the building of monasteries and churches. On 3i May 84i, Rampert, bishop of Brescia, granted land outside the city to some tile-makers, in return for material for the construction of the suburban church, San Faustino (CDL, 140 No. 247). The tile-makers were licensed to dig for clay on the site, and to build kilns and other structures there for the storage of raw materials, fuel, tools and the finished product.

  By coincidence, the first phase of productive activity at San Vincenzo after c. 790 was tile-making, centred upon a large, vaulted tile kiln with twin firing chambers, similar in form to Roman brick kilns known from Varazze and elsewhere (Moran 2000). The vast numbers of tiles produced are entirely unlike the Early Medieval roofing tiles known from sites in the terra, such as Colle Sant’Angelo (Hodges 1997a, 186–8). Evidently, the tile makers of San Vincenzo were not native to the territory ceded to the monastery at its foundation c. 700, the Terra Sancti Vincentii, although it is possible they hailed from estates granted to the monastery during the first quarter of the ninth century. In antiquity, the region’s tile-makers had enjoyed the praises of Cato, who recommended Venafro as a good place to buy bricks and tiles (De Agri Cultura 135, 1). Could it be that specialist tile-makers were still to be found at or around Venafro in the early ninth century?

  The patronage of the Beneventan nobility gave San Vincenzo the seigneurial and judicial powers to mobilize the human and material resources needed for the monastery’s spectacular rebuilding. In a number of cases, grants of curtes and terrae were accompanied by families of servi; meanwhile, the monastery received a sharp increase in food renders from aristocratic donors (Wickham 1995). During the Carolingian-era reconstruction of the monastery (c. 790–830), the makers of San Vincenzo inhabited a complex of clay-bonded (parttimbered?) buildings and cobbled yards, perhaps while cultivating lands on low-lying ground to the south of San Vincenzo Maggiore. Condumae, family groups of servile persons, occupied Casa Lorenzo, a broad terrace on the edge of the Rocchetta plain, less than two kilometres from the site (Hodges 1997a, 184).

  From production site to monastic workshop

  As the construction of San Vincenzo Maggiore came to completion c. 820, artisans in certain trades established the production site on the east bank of the Volturno (Fig. 19.2), while within the monastery, the pisé building associated with the temporary workshops was partially dismantled and rebuilt in mortar-bonded masonry (Fig. 19.7a). Shortly thereafter, three lateral mortar-bonded walls were inserted, creating four square or rectangular rooms – the so-called ‘collective workshop’ (Fig. 19.7b) (Hodges 1991, 70–4; Mitchell 1996, 148–55; Hodges and Mitchell 1996, 51–3). This probably took place no earlier than the 830s, to judge from the presence of two silver deniers of Sico of Benevento (817–32). Later, following an earthquake in 848, further alterations were made – Room A was given a rubble-built bench and a tiled floor; and Room C was lavishly remodelled as living quarters. Inside, wattle partitions and screens subdivided the space, and the walls were plastered and painted; outside, the eaves were adorned with a row of decorated terracotta corbels. This elaborate architecture replaced the clay-bonded vernacular of the original structure. The room seems to have been used as a tool store in the second half of the ninth century, and was thus interpreted as the office of the monastic superintendent of works, the chamberlain (Mitchell 1996, 150–3).

  At different times in the period 830–81, the adjoining rooms of the so-called ‘collective workshop’ were used by artisans engaged in fine metal-working, bone-and ivory-carving, and possibly textile manufacture (ibid., 148-55). During this period, Room A was used for the composition and finishing of items of fine metalwork and enamels. Finds from the latest occupation deposits included bronze sheet, strips of gilded-and silvered-bronze beaded wire, tacks, hooks and fittings, and two trays of coloured glass cloisonné enamel. In a space to the north of the room, small crucibles were used to heat the tiny quantities of glass needed by the enamellers. It was here that copper-alloy trays were fashioned and fused with coloured glass to create cloisonné enamels, and it was here that the finished objects were gilded or silvered. Otherwise, Room A had been used for the cold assembly and finishing of elaborate liturgical objects such as book covers, reliquaries and processional crucifixes.

  FIGURE 19.7. Plans of (a) the Early Medieval clay-bonded structures and adjoining yards and (b) the so-called ‘collective workshop’.

  During the ninth century, silvered-iron objects of personal adornment, such as belt buckles and strap-ends, mounts and fittings – as well as bridle furniture – were produced at San Vincenzo. A spectacular set of sword-belt mounts, and associated bridle fittings, has been discovered in late ninth-century contexts in the monastery, including two distinctive D-shaped buckles (Mitchell 1994b and 2001). A third, unsilvered iron buckle of this kind was found during excavation in Room B, although no evidence of smithing has been found there or elsewhere in the monastery. Instead, the buckle may have been manufactured elsewhere, and imported to the workshops for silvering. The two Beneventan deniers referred to above were probably intended as a source of silver for this purpose, and, similarly, the silver inlay had been extracted from the incised recto of a three-ounce Byzantine weight found in the excavation of Room A. Thus it seems the production of the monastery’s internal workshops was limited to the assembly and finishing of luxury objects fashioned from materials originated elsewhere, with prestige items brought to the internal workshops for gilding or silvering. The presence of the extramural production site suggests that it was from these less pretentious buildings east of the Volturno that materials for the monastery’s luxury artisans were supplied in prepared form by
another order of (lay?) artisans.

  The monastery’s production of luxury arts in the ninth century may be divided into two categories: liturgical objects (reliquaries, bookcovers and crosses) incorporating cloissoné enamels and carved bone and ivory, for display within the monastery (Mitchell 1985 and 1992; Mitchell and Hansen 2001); and items of personal adornment (sword-belt and bridal furniture), in iron inlaid with silver (Mitchell 1994b and 2001). Objects in the latter category were possibly distributed by the monastic community as gifts to distinguished patrons; the set of sword-belt mounts and associated bridle furniture referred to above was recovered from Early Medieval deposits associated with a furnished grave within the monastery, in an area associated with the reception of distinguished guests.

  The extramural production site and the monastic workshop were the last links in an operational chain of sites engaged in sourcing, collecting, and distributing materials on the monastery’s behalf. Further fieldwork is needed to identify the location and nature of these sites, while the volume of production, and the extent of its distribution, remains largely unknown. Given the paucity of traded commodities (except pottery) identified by survey and excavation at sites in the terra, it may be that production was limited to the local demand of the monastic community and their elite supporters.