Ravenna and the Traditions of Late Antique and Early Byzantine Craftsmanship: Labour, Culture, and the Economy 9783110684346, 9783110684322

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Ravenna and the Traditions of Late Antique and Early Byzantine Craftsmanship

Millennium-Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr.

Millennium Studies in the culture and history of the first millennium C.E. Herausgegeben von / Edited by Wolfram Brandes, Alexander Demandt, Peter von Möllendorff, Dennis Pausch, Rene Pfeilschifter, Karla Pollmann

Volume 85

Ravenna and the Traditions of Late Antique and Early Byzantine Craftsmanship Labour, Culture, and the Economy Edited by Salvatore Cosentino

Diese Publikation wurde im Rahmen des Fördervorhabens 16TOA021 – Reihentransformation für die Altertumswissenschaften („Millennium-Studien“) mit Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung im Open Access bereitgestellt. Das Fördervorhaben wird in Kooperation mit dem DFG-geförderten Fachinformationsdienst Altertumswissenschaften – Propylaeum an der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek durchgeführt.

Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter der Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Lizenz. Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Die Bedingungen der Creative-Commons-Lizenz gelten nur für Originalmaterial. Die Wiederverwendung von Material aus anderen Quellen (gekennzeichnet mit Quellenangabe) wie z.B. Schaubilder, Abbildungen, Fotos und Textauszüge erfordert ggf. weitere Nutzungsgenehmigungen durch den jeweiligen Rechteinhaber. ISBN 978-3-11-068432-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-068434-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-068443-8 ISSN 1862-1139 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935594 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents List of Contributors Abbreviations

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Salvatore Cosentino Introduction 1 Paul Arthur 1 The Changing Geography of Artefact Production in the Late Antique and Early Byzantine Mediterranean 5 Glenn Peers 2 Late Antique Making and Wonder

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Salvatore Cosentino 3 The Structural Features of Ravenna’s Socioeconomic History in Late Antiquity 59 Isabella Baldini 4 The Toilsome Journey of Marbles and Stones Maria Cristina Carile 5 Ivory Production: Commerce, Culture and Power

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Enrico Cirelli 6 Bricks for Ravenna: Materials and the Construction of a Late Antique Imperial Residence 153 Deborah M. Deliyannis 7 The Social Sphere of Writing: Manuscripts, Inscriptions and Papyri Debora Ferreri 8 Grave Goods and Burial Typologies: Funerary Customs in Ravenna Chiara Guarnieri 9 Ravenna, Classe and its Surroundings: Pottery as a Mirror of Everyday Life 259

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Contents

Vivien Prigent 10 Notes on the Production and Circulation of the Byzantine Ravennate Coinage 293 John Haldon 11 Concluding Remarks. One

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Judith Herrin 12 Concluding Remarks. Two

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Index

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List of Contributors Paul Arthur Professor of Christian and Medieval Archaeology Università del Salento [email protected]

Debora Ferreri Adjunct Professor Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna [email protected]

Isabella Baldini Professor of Christian and Medieval Archaelogy Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna [email protected]

Chiara Guarnieri Archaeologist Officer Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la città metropolitana di Bologna e le province di Modena, Reggio Emilia e Ferrara. [email protected]

Maria Cristina Carile Associate Professor of Medieval Art Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna [email protected] Enrico Cirelli Alexander von Humboldt Researcher at Ludwig Maximilians Universität Institut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte und Provinzialrömische Archäologie Junior Researcher of Christian and Medieval Archaeology Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna [email protected] Salvatore Cosentino Professor of Byzantine Civilization Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna [email protected] Deborah M. Deliyannis Professor of History Indiana University, Bloomington [email protected]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110684346-203

John Haldon Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies (emeritus) Princeton University [email protected] Judith Herrin Professor Emerita King’s College London [email protected] Glenn Peers Professor of Medieval Art Syracuse University [email protected] Vivien Prigent CNRS, chargé de recherche UMR 8167, Orient et Méditerranée [email protected]

Abbreviations CARB CIL CHLA CJ CTh LPRa

MGH

PIB PLRE Variae

Corsi di Cultura sull’Arte Ravennate e Bizantina. Ravenna . Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum. Berolini . Chartae Latinae antiquiores, XXIX (= Italy, I). Dietikon – Zürich . Corpus iuris civilis, II, Codex Iustinianus, recensuit P. Krüger. Dublin – Zürich  (editio stereotypa). Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes, ediderunt Th. Mommsen et P. M. Meyer. Berolini . Agnelli Ravennatis Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, cura et studio Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, ), Turnhout ; other editions by Alessandro Testi Rasponi, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores II/, Bologna  (until ch. ); and by Oswald Holder Egger, in MGH, SS Lang. et Ital., Hannoverae , pp. –. Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Hannoverae – (AA = Auctores Antiquissimi; Epp. = Epistulae; SS = Scriptores; SS Mer. = Scriptores rerum Merowingicarum; SS Lang. et Ital. = Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI–XI). S. Cosentino, Prosopografia dell’Italia bizantina, I-II. Bologna –. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, edited by J. R. Martindale. III/A-B, Cambridge . Cassiodori Variae, edidit Th. Mommsen, in MGH, AA, XII, Berolini , pp. –.

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Salvatore Cosentino

Introduction Most of the contributions in this volume were presented in a workshop held in New York in March 2013. Other contributions have since been added to this initial nucleus, which have considerably enriched the original project. In some ways, the present volume stands in an intellectual dialogue with another book recently published on the history of Ravenna, that edited by Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson.1 The interplay between the present publication and the London volume lies not only in the fact that some authors participated in both projects, but above all in their shared purpose: to address the history of Ravenna from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages from both an international and interdisciplinary perspective. In the last twenty years, scholarship on late antique and early medieval Ravenna has resulted in remarkable publications mainly focused on the fields of architecture, mosaics and archaeology.2 While the fil rouge of the London workshop was the topic of change and the transformation of the city, that of the present volume is focused on labour – both manual and intellectual – as well as the structure of production and objects derived from manufacturing activities. Although some of the single aspects dealt with here cannot be considered as original, the book as a whole nevertheless offers an approach to the history of Ravenna which is not very common in the extant scholarship. For reasons not depending on the present writer, it was not possible to include chapters on mosaics and metals. However, if one considers that the former has already been thoroughly investigated by scholars and the production of the latter was very limited within the late antique city, it can be claimed that the present publication does indeed present aspects of originality within the rich Ravennate historiography. The structure of the volume is basically divided in two parts. Three contributions deal with issues of ‘framing’ that concern the changing geography of artifact production in the late antique Mediterranean (Paul Arthur), the perception and meaning of late antique manufacturing making (Glenn Peers), as well as the features of the socioeconomic history of Ravenna during the period under scrutiny (Salvatore Cosentino). 1 Herrin/Nelson 2017. 2 I limit myself to the quotation of monographs and edited books (in chronological order): Manzelli 2000; Mauro 2001; Vespignani 2001; Russo 2003; Montevecchi 2004; Penni Iacco 2004; Ravenna da capitale imperiale a capitale esarcale 2005; Mauro 2005; Tagliaferri 2005; Augenti 2006; Augenti/ Bertelli 2006; Pasi 2006; Ranieri 2006; Augenti, Bertelli 2007; Spadoni, Kniffitz 2007; Barsanti/ Paribeni/Pedone 2008; Cirelli 2008; Kniffitz 2009; Vernia 2009; Mauskopf Deliyannis 2010; Augenti 2011; Baldini 2011; Rizzardi 2011; Penni 2011; Verhoeven 2011; Augenti/Ficara/Ravaioli 2012; David 2013; Jäggi 2013; Sotira 2013; Fiori/Tozzola 2014; Baldi 2015; Dresken-Weiland 2016; Munkhammar 2016; Augenti/Christie/Laszlovsky/Ripoll 2017; Bencivenni 2018; Fiori 2018; Guarnieri/Montevecchi 2018; Johnson 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110684346-001

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There is, then, a series of contributions devoted to specific objects or production activities: imports and use of marble (Isabella Baldini); production and patronage of ivory (Cristina Carile); bricks and vaulting tubes (Enrico Cirelli); pottery (Chiara Guarnieri); the generation of writing culture (Deborah Deliyannis); grave goods and funerary customs (Debora Ferreri); minting (Vivien Prigent). The volume ends with stimulating final remarks by John Haldon and Judith Herrin. Seen through the prism of labour and production, what kind of image did Ravenna convey in Late Antiquity? We have a city that connotes itself simultaneously as both consumer and productive centre. It could be argued that this feature was shared by most urban settlements in the ancient and medieval world; and yet, what is really peculiar about Ravenna is the contrast between a city which was not big demographically-speaking and the sophisticated articulation of its labour market. We are told by the contributions in this volume that Ravennate society imported huge quantities of Proconnesian marble from the East, ivory from Egypt, high-priced wines and olive oil from the Fertile Crescent and Istria, papyrus perhaps from Sicily, and grain from Istria and Sicily. It also necessarily had to import precious metals such as gold, silver and copper for the functioning of its mint. Who were the actors who supported this economic demand? Certainly, in addition to the imperial court and that of the Ostrogothic kings, the church of Ravenna also played a remarkable role, becoming increasingly important starting from the early 6th century onwards. Furthermore, the army should especially be taken into account when analyzing the 5th century, as it must have reached important numerical concentrations at certain moments during this time span. Yet if, on the one hand, these prominent ‘public’ actors provided Ravenna with its late antique economic imprint, it did not constitute the unique forces that supported the demand. There was also an active middle class in the city that was styled in the written sources as viri honesti. It represented a segment of the population which was endowed with economic means that was active along with the big public actors (court and church) in supporting the cycle of production, consumption and demand in a much larger way than the laic aristocracy did – which was in itself quite evanescent in Ravenna until at least the early 9th century. I would add that this feature, namely the sociallycomposed nature of economic demand in the city, remained a visible trait even during the early Middle Ages. Due to the series of characteristics that the history of production and craftsmanship has in Ravenna, it constitutes a privileged observatory for economic and social history, although perhaps not easily comparable to other urban models witnessed in the late antique Mediterranean. In completing this volume, I have incurred some debts. I want to thank Prof. David Freedberg and the Italian Academy at Columbia University for hosting the workshop in New York in (the now-distant) March 2013, as well as the Fondazione Flaminia of Ravenna and the former vice-mayor of Ravenna, Mr. Giannantonio Mingozzi, for having generously co-funded the organization of this same workshop. I also wish to thank all the Editors of the ‘Millennium Studies’, especially

Introduction

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Prof. Wolfram Brandes, for including this volume in the series, as well as Dr. Veronica Casali for helping me during the editorial process.

Bibliography Augenti, Andrea, ed. 2006. Ravenna tra Oriente e Occidente: storia e archeologia. Ravenna. Augenti, Andrea, ed. 2011. Classe. Indagini sul potenziale archeologico di una città scomparsa. Bologna. Augenti, Andrea and Bertelli, Carlo, eds. 2006. Santi Banchieri Re. Ravenna e Classe nel VI secolo, San Severo il tempio ritrovato. Milano. Augenti, Andrea and Bertelli, Carlo, eds. 2007. Felix Ravenna. La croce, la spada, la vela: l’alto adriatico fra V e VI secolo. Milano. Augenti, Andrea, Christie, Neil, Laszlovsky, Jozef and Ripoll, Gisela, eds. 2017. La Basilica di San Severo a Classe. Scavi 2006. Bologna. Augenti, Andrea, Ficara, Marisa and Ravaioli, Enrico, eds. 2012. Atlante dei beni archeologici della provincia di Ravenna, I, Il paesaggio monumentale del medioevo. Bologna. Baldi, Elena. 2015. The Coin Evidence as a Source for the History of Classe (Ravenna). Excavations of the Harbour Area (2001–2005) and the Basilica of San Severo (2006–2010), BAR International Series 2736. Oxford. Baldini, Isabella, ed. 2011. L’avventura archeologica di Giuseppe Gerola dall’Egeo a Ravenna. Bologna. Barsanti, Claudia, Paribeni, Andrea and Pedone, Silvia, eds. 2008. Rex Theodericus: il Medaglione d’oro di Morro d’Alba. Roma. Bencivenni, Alice. 2018. Ravenna. Le iscrizioni greche. Milano. Cirelli, Enrico. 2008. Ravenna: archeologia di una città. Borgo S. Lorenzo. David, Max. 2013. La basilica di S. Croce: nuovi contributi per Ravenna tardoantica. Ravenna. Dresken-Weiland, Jutta. 2016. Die frühchristlichen Mosaiken von Ravenna: Bild und Bedeutung. Regensburg. Fiori, Cesare and Tozzola, Eliana, eds. 2014. San Giovanni Evangelista a Ravenna: storia di una chiesa, di mosaici perduti e di mosaici ritrovati. Ravenna. Fiori, Cesare. 2018. Tecnica e arte del mosaico antico. Ravenna. Guarnieri, Chiara and Montevecchi, Giovanna, eds. 2018. Il Genio delle Acque. Scavi nelle piazze di Ravenna (DEA, Documenti e Evidenze di Archeologia, 9). Ravenna. Herrin, Judith and Nelson, Jinty. 2017. Ravenna, Its Role in Earlier Medieval Change and Exchange. London. Jäggi, Carola. 2013. Ravenna. Kunst und Kultur einer spätantiken Residenzstadt. Die Bauten und Mosaiken des 5. und 6. Jahrhunderts. Regensburg. Johnson, Mark. 2018. San Vitale in Ravenna and Octagonal Churches in Late Antiquity. Wiesbaden. Kniffitz, Linda, ed. 2009. L’imperium e l’oblatio nei mosaici di Ravenna e Costantinopoli, Centro Internazionale di Documentazione sul Mosaico. Ravenna. Manzelli, Valentina. 2000. Ravenna. Città romane, 2. Roma. Mauro, Maurizio, ed. 2001. Ravenna Romana. Ravenna. Mauro, Maurizio, ed. 2005. I porti antichi di Ravenna. Ravenna. Mauskopf Deliyannis, Deborah. 2010. Ravenna in Late Antiquity. Cambridge. Montevecchi, Giovanna, ed. 2004. Archeologia urbana a Ravenna: la Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra, il complesso archeologico di via D’Azeglio. Ravenna.

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Munkhammar, Lars. 2016. La Bibbia dei Goti, Ravenna e Teoderico. Un antico manoscritto, il Codex Argenteus. Ravenna. Pasi, Silvia. 2006. Ravenna, San Vitale: il corteo di Giustiniano e Teodora e i mosaici del presbiterio e dell’abside. Modena. Penni Iacco, Emanuela. 2004. La basilica di S. Apollinare Nuovo di Ravenna attraverso i secoli. Bologna. Penni Iacco, Emanuela. 2011. L’arianesimo nei mosaici di Ravenna. Ravenna. Ranieri, Egidio. 2006. La monetazione di Ravenna antica dal V all’VIII secolo: impero romano e bizantino, regno ostrogoto e longobardo. Bologna. Ravenna da capitale imperiale a capitale esarcale (Atti del XVII Congresso Internazionale di Studio sull’Alto Medioevo). 2 vols. Spoleto 2005 Rizzardi, Clementina. 2011. Il mosaico a Ravenna. Ideologia e arte. Bologna. Russo, Eugenio. 2003. L’architettura di Ravenna paleocristiana. Venezia. Sotira, Letizia. 2013. Gli altari nella scultura e nei mosaici di Ravenna (V-VIII secolo). Bologna. Spadoni, Claudio and Kniffitz, Linda, eds. 2007. San Michele in Africisco e l’età giustinianea a Ravenna. Milano. Tagliaferri, Maurizio, ed. 2005. La chiesa metropolitana ravennate e i suoi rapporti con la costa adriatica orientale. Imola. Verhoeven, Mariëtte. 2011. The Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna: Transformation and Memory. Turnhout. Vernia, Barbara. 2009. Leggere i muri: analisi degli edifici di culto nella Ravenna del V secolo. Bologna. Vespignani, Giorgio. 2001. La Románia italiana dall’Esarcato al Patrimonium. Spoleto.

Paul Arthur

1 The Changing Geography of Artefact Production in the Late Antique and Early Byzantine Mediterranean Abstract: Archaeology is helping to define the changing geography of artefact production between the 6th and the 8th centuries, a seminal period for the economic development of the later Middle Ages. This paper presents a selection of the evidence for different classes of resources and objects, arguing that the geography of professional artefact production was largely conditioned by a policy of survival of the post-Roman successor states, particularly Byzantium, the élite and the capital cities. It permitted the maintenance or redirection of communication networks and the distribution of many products to government officials, the army and other privileged parties, throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. The bulk of the population, on other hand, with limited access to capital and to marketplaces, had to rely ever increasingly on selfsufficiency in the supply of fundamental items of daily use.

For some time various scholars have avoided using terms like “decline and fall”, “collapse”, or even “crisis”, in the context of the end of the Roman Empire in the West, preferring to use words that hold no necessarily negative attributes, such as “transformation”.1 Of course, one person’s or one Empire’s ruin may well have been someone else’s success, as all depends upon individual fortunes and standpoints. In the Western world, scholars often tend to use these words in the context of the western Roman Empire looking outwards, from the “Roman” point of view, rather than inwards, from the point of view of the peoples who supplanted the Empire. I do not want to enter into a debate that is not my current remit, if only to say that I greatly appreciate this aspect of the book by Bryan Ward-Perkins2 that attempts to address the question of the fall of the Western Roman Empire as the collapse of a civilisation, rather than of its transformation, once again placing a certain amount of weight on the shoulders of successor populations who, given Rome’s economic decline, entered what had been for many centuries a somewhat self-centred Roman “world” Empire. I

1 See, for instance, Cameron 2012. 2 Ward-Perkins 2005. Note: I would like to thank Salvatore Cosentino for inviting me to take part in this volume. Vasco La Salvia has generously helped me understand Byzantine mining and metallurgy. I also take the opportunity of thanking my former students Brunella Bruno, Simona Catacchio and Marco Leo Imperiale for discussion and useful observations. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110684346-002

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also find quite convincing the view of Harper3 that suggests that much had to do with climatic changes and their consequences, quite beyond Roman control or perception. Nonetheless, even racked by crisis, the Empire did not collapse in Late Antiquity, but substantially reshaped its borders, shifting its centre of gravity from the ever more precarious Rome, to the more strategic and defensible Constantinople, and both sought and was made to adapt to the severe changes of the times.4 This paper will examine one aspect of adaptation, how the geography of artefact production changed as the western part of the Roman Empire substantially came apart and was eventually replaced, whilst the eastern part was able to survive as a coherent block, largely centred on the Aegean, for centuries to come. It will therefore concentrate on the years from the later 6th century when the emperor Justinian briefly re-conquered part of the West, to the beginning of economic revival during the course of the 8th century, which material effects were to be more clearly seen through the years of growth during the Middle Byzantine period of the 9th and 10th centuries.5 Indeed, it will be argued that the geography of professional artefact production was largely conditioned by a policy of survival of the State, the élite and their capital city, which permitted the maintenance or redirection of communication networks and the distribution of many products. Conversely, the bulk of the population, with limited access to capital and to marketplaces, had to rely ever more on self-sufficiency in the supply of fundamental items of daily use. The theme of the “Geography of artefact production in late antique and early Byzantine Mediterranean” is vast and would require a book or more unto itself, as it is by no means an easy task to try and define a pattern or an all-embracing model with such disparate and imbalanced evidence that currently exists. This contribution will thus concentrate on some aspects that I personally find to be of particular interest, and from the viewpoint of an archaeologist working principally on Byzantine Italy. I have also been careful not to dwell exclusively on the production of ceramics, which are the most studied category of ancient manufactured goods and have been dealt with elsewhere, including in the magisterial synthesis by Wickham on the early Middle Ages.6 Ceramics have indeed, and perhaps all too often, been used as proxy-data for the ups and downs of production and exchange, but cannot paint the whole picture. Furthermore, far more has been written about the movement of goods (particularly concerning ceramics, as just noted) than about their production, also because of the prevailing archaeological evidence for the former, in the form of recovered objects with

3 Harper 2017; although see the critique by Sessa 2019. 4 Haldon 2016. In writing this paper I have reread the old but still very readable essay by Lopez 1957, which has much that is relevant to the topics discussed here. 5 Decker 2016. 6 Wickham 2005.

1 The Changing Geography of Artefact Production

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provenance related to their use, rather than for the latter.7 As Enrico Zanini has perceptibly observed, the archaeology of goods and of productive and commercial structures is also, in part, the archaeology of the rather textually silent productive and commercial “middle-class”.8 That there was a breakdown in the production and circulation of many massproduced items across most of the ancient Roman Empire is now assured. One of the largest and most efficient industries, that of African Red Slip Ware (Fig. 1) and Tunisian amphorae (Fig. 2), which products were distributed throughout the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and parts of northern Europe, witnessed recession during the second half of the 6th century and effectively collapsed by the beginning of the 8th.9 The economic trajectory of African Red Slip Ware, as with many amphorae, appears to witness a gradual reduction in its markets during this period, with products being sent to specific and privileged sites.

Fig. 1: Distribution of late African Red Slip ware forms 105–106 (courtesy Michel Bonifay).

7 An important exception is now the volume edited by Molinari, Santangeli Valenzani, Spera 2015, that concentrates on Rome. 8 Zanini 2006. 9 Bonifay 2004, 482–485.

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Fig. 2: Hill of amphora sherds from the Chouggafia amphora workshop, near Neapolis in northern Tunisia. Tunisian-French mission directed by M. Fantar and T. Ghalia (courtesy Michel Bonifay).

Over the last dozen years or so I have been excavating the remains of a later 7th to early 9th century village in the heel of Italy, at Supersano in southern Puglia, in what was then Byzantine territory.10 Alongside the recovery of about 7.500 fragments of pottery, all made locally,11 we found only one fragment of imported pottery, a residual piece of North African Red Slip Ware, possibly part of an heirloom, one glass beaker probably from northern Italy12 and a few fragments of imported volcanic rotary querns apparently from the island of Melos. In sum, long-distance imports at the site were all but absent, and those very few found seem to represent either rare status objects (the glass), or irreplaceable necessities.13 In quite stark contrast to these finds are the plethora of objects that come from the many urban and rural contexts dated to the 5th and 6th centuries that have

10 Arthur, Fiorentino, Leo Imperiale 2008. 11 In this essay I will regard exchange as being local (