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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Geography > Amenity Versus Enterprise

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• Notorious hiatus in observable material culture 5th to 8th centuries. Why?
• Pirenne thesis – economic collapse militant Islamic penetrations as prime mover – Hodges and Whitehouse favour – economic rather than ecological or military imperative: 5ht in West 6 and 7 in East – “general entropy of social and economic life; autarchic settlements appear in the countryside; complex chiefdoms and incipient states are moving goods in limited fashion for non-commercial ends; cities are vanishing or reduced to ecclesiastical and administrative nuceli” – should be visible in 3 spatial frameworks.
• Economic, ecological and ideological – how do you disentangle the factors. Ward-Perkins – numerous villas were abandoned and hilltops were fortified - incastellamento- charming hill-top towns. When why?
• 6th and 8th century (seen from pottery remains) – Christie believes hilltop towns initially founded as strategic hamlet protect Rome to Ravenna route from Goths in 6th century – garrison commanders achieve autonomy – widespread incastellamento and restructuring of the landscape – serving new fedualish agricultural system – independent of imported food. By Arab incursions Rome subordinate supplier to new dispersed hierarchy.
• NEW USES OLD TOWNS – dram. Social and political change – role of towns and resource system changes as a result.
• Ecological – Rome in 4th and 5th centuries – Portus Minucia- grain distribution to Rome took place – earthquake, floods etc – chain of natural events.
• Simeoni’s verdict early medieval city “Squalid; buildings falling down and abandoned outside and inside the walls, the ancient monuments partly robbed and flanked by the miserable constructions of the barbarians”. Hodges says no continuity. Los of urban services and will to maintain urban fabric mist be called decline.
• Cristina La Rocca – uses traditional signals of de-urbanisation not for anarchic abandon but deliberate rearrangement of urban space.
• Buildings refurbished (Verona) using material form old monuments. Evidence for amphitheatre, basilica and capitol are being readapted between 7th and 10th centuries, Not abandoned but privatised.
• Not assume that dimly perceived use of urban space as zoned housing and gardens and elite centres is inferior – just different. Can’t be considered as palace sites either. Alternative investment strategies of the new leaders – fine clothes as opposed to good bricks (Chris Wickham) –

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