25 Chapter 1597 12/10/07 11:44 Page 649

25
The Contribution of Regional Survey
to the Late Antiquity Debate:
Greece in its Mediterranean Context
J. BINTLIFF
Leiden University

Summary. The fall of Rome, so awesome for Saint Augustine when the news
reached the North African provinces that it stimulated his imagination to contem-
plate the truly eternal City of God, continues to intrigue and puzzle us. Our
archaeological and historical concerns today are less metaphysical and more intel-
lectually challenging at the level of reconstructing the processes at work before,
during and long after the official sack of Rome, and are as much focused on the
succeeding transition to the medieval world as on the build-up to imperial decay
and collapse. This paper develops out of a grass-roots case-study examination of
the transformation of society in town and country in central Greece, founded on a
regional survey project that has been running for 25 years. From the arrival of
Roman control, through late antiquity and into the resurgence of strong state con-
trol emanating out of Byzantium in the eighth–nineth centuries AD, I shall try to
set the patterns, provisional interpretations and questions which have arisen from
the sequence in this region into wider debates around the Mediterranean concern-
ing the contribution of regional archaeological survey to the late antique–early
medieval transition.

Introduction

IN THE WEST-EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM, our perception of the end
of antiquity could be well-symbolized by the reaction of Saint Augustine, a bishop in
North Africa, when he heard of the sack of Rome in AD 410 (cf. Bintliff and Hamerow
1995, Introduction). The end of ‘civilization as we know it’ seemed apparent, and the
tide of destructive barbarian tribes did not take long to flow over Augustine’s Roman
province as well. After this came centuries of ‘barbarism’ before traditional Eurocentric

Proceedings of the British Academy 141, 649–678. © The British Academy 2007.
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650 J. Bintliff

narratives see the gleam of recovery with the Carolingians and the slow crystallization
of the Western nation-states out of the Dark-Age tribal kingdoms.
Other contributors to this collection have been asked to address questions of urban
change across late antiquity and into the early medieval era, so I shall deal primarily in
this chapter with the evidence from intensive regional archaeological surface survey. I
shall offer a quick tour around a number of landscapes in the Mediterranean, before
focusing on our own regional results for late antiquity from central Greece. My aim is
to show the complexity of the period and of divergent trajectories to the middle ages.

An early West-versus-East dichotomy

The classic pioneer Mediterranean surface survey was the South Etruria Survey, pub-
lished in the 1960s–1970s, most notably in the marvellous synthesis by Tim Potter
(1979). The striking cumulative picture (Fig. 1) of a progressively declining countryside
in the later Empire well before the Barbarian invasions of the early fifth century, con-
trasting with a climax of population and prosperity in the first two centuries AD of the
early Empire, appeared to encapsulate the fall of the Western Empire as a combination
of internal decay and an external coup de grâce. A model for the trajectory of the
Eastern Empire was provided by the early 1980s from the Boeotia Survey in central
Greece, directed by myself and Anthony Snodgrass (Bintliff and Snodgrass 1985;
Bintliff and Snodgrass 1988a) (Figs 2–4) where the countryside reached its peak popu-
lation and wealth much earlier, in classical Greek times around 400 BC, fell into stag-
nation from late Hellenistic through to early imperial times (c.200 BC–AD 200), but then
recovered to a new peak of rural activity (but on a markedly lesser scale than the pre-
ceding climax) in the late Roman era —here strikingly dated to c.AD 400–600. The out-
of-phase relationship implied for the Western and Eastern Roman Empire was marked,
and perhaps could be considered as a linked series of processes (Bintliff and Snodgrass
1988b).

Figure 1. Site numbers over time in part of the South Etruria Survey region, after Potter (1979, p. 142).
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 651

Figure 2. Boeotia Survey, South-west Area, sites of the archaic to classical era.
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652 J. Bintliff

Figure 3. Boeotia Survey, South-west Area, sites of the late Hellenistic and transition to early
Roman imperial eras.

The evidence proliferates, diversity grows

Subsequently, however, a much larger body of survey publications has become available
from many other regions of the Mediterranean, prompting the realization that there is
great diversity within both the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire.
In the Ager Cosanus in coastal Etruria, the rural settlement pattern agrees with and
adds to the older British survey of inland South Etruria, showing (Fig. 5) a progressive
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 653

Figure 4. Boeotia Survey, South-west Area, sites of the late Roman era.

decline of rural sites over the middle to late Empire (in Western chronology).
According to Cambi and Fentress (1989), by the early Empire small peasant farms go
and slave villas dominate. In the middle to late Empire these villas progressively decline
in number, leaving by AD 500–600 a small network of late Roman-origin large estates
which are argued to form the basis for the subsequent nucleated village pattern of the
Middle Ages —the latter villages arising often in their near vicinity. Disconcertingly,
however, Fentress’s study of the regional town of Cosa (Fentress 1994) tells a different
story: the Republican colony here failed, whilst attempted imperial refoundations by
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654 J. Bintliff

Figure 5. Early to late Roman site numbers in the Albegna Valley, Ager Cosanus (columns) plotted
against the regional (shaded block) levels of import in north-African fine table ware, and the rate of
import at a major villa site in the survey area (white block) (fig. 1 from Cambi and Fentress, 1989).

Augustus and in the third century also had short and unsuccessful fates (cf. Fig. 6).
Finally a Byzantine fort appears, but the site by then has a different name. Fentress’s
interpretation stresses the early loss of a free peasant population in the region, a dom-
inance of slave villas, then the decline even of the latter, plus the lack of the need for a
town by these land-owners, as key elements cutting off all the necessary stimuli for
urban survival and of the supply of peasants which could feed later recolonization.
Likewise in the Roman East, Hans Lohmann’s tremendous pioneer survey in the
hinterland of Athens, Attica (Lohmann 1993), specifically of the deme of Atene, shows
a spectacularly preserved classical Greek landscape of estate centres, followed by
almost total abandonment till the twentieth century, the only significant intervening
activity being a series of pastoral enclosures dating to late antiquity. In central Greece
our urban survey at the Boeotian city of Haliartos showed also a classical Greek
apogee, but abandonment in early Roman times, and merely hamlet or farm reuse in
the later Roman Empire. The catalyst here was destruction by the Roman army in the
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 655

Figure 6. Settlement AD 150–200: sest trials in selected sectors of the Roman imperial town of Cosa,
with postulated occupied zone of insulae in black, insulae zones of rubbish disposal in grey (from
Fentress 1994, fig. 3).

second century BC, but it is striking that neither town, nor its immediate chora or tied
hinterland, recovered till the middle ages (Bintliff and Snodgrass 1988a).
These examples sensitize us to the need to investigate the economic and social
processes that structure the life of town and country, and their contingent conjunctures
with more short-term events of a military or political nature. But even when we possess
maps of town and country period by period, allowing us to make such comparisons
between the nature, size, and number of urban sites with the corresponding development
of rural sites, it is now necessary to embark on a new process underway in recent years —
a radical revaluation of the interpretative possibilities of the data involved in regional
survey. Moreover the project in intensive survey circles of acquiring higher resolution
data, especially ceramic knowledge of poorly known periods, is often rewriting older
interpretations. Let me now illustrate these points by calling in on a number of classic
Mediterranean survey projects for late antiquity.

The Levant in late antiquity

I shall begin with a flourishing late Roman settlement pattern in a region where one of
our contributors —Jean-Pierre Sodini —has been active, along with generations of
French researchers, the eastern uplands of Syria (Fig. 7), although similar phenomena
exist through Jordan and Palestine. Since Tchalenko’s pioneering analysis (Tchalenko
1953–5) of the 700 or so late Roman stone villages in the northern limestone Massif,
much rethinking, and restudy of these dense upland settlements has been ongoing,
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656 J. Bintliff

Figure 7. Villages of late antique Syria (from Greene 1986, fig. 58—after Tchalenko 1953, pl. 35).

especially by Georges Tate (Tate 1992) and others (for recent discussions: Graf 1991;
Gatier 1994; Foss 1995; Doukellis 1996). It is suggested that this proliferation of agri-
cultural villages rises in density from early Roman times to the fifth century, slows in
the sixth but is still increasing in the seventh— although the quality of constructions
may be declining in the sixth–seventh centuries. It is claimed that many villages con-
tinue into early Islamic times, to the eighth–nineth centuries AD, but generally aban-
donment occurs by the end of this period. Notably for us neither the sixth-century and
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 657

later plague, nor the sixth–seventh-century invasions by the Persians and Arabs seem to
cause catastrophic closing down of this landscape, rather a steady rise then gradual
decline is argued for. The much-disputed basis for this rise-and-fall cycle rests on the
role of export products from these villages: for Tchalenko the trade in surplus olive oil
to the lowland cities or overseas was the basis for the settlement system, with the
decline of Roman towns and imperial trade causing local collapse. Tate and Callot
argue that trade was a supplement rather than mainstay of the villages (cf. Gatier
1994), the area being marginal, the surplus exaggerated —but Tate still suggests that
ultimately there was a Malthusian overpopulation crisis and this scissored with a
decline in the extra income from trade to the lowlands to stimulate the abandonments
between final late Roman and Abbasid (middle Islamic) times. We would like more
work on the disputed auto-consumption versus commercial supply of oil debate! For
example, on the Golan Heights of Palestine, Macoz and Killebrew (1988) have calcu-
lated for one such late antique village, that of Qasrin, that olive oil production was
enough to supply both the 300 site inhabitants and an additional 600 people as a trade
product, helping to pay for its fine synagogue perhaps.
Further south in the Levant, Steve Rosen and other Israeli scholars have recently re-
evaluated the equally dramatic flourishing of small towns (some half-dozen) and rural
farms in the arid Negev Desert (Rosen 2000; cf. also Rosen and Avni 1993; Avni 1994;
and Haiman 1995). The following figure (Fig. 8) shows one of these towns —Avdat —
a familiar late Roman plan with fortified ecclesiastical and military enclosures and a
large extramural settlement. Around it the contemporary, well-preserved surface water-
control systems still remain visible, which elevated an impossibly low rainfall to levels
comparable to the Mediterranean croplands of the Palestine coasts to the north. The
towns show decline in size and number through the late sixth and seventh centuries, but

Figure 8. The late Roman town of Avdat in the northern Negev Desert (photo by author).
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658 J. Bintliff

there is partial survival through early Islamic times. In contrast, the countryside around
(Fig. 9), beginning with this late Roman picture of flourishing farm settlement around
towns in the northern Negev, farms alone in the south, and dependent specialist pas-
toralism in the south-east, sees further agricultural expansion in early Islamic times,
when the farming border pushed much further south than in the late Roman era. The
cultivated countryside, again, will not see decline and abandonment till the nineth–
tenth centuries. And the same question arises: the rise and fall cycle is clearly not the
victim of plague, Persians or Arabs, but can the economic function of this agricultural
intake of the semi-desert explain things better? For Steve Rosen, exports of wine and
other agricultural products and pastoral production depended on a large market in the
core agricultural hinterland of Mediterranean Palestine, but at the same time, Avni and
Rosen have argued that the fluctuations of rainfall meant that surpluses were unreliable
and in some years the state would have had to step in with food supplies to sustain life
in the Negev. A political act by late Roman and Umayyad (early Islamic) powers
encouraged sedentary life here, with profit from commerce being an irregular reward
for the heavy investment needed to farm in this region. A shift in state interests in
Abbasid times, away from the Levant and towards Iraq and Baghdad, may be relevant
to the rural collapse, as in contemporary Syria.

The Libyan Valleys

The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey again studies an unparalleled intake of a mar-
ginal pre-desert landscape, this time in Tripolitania, and also reliant on artificial irriga-
tion systems (Fig. 10) (Gilbertson et al. 2000). A great expansion in this challenging
environment in early Roman times is sustained in late antiquity. In the sixth–seventh
centuries the south zone is gradually abandoned and settlement concentrates in the
north sector studied, then the settlement system winds down slowly through the early
Islamic period (still using the same technology), eventually to become the limited wadi-
farming nucleated settlements of today. The role of elites and the status of the farmers
themselves —independent or sharecroppers —is unclear, and once again the impor-
tance of commercial exports from this costly investment in a difficult landscape is hotly
disputed. Barker and Gilbertson maintain that the export of surplus olive oil and cere-
als was significant to the phenomenon of colonization, whereas in the same team van
der Veen (1985) argues that like the Negev, the very variable rainfall ensured that large
regular surpluses were not likely, making autoconsumption the basis for the Roman
farms. Nonetheless, if state encouragement to sedentarize nomads and produce occa-
sional surpluses was then prone to changes in state power, the political changes of the
sixth–eighth centuries remain potentially relevant to the ultimate disappearance of this
dense farming landscape.
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 659

Figure 9. From Rosen 2000, fig. 3.4. Late Roman settlement and land use zonation in the Negev
Desert: upper oblique shading — rural agricultural settlement focused on urban centres; central
horizontal shading — rural agricultural settlement without urbanism; lower oblique shading—
dependent specialist pastoralism.
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660 J. Bintliff

Figure 10. Location map of the UNESCO Libyan Valleys project in the pre-desert sector, in relation
to the lower limit for rainfed farming at 200 mm rainfall (from Gilbertson et al. 2000, fig. 8.1).

Southern France

Now we move to a very different landscape —the Rhone Valley (Fig. 11) and its late
Antique settlement system. A vast database of 634 survey sites associated with meticu-
lous fieldwork and quantitative analysis allow Raynaud, Fiches and colleagues to chal-
lenge us again with a new and surprising narrative for Roman era settlement history
(Raynaud, 1996). The number (Fig. 12) and surface occupation area of the sites do
show a clear decline from early to late Roman times, but the French team dispute the
apparent significance of the trend. The main change is an early Roman boom in small
sites. The number of large sites to small sites (Fig. 13) shifts from ⬎5:1 to 2:1 to ⬎5:1
again, from Republican to late Roman times, but Raynaud argues that (a) many of the
small sites are not residential or are at least temporary agricultural stations for villas or
villages nearby, and (b) the peak in surface area occupied, associated with the early
Roman sites, is a product of the fact that those which are permanent are two to three
times larger than pre-Roman farms due to Roman habits of prestigious space-eating
villa plans. Although, therefore, from the third century, site numbers and surface areas
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 661

Figure 11. Mediterranean France with the location of intensive survey sectors studied in the
framework of the Archeomedes Project (from Raynaud 1996, fig. 1).

decline, the author argues that much of this is rather a restructuring of space (Fig. 14),
the population remaining focused at villas and villages, although some degree of pop-
ulation decline and a definite reduction in the number of villages are still admitted. The
real change is set in the seventh century (long into post-Roman times), when a more
dramatic thinning-out of the last group of villas and villages takes place (cf. the results
from the Albegna Valley within the Ager Cosanus discussed above). But this is still seen
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662 J. Bintliff

Figure 12. Changing percentages of sites occupied and surface area of sites in the sectors from
Fig. 11, during Roman Republican through to early post-Roman times (from Raynaud 1996, fig. 3).

Figure 13. Changing proportions of large and small rural sites in the sectors of Fig. 11: in late
Republican and late Roman to early post-Roman times, large sites are more than five times commoner
than small, whilst in early Roman imperial times, they are only twice as common (from Raynaud
1996, fig. 12).

as a continuous story of progressive focusing from the third century on a network of

domains or villages —and the longest lived of these will be the germs for the medieval
village network. The prime case study is the locality of Lunel where detailed excavations
have provided a good test for this model (Raynaud, 1990).

Figure 14. Opposite: Hypothesized estate territories (labelled A–M) in late Roman times in one
survey block of the area shown in Fig. 11 (from Raynaud 1996, fig.2).
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664 J. Bintliff

Boeotia

Let me finally turn to a discussion of the results of our own project in Boeotia, central
Greece (Fig. E) for late antiquity (utilizing the original survey directed by myself and
Professor Anthony Snodgrass, and our current work by myself, Professor Bozidar
Slapsak and Dr K. Sbonias).
(1) At the regional level we have long been struck by the remarkable fact of how
much of the Greco-Roman town and village network (Fig. 15: Greco-Roman
nucleated sites in the region) is mirrored in the network of nucleated settle-
ment in the high medieval era (Fig. 16). Our windows of intensive survey have
shown that the likelihood of occupational continuity on or near ancient foci is
very great.
(2) Our ongoing survey at the city of Tanagra (Bintliff 2006) shows vigorous early
and late Roman activity in the town (although it has slightly contracted since
classical Greek times), and intensive land use in its surrounding countryside,
very much against the trend elsewhere in central Greece. In late Roman times,

Figure 15. Nucleated settlements in Greco-Roman Boeotia, central Greece: towns represented by
triangles, villages by circles.
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 665

Figure 16. Settlement foci in middle Byzantine and Frankish Boeotia.

repairs are made to the entire fourth-century BC circuit wall of the city. The
urban plan (Fig. 17: based on geophysics) reveals progressive changes to the
classical Greek grid of streets and insulae, with baths and small and giant
churches erected over older public and private blocks. In the countryside in
early to late Roman times it is mostly rich land-owners who seem to be build-
ing, some 2 km from the city, a large settlement, fortified probably in late
antiquity, may perhaps have acted not only as a satellite village to late Roman
Tanagra but even at a certain point replaced it as the district population focus,
with its greater defensibility and smaller circuit (the hilltop peninsula of Agios
Constantinos). At the end of the troubled Dark Ages of the seventh to eighth
centuries AD the latter site has been replaced by a small open landscape
middle Byzantine hamlet lying intermediate between the ancient city and our
suspected sub-Roman refuge site. Our current model is to suggest that after
the devastations of the Black Death and the Slav invasions of the later sixth
century into the early seventh, urban and rural populations shrank to village
level, accommodated in the refuge site and subsequent Byzantine hamlet.
(3) Another village site in Boeotia studied much earlier by our survey teams was
Askra, in the Valley of the Muses (Fig. E). Here we have argued for continu-
ity at the end of antiquity, but on-site in this case. What had been a large,
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666 J. Bintliff

Figure 17. Geophysical prospection (resistivity) by the Archaeology Department, Ljubljana

University, of the southern part of the Greco-Roman city of Tanagra, Boeotia: this method highlights
walls and especially brings out the gridplan of streets and house blocks created in late classical Greek
times. Also visible, however, is the apsidal cathedral of late antiquity in the lower left image (third
block from the left, adjacent to a stoa running to its left) and a possible Roman bath complex or per-
haps baptistery in the third block from the right (same row) (courtesy of Bozidar Slapsak and Branko
Music).
almost town-like settlement in classical Greek times had shrunk drastically by
the early Roman period, but in the late Roman era a great revival occurs,
bringing the occupied area back to classical Greek levels (we estimate some
1,000 people there in the fith to sixth centuries AD). We have argued from a
number of pieces of evidence that this village over the following centuries
metamorphosed into a middle Byzantine village, which significantly by the
tenth century had acquired a Slav name and a bishop; the surface finds sug-
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 667

gest a very small community in between these dates and either a population
replacement by incoming Slav peasant invaders or a merger of indigenous
with incoming populations. We have traced the subsequent minor displace-
ments of this village to two further locations in the same valley, up to the pres-
ent day (Bintliff and Snodgrass 1988a; Bintliff 2000), incidentally underlining
the critical role of complete survey coverage of Siedlungskammer or settle-
ment chambers in a landscape. Here, and at Tanagra, the plague of the sixth
century AD and the economic and military crisis of that century and of the
seventh surely can be registered, but equally let us note the case for peasant sur-
vival and adaptation through early medieval times, which may well be the germ
for settlement and population revival in high medieval times (reminiscent of
both the Ager Cosanus and Rhone Valley scenarios).
(4) Another earlier survey site of ours is the large city of Thespiae (Fig. E), most
extensive and populous in classical Greek times (95 ha) (Bintliff and
Snodgrass 1988a). It shrank by the early Roman period to less than half its
size (40 ha) and, despite a spectacular recovery in the number and size of sites
in its chora in late Roman times, the town remained obstinately shrunken.
Nonetheless, note a familiar scenario: a small fourth-century AD-plus kastro
(fort) of spolia (enclosing some 12 ha) is erected within the late antique settled
area, outside of which lies an extramural town of some 36 ha incorporating
several churches, and —most significant —overlying this extramural late
Roman town is an extensive middle Byzantine village. Again our working
model, subject to ongoing ceramic research, is that buried amidst our late
Roman ceramics should lie material deposited by a ‘sub-Roman’ village of the
seventh–eighth centuries, which will subsequently be replaced by the distinc-
tive assemblage (from outside cultural contacts) of Byzantine glazed and
other new and distinctive medieval wares by the ninth–tenth centuries. A
further point of interest in this district of Boeotia is the open, undefended
location of both the Askra village and the successor village overlying the
extramural settlement of late antique Thespiae.
(5) Our very recent, unpublished work on the rural hinterland of Thespiae City
(Bintliff, Howard and Snodgrass, 2006) adds unexpected revisions to our pre-
vious interpretations of the late Roman landscape of Greece. In classical
Greek times (Fig.18) we estimate that some 75 per cent of the city-state’s pop-
ulation lived in the town (c.12,000 people), whilst the remaining 25 per cent
dwelt in its hinterland —of which we show here only the sector which is the
inner 2–3 km radius out from the town and to its south. Population estimates
point to 100 per cent land utilization and within the farms and hamlets shown
here a significant percentage of residents must have been working on the
estates of rich urban land-owners. In the transitional era, late Hellenistic to
early Roman times (Fig. 19), severe depopulation of the town and of sites in
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668 J. Bintliff

city H cemeteries

C
(Th W)
City – classical extent

C?

C H
C

MF C
H C
H

Apollo
temple H
F

H (S?)
Askris Potamos

300 0 300 600 Meters

C (Palaeokarandas)
Classical – early Hellenistic
period map

Figure 18. Rural settlement in the inner south chora (agricultural hinterland) of the Greco-Roman
city of Thespiae, Boeotia. Classical to early Hellenistic era. Key: H⫽Hamlet, LF⫽Large Farm,
MF⫽Medium Farm, F⫽Small Farm, C⫽Cementery, S⫽Sanctuary. Site size indicated. (From
Bintliff, Howard and Snodgrass 2006).
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 669

H-R city
MF/H F

LA

F
LA

LF/H F

LA

H?
Askris Potamos

300 0 300 600 Meters

Late Hellenistic – early

Roman period map

Figure 19. Rural settlement in the inner south chora (agricultural hinterland) of the Greco-Roman
city of Thespiae, Boeotia. Late Hellenistic and transitional early Roman imperial era.
Key: H⫽Hamlet, MF⫽Medium Farm, F⫽Small Farm, LA⫽Low Activity (non-residential). Site size
indicated. (From Bintliff, Howard and Snodgrass 2006.)
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670 J. Bintliff

the countryside occurred —rural sites shrink or change to non-residential

agricultural use. In early imperial times proper, a slight recovery of rural sites
can be observed (Fig. 20), especially in the west, which becomes stronger in
middle Roman times (c.AD 200–400) (Fig. 21). In late Roman times (c.AD
400–600) (Fig. 22), this recovery leaps forward and we see a landscape com-
posed of villas, hamlets, and villa-hamlets. Note that the city remains small,
with an interior fortified enceinte as discussed earlier. Nonetheless, the rural
occupation site density and size, when translated into rural population, and
then extrapolated to the whole chora of Thespiae for this period, and com-
bined with the late Roman urban population (despite the halving of the urban
area since classical Greek times), proves to be beyond the carrying-capacity of
the landscape! Clearly our older interpretations need rethinking, and further-
more, the imbalance of town over country during classical Greek times, on
these figures, is now precisely inverted for late antiquity.
(6) A clue to solving this apparent enigma lies in the evidence of the so-called
‘off-site pottery’ in the district. We have counted the density of surface pot-
tery between sites and have found a staggering density of almost 1.5 million
sherds in this 5.2 square km zone (Fig. 23). Its radial fall-off from the city
and general worn condition show it to be manuring debris distributed by
urban farmers to increase soil fertility, a phenomen earlier analyzed in detail
by Wilkinson from Near Eastern surveys (Wilkinson, 1989). It seems to be a
mark of extreme agricultural intensification and population pressure, so that
our sample for dating should shed light on land pressure (Fig. 24).
Remarkably, the late Roman period has very little manuring pottery, but in
contrast almost all can be dated to classical Greek times, when the city was
at its largest. However, we can show that late Roman farmers, as the farmers
in previous historic eras, practised intensive manuring in infield areas or
gardens around villa and hamlet sites (Fig. 25 with haloes), as predicted by
Byzantine economic historians from purely textual evidence (Ducellier 1986,
chapter 4 and fig. p. 188).
(7) Our explanation for the population discrepancies in late Roman times is as
follows, taking also into account the fact that the late Roman rural sites have
very little domestic pottery compared to roof tiles and storage or transport
amphorae. We believe that these late antique sites are largely empty estate
centres with a small permanent staff, whilst the labour force of tied or paid
workers now lives in the shrunken city. The result would be a much lower over-
all population and one sustainable without the need for widespread manuring.
The obvious model is the early modern Sicilian agro-town (Blok 1969).
(8) In Byzantine times, the extramural part of Thespiae City we believe trans-
forms into a village, whilst the inner Roman kastro is abandoned (the high
medieval name for this village, of Erimokastro— the deserted fort —fits rather
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 671

300 0 300 600 Meters

ER period map

Figure 20. Rural settlement in the inner south chora (agricultural hinterland) of the Greco-Roman
city of Thespiae, Boeotia. Mature Roman imperial era. Site functions as in Figs 18–19, plus V⫽Villa.
(From Bintliff, Howard and Snodgrass 2006.)
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672 J. Bintliff

300 0 300 600 Meters

Middle Roman
period map

Figure 21. Rural settlement in the inner south chora (agricultural hinterland) of the Greco-Roman
city of Thespiae, Boeotia. Key as in Figs 18–20. Middle Roman imperial era (second to fourth
centuries AD). (From Bintliff, Howard and Snodgrass 2006.)
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 673

Late Roman
city
? H
fort
H

V
V V

LA

V/H

V/H

H
Askris Potamos

300 0 300 600 Meters

Late Roman
period map

Figure 22. Rural settlement in the inner south chora (agricultural hinterland) of the Greco-Roman
city of Thespiae, Boeotia. Late Roman era (c.400–600⫹ AD). Key as in Figs 18–20. (From Bintliff,
Howard and Snodgrass 2006.)
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674 J. Bintliff

Figure 23. Density of off-site surface ceramics in the south inner hinterland/chora of ancient
Thespiae City, corrected for surface visibility: site cores shown as white circles; finds from site cores
excluded; greyscale gives density per hectare (from Bintliff 2006).
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Figure 24. One of three samples of the off-site surface ceramics mapped in Fig. 23 from the south
hinterland/chora of ancient Thespiae City, plotted by period. The absolute dominance of broadly
classical Greek-age material is striking (g–h) (from Bintliff 2006).

Figure 25. The mapping of site ‘haloes’ around Greco-Roman rural settlement sites allows the iden-
tification and delimitation of zones immediately around the farm or hamlet where intensive infield
cultivation was carried out. In this example from the southern chora/hinterland of ancient Thespiae
City, the classical–early Hellenistic hamlet of LS3 is displayed with surrounding surface ceramic
densities. Although the enitre district has high off-site sherds from urban manuring, it is still possible
to observe an even higher zone of density on several sides of the site core (this latter being marked
by the white onsite survey grid) (from Bintliff 2006).
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676 J. Bintliff

neatly!). Is it also a coincidence, that one of the giant Roman villas —TS14 —
is almost precisely overlain by a Byzantine hamlet? So far we have, however,
been unable to document ceramics which might span the Dark Ages at either
site, although we do not know what this material should look like. We
nonetheless are currently inclined to suggest that the city was already rather
an un-classical settlement in late antiquity, whilst from the late sixth into the
seventh centuries it shrank to a village, when also perhaps a merger (or dis-
placement?) occurred with incoming Slav tribal colonists. Could the model
also apply to the large villa site?

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to stress the heuristic value of three models to help us
comprehend regional settlement developments.
(1) One borrowed from Chris Wickham (1984): to study a region we must take into
account both internal socio-economic and demographic dynamics and the role
of external pressures. Thus, in the case of Greece (Bintliff 1997), intensive and
extensive surveys show very variable rates of population growth and urbaniza-
tion from region to region across Greco-Roman times. Relevant factors include
core-periphery relations of power or commerce, but also different rates of
demographic and economic take-off and Malthusian or commercial crashes.
(2) Secondly, rural and urban societies can settle into persistent modes de vie or
mentalités which can lock ways of life into patterns, that, as we have seen, can
cross traditional period boundaries or dramatic historic events (Bintliff 1997).
(3) Thirdly, and more practical in flavour, German historical geography or
Landeskunde showed already by the 1930s that we must pursue demographic
dynamics and settlement shifts at the micro-landscape or Siedlungskammer
level, in order to comprehend historical processes on the ground (Bintliff
2000).
Finally, three quotes strike me as compatible with the arguments presented in this paper:
There was no ‘fall’ of Byzantine Africa, but instead a combination of countless smaller changes
that had been quietly taking place over a long period. (Averil Cameron, cited by Whitehouse
1991, p. 512)

. . . classical towns were firstly ‘deconstructed’ and then ‘reconstructed’ in a new form. (Leone
1999, 125)

What modern commentators tend to do is to underestimate the resilience of the peasant.

(Christie 1996, 278)
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF REGIONAL SURVEY 677

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