Roads to recovery: an investigation of early medieval agrarian strategies in Byzantine Italy in and around the eighth century

The cumulative power of botanical and chemical analysis is demonstrated here by our authors, who succeed in opening a window on Europe’s most obscure period, in the south as in the north, the time after the Roman and then the Byzantine empire lost its hold. The emphasis here is on the rise in production and trade of cash crops in the eighth century as detected by survey, pollen, charcoal and residues. Taken together, the new data show a community well on the road to economic recovery after two centuries of recession and monetary failure.