Le nuove dinamiche insediative dell’Italia bizantina e post bizantina (VI – X sec.)

Since the end of the 20th century it has been widely accepted that the notion of Byzantine Italy has to be intended in terms of a plural entity, taking into account the spatial-temporal differences and the complexity of the dynamics in the relationship between the Italian territory and the central administration of the Byzantine state. On the one hand, there is certainly a ‘Byzantine variable’ which determined many peculiar aspects of the Italian regions that remained under Byzantine control for a longer time than those that passed early under Lombard control. But, on another hand, within those same regions there are specific dynamics in construction and transformation over time of settlement patterns. The need for managing the civil administration and the fiscal revenues of the Provincia Italia determined to a good extent the survival of the network of cities; but, at the same time, the need for a integrated defense system to protect the whole territory determined the birth of a network of defensive settlements, leading in fact to the generation of many new hilltop centers. Over time and with the changing forms of regional management in the Byzantine Empire, these fortified settlements assumed a progressive autonomy, where the life of a hilltop settlement is linked on the one hand to local territorial dynamics, as happened in the non-Byzantine regions of Italy in the same years, but also to administrative and economic dynamics on a decidedly larger scale, which still need to be investigated on a Mediterranean perspective.