Book Reviews

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Between Text and Territory. Survey and Excavations in the Terra

of San Vincenzo al Volturno. Edited by Kim Bowes, Karen Francis
and Richard Hodges. Archaeological Monographs of the British School
at Rome 16. London: The British School at Rome. 2006. xiv + 355 pp.
+ 195 b/w illustrations. £49.50. ISBN 0 904152 48 0.

Many readers will be aware of the extensive complex of early medieval

monastic buildings on the west bank of the Volturno uncovered by
the excavations of which Richard Hodges was for many years the
director. Revelation of the central monastic complex was from the first
accompanied by investigations of some of the surrounding area, carried
out periodically through the period 1980–1997 and aimed at illuminat-
ing the relationship between the early medieval monastery and the
lands around it. This book publishes the results of those projects. It is
perhaps inevitable that some chapters contribute more to the stated
focus than others. Chapters assessing the San Vincenzo community’s
exile at Capua in the late ninth and tenth centuries, discussing the
upper Volturno valley in the Roman era, and retracing the Roman
aqueduct from the Volturno to Venafro, are largely peripheral to the
central story of the interweaving of the monastery and the valley in the
early Middle Ages.
It is with its late antique (third- to sixth-century) phase that San
Vincenzo really arrests our attention, and the book includes a reassess-
ment of it in this period by Kim Bowes, which draws on a host of
recent surveys and excavations as well as new historical perspectives. By
interpreting the fifth- and sixth-century remains at San Vincenzo itself
as a Christian complex of some importance, Bowes offers the best
explanation of the coin finds, the isolated stone structure (a chapel) on
nearby Colle Sant’Angelo, and the ‘double-church’ configuration of the
buildings at the central site. She shows that by the fifth century, despite
some conciliar canons to the apparent contrary, rural locations like San
Vincenzo could be episcopal sees, and devotional foci for the surrounding
region. All, however, disappear from view after the mid-sixth century.
Early Medieval Europe 2008 16 (4) 494–507
© 2008 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600
Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
 Book Reviews 495

The existence of bishops in places not traditionally seen as cities are a

sign of a ‘category-less world’ in which cities were no longer defined by
economic vitality but by ideological and/or social function; thus ‘what
begin to distinguish different sites are things we cannot dig up’ (p. 297).
The slightness of the evidence from the seventh to ninth centuries
inclusive underlines this point. This scarcity is surprising given the
incontestable size of the abbey complex by the end of that period, and
even more so when we see the evidence for a substantial settlement,
probably of laymen, on the opposite bank of the Volturno from the
abbey. Extensive survey in the rest of the valley yielded no signs of
agriculture supporting such a population centre, and of the three sites
excavated, one (Colle Sant’Angelo) was probably primarily religious,
while the earlier case for continuity at another (Vacchereccia) has now
been cast into doubt because of better understanding of the ceramic
context. Only at Colle Castellano was there the suggestion of limited
activity before the tenth century. It was only at the latter date when,
as the Chronicon Vulturnense also attests, new fortified villages were
founded on hilltop sites across the region. It is telling that this was
precisely the period when the monastic settlement was at its lowest ebb,
following its sack in 881. If this recourse to lands closer to home
suggests that previously the community had been sustained by more
distant estates, we remain ignorant of how produce might have been
brought to the abbey, or converted into transportable wealth (the latter
perhaps implying the existence of markets at a regional level). Much
else eludes us, in fact: even after such relatively extensive archaeological
investigation, Hodges has to propose that undiscovered post-built or
pisé dwellings housed the valley’s early medieval peasants, in preference
to the implausible idea of complete depopulation. This points up a
general lesson of the San Vincenzo experience: that historical paradigms
relate uneasily with archaeological agendas, partly because both are
constantly shifting. In that connection, it is a shame that this book
takes no account of the ongoing investigations at San Vincenzo.

University of Liverpool MARIOS COSTAMBEYS

Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to

A.D. 1014. By Clare Downham. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press.
2007. xx + 338 pp. £25.00. ISBN 978 1 903765 89 0.

For four hundred years, from the later ninth century to the later
thirteenth, a dynasty of sea kings played a major role in the history of
Britain and Ireland before being finally snuffed out by the forces of
Early Medieval Europe 2008 16 (4)
© 2008 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd