Bishops and Merchants: The Economy of Ravenna at the Beginnings of the Middle Ages

The temporary conquest of Ravenna by king Austulf (751 AD) and the end of the rule of the exarchate is the beginning of a new phase of this Imperial city moving its role towards a new position as centre of the new idea of power during the middle Ages. In the last fifteen years the excavations conducted in Classe, one of the main Adriatic ports, and the last excavations in the centre of the town, give us a new quantitative perspective for the period that follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Despite the fall of the Exarchal administration, the infrastructure and city services were still guaranteed, probably by the Episcopal authority, in the same way that was happening in many other Italian cities from the North to Sicily, and the same was true especially concerning the urban defenses. If we adhere to old-fashioned historical theories the final act of Late Antiquity is in fact during the seventh century, caused by Arab invasions. Certainly, the idea that north-western Europe was cut off from the newly-Islamic Mediterranean from this period, thereby causing it to develop a dynamic economic focus within the Frankish realm of Charlemagne, has been comprehensively disproved not only by archaeology but also by a more inquisitive reading of contemporary documents. In this lecture I will try to demonstrate with archaeological evidence that Ravenna and Classe played a fundamental role in the creation of a new economic system that laid the foundations for the following political assets