Agricolture
Agricoltura - parte 1 - testo + foto
Agriculture means food. In our area the word calls to mind the vine, which gives us wine, and wheat, which gives us bread.
Nowadays, when we talk about food and wine, anything linked to “old” traditions seems to deserve particular respect, with this quality felt to represent some kind of added value. In truth, very often the adjectives “old” or “ancient” are just vague, empty words, which evoke an equally generic and empty vision of history.
History is called into play when it is claimed to be linked to the “birth”, “origins” or “roots” of this or that wine, this or that local product or specialty, or this or that place. Above all, “roots” are evoked. This is a word that is becoming increasingly intolerable, as it reflects a very modern obsession — everyone nowadays seems to be in search of “roots” of some kind!
All too often, validating the present by recalling the past, legitimising what is done today by stressing that it was already done in the past, has a purely commercial purpose; and the historically meaningless expression “once” underlines the empty nature of this rhetoric. True history is something quite different!
Accordingly, a genuinely historical approach to the topic of wine and, in general, food can help us gain a much better understanding of it.
For the Oltrepò area, the vine is practically synonymous with life, and this has been the case for a very long time: the discovery of a fossilised vine trunk (now lost) in the Casteggio area was reported in the year 1876: it was a specimen of Vitis vinifera L., a spontaneously growing species that was later supplanted by cultivated varieties (also called “vines”), which are generally believed to have been introduced into our area by the Etruscans in the 6th century BC.
The common grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) belongs to the Vitaceae family, which includes approximately 70 species (the genera Vitis L. and Muscadinia Small) that were widespread in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and thus flourished in temperate-continental, Mediterranean and subtropical climatic conditions. Together with the olive, common fig, pomegranate and date palm, the common grapevine is part of the oldest group of fruit-bearing trees cultivated in the Mediterranean area. The first archaeological traces of its domestication and cultivation date back to the period between the 8th and 6th millennia BC and were found in a geographical area between the Black Sea and Iran. It seems that from this primary area of domestication, cultivated varieties spread to the Near and Middle East and southern Europe; over time, partly as an effect of continuous selection by farmers and secondary domestication phenomena, vines with particular agronomic and organoleptic characteristics emerged and became established. In the Eastern Mediterranean, there is evidence that viticulture was practised in the Aegean area, Cyprus and Crete in particular, from the third millennium. In Greece, wine drinking was a key part of symposia (erudite and convivial gatherings that indicate a high level of civilisation), and vine cultivation was improved and adapted to less hostile climatic conditions. Southern Italy, starting from the 8th century BC, saw a further refinement of viticulture that would soon spread to the entire peninsula.
Agricoltura - parte 2 - testo + foto
The diffusion of vine growing and wine culture in the Oltrepò area was linked to microclimatic dynamics, which only in the Iron Age and after the 8th century BC allowed the planting of Mediterranean varieties here; it was also an effect of economic, demographic and social changes determined by the different forms of protohistoric settlement.
In the Middle Bronze Age (16th century BC), when the slow process of introducing cultivated vines into southern Italy first began — this is when, in Sicily, the term viino arose, corresponding to the Mycenaean woinos and the Greek oinos —, the northern part of the peninsula was still subject to the rigours of the subboreal climate.
As mentioned, our area had a wild vine (Vitis silvestris), which, however, having a low sugar content, could not feature prominently in the local food economy in the way that berries like the cornel berry, elderberry and blackberry did. Probably thanks to Mycenaean trade, a complex process was started involving the gradual adaptation and grafting of local wild vines; then, thanks to the influence of Etruscan viticulture (from central Italy), and that of Massalia to the west — the Greeks founded the colony of Marseille around 600 BC —, the development of vine growing in our area gathered pace. But it was certainly also thanks to the end of cold oscillations, after the 8th century BC, that this was able to happen.
Archaeology attests that the Ligurians in the 6th century, while mainly drinking beer, also consumed wine (which Strabo, in the Augustan age, would define as “poor, resinated and sour”). Subsequently, in the 5th and 4th centuries, wine assumed an increasingly important role. Before that, as confirmed by the Celtic-Ligurian term labrusca (the name of a poor wine that eventually led to today’s Lambrusco), the cultivation of wild grapes had been popular, achieved by means of the arbustum gallicum (alterno or vite alberata) system of “marrying” the vinestock to an elm or maple tree, a method still practised today in some regions of Italy and Europe. Incidentally, Narbusto, the name of a locality near Casteggio, attests to this.
Even at the beginning of the 2nd century AD, Tacitus described both the Cremona and the Lomellina countryside as a tangle of vines and trees. It was indeed the Lomellina area (Garlasco to be precise) that gave us a terracotta statuette, probably from the Augustan-Tiberian period, depicting a winemaker holding a billhook and a bunch of grapes.
Agricoltura - parte 3
A peculiar feature of winemaking in inland Liguria was the use of a vegetable pitch (nematurica/nemeturica, from nemeton, meaning sacred forest), obtained from spruce and Scots pine, to preserve and flavour the wine. This is a clear indication that it was in competition with the resinated wine traditionally produced in Marseille.
The western part of the Emilian plain is where the tradition of labrusca developed, culminating in the Lambrusco wines produced today. North of the Po, on the other hand, Pliny recalls the cultivation, by means of the alteno system, of robust red grapes, giving rise to wine like today’s Nebbiolo (or Spanna), derived from the “Spionia” variety of grape, which is capable of withstanding heat, rain and fog.
One of the most important vines grown in Cisalpine Gaul was vitis Raetica, named after the region of Raetia that in ancient times extended from the Danube to the Canton of Grisons and included Tyrol and northern Lombardy. Rhaetian wine was praised by the greatest poets and writers, such as Virgil, Martial and Suetonius; according to the latter, even the emperor Augustus, who drank alcohol in moderation, particularly liked this type of wine. Pliny the Elder indicated the Veronese countryside as its place of origin. The wines of Venetia were celebrated by Anneo Floro for their sweetness. In Roman times, the area around Verona must have been a major producer and exporter of fine wines, illustrious ancestors of today’s Valpolicella, Bardolino, Custoza and Soave.
The Aquileian area is where the grapes giving rise to Pucinum vinum grew. This wine, with a high sugar content, was enjoyed by the empress Livia, wife of Augustus, who credited it with her longevity (she lived to the age of 86).
In the western Cisalpine area, there were other vines: widespread in Piedmont, for example, was the vitis Allobrogica, whose black-coloured fruit ripened in the cold.
The selection and refinement of wild vines was, however, a slow process involving the grafting, on to them, of more profitable varieties and the experimentation of cultivation techniques more suited to the climate.
The Greek Anthology (Latin: Anthologia Graeca), in Book IX, Epigr. 561, reminds us that “the snowy Celtic Alps” can nourish only the “wild vine”, an affirmation that modern scholars have also interpreted as an indication of the early use of the Eiswein technique to increase the sugar content of grapes that grow at high altitudes where they are well exposed to the sun, but have a fairly short growing season, due to the early cold.
What is certain is that Greek viticulture techniques spread from the end of the 2nd century BC. In particular, the technique of short pruning and the use of a dead support (carax, or “carasso” as it is still referred to in local dialects) had the effect of reducing both the cultivation of labrusca grapes (which nevertheless continued for domestic consumption and the production of vinegar) and the diffusion of the alberata method.
At that time, it was typical in our area to drink pure wine that would have been oxygenated through the use of oak barrels, and to use flasks shaped like spinning tops, which anticipated the shape of the modern decanter.
Abitare - parte 1 - testo + foto
Before examining the types of dwelling that existed in Oltrepò Pavese in the Roman era, it is worth considering the techniques that were used to build them. In so doing, it immediately becomes clear that in this area, reached by the extreme offshoots of the Apennines, the use of stone, in particular river stones, was predominant. And these stones, even when large, were generally used whole. The use of bricks is documented in rare cases, in Broni, Campospinoso and Castelletto di Branduzzo. The bonding material, when present, would be lime mortar or clay.
Use of the so-called mixed technique, meaning the simultaneous use of stones/pebbles and bricks (including roof-covering tiles, i.e., tegulae and imbrices, whole or fragmentary), is also well attested in Oltrepò, as it is in Cisalpine Gaul generally, and it can be interpreted in the context of efforts to exploit to the full the natural local resources: river stones and clay.
The use of these two types of material gave rise to considerable technical/formal variety. Based on our knowledge, a stone- or pebble-based lithic technique with sporadic use of randomly distributed brick fragments seems to be the most documented. Only rarely, it seems, were these fragments placed in specific portions of the masonry, such as at the corners or in the buttresses, with the purpose of controlling the construction and achieving static consolidation. Instead, the use or otherwise of binding material does not seem to have followed precise rules.
Foundations were usually built using stones and bricks. Most rural buildings had walls constructed using lightweight or perishable materials, mainly clay and wood, which could be combined with plant fibres such as reeds or twigs (difficult to identify archaeologically). This is not to say that these were rudimentary, poor-quality solutions: on the contrary, it has been proven that their raw clay walls could be plastered and even decorated with frescoes. Moreover, if one considers the static structural problem of the loads and tensions placed on the members of wood frame walls, it becomes clear that these structures actually boasted very high conceptual complexity demanding equally high technical skill.
Abitare - parte 2 - testo + foto
Even before the arrival of the Romans, the presence of Etruscan populations (6th–5th century BC) had led to the spread, alongside simple huts, of houses with stone foundations, walls constructed using perishable materials, and roofs made of lightweight materials such as bundles of reeds, marsh grasses and straw, essentially continuing the construction practices of pre/protohistoric times. These techniques were still in use in the Celtic era (4th–3rd century BC).
The types of dwelling known to have existed in the Oltrepò countryside were very much in line with what was found in the cisalpine area generally. They ranged from purely residential buildings (actually rather rare), devoid of any economic-production connotation, to mixed buildings (for residential and production uses) and so-called rustic villas, the latter with only limited residential space, and finally to the most widespread type, the farmhouse or small farm with a wide variety of architectural, structural and planimetric features. Typically, these buildings were characterised by a simple and limited sequence of rooms (between two and four); sometimes there would also be accessory rooms, stables and warehouses, not directly connected to the main structure, but separated by a yard.
Archaeological investigations reveal a high frequency of human settlements in the countryside of Roman northern Italy, distributed in such a way as to constitute an organic settlement system, always perfectly adapted to the morphology of the land.
For a long time, one of the most typical settlement patterns in extra-urban areas saw the population distributed among smaller inhabited centres, in other words, per pagos vicosque (by districts and villages). This system, characterised by the presence of modest buildings and a notable subdivision of properties, often reproduced the pre-Roman model of organisation by scattered villages.
Abitare - parte 3
Rustic villas, or farmhouses, of different types and sizes, also became widespread in Cisalpine Gaul. Under them, there could also be smaller farmhouses, even consisting of just a single room.
Many of these farms, in addition to ensuring their own subsistence, produced goods for trade, a phenomenon that gave northern Italy a flourishing and very competitive economy. This system of small, medium-sized and large properties was consolidated in the late Republican age (at the end of the 1st century BC), reached its maximum expansion in the Early Principate period (throughout the 1st century AD and part of the 2nd), and remained vital until the 2nd–3rd century AD, when, for economic reasons and as a result of the changing climate, there began an increasingly intense process of abandonment and depopulation of the area.
In the Staffora Valley, and more generally in Oltrepò Pavese, archaeological research over the past thirty years has made it possible to start the process of reconstructing an ancient rural landscape that reflects these occupation and population dynamics.
Reconstructing an ancient rural landscape is often difficult due to the disappearance or modification of most of the inhabited centres and anthropic elements that characterised it in the past.
In the absence of direct traces — remember that often, especially in the case of basic constructions, perishable materials, such as wood, branches and compacted earth, would be used to build homes, making it very difficult to identify them in the ground today —, the discovery of rural burial sites, which were always close to dwellings, can help us to establish where people lived.
Burial sites, therefore, provide a wealth of information not only on the economic, cultural, social and ideological profile of the community of reference, identifiable through the type of burial and the grave goods present, but also on the organisation of the territory where the community itself lived, on the type and distribution of the inhabited centres and road networks, and on the division of the cultivated land.
A burial site, implying a series of relationships with the surrounding environment, never exists in isolation.
Volti - parte 1 - testo + foto
Roman portraits in Cisalpine Gaul are predominantly funerary. There exist numerous examples of the deceased depicted, dressed in a toga, as a civis (citizen), which was a status to be proud of. Female images, too, are generalised, with the style of clothing taken from Hellenistic models.
Funerary portraits are often to be found on steles, which tend to show only the bust as opposed to the complete figure.
These portraits, which were meant to set the individual in their historical dimension, display a realism that is typical of the Roman mentality; accordingly, the face had to be shown as it really was, with all its imperfections, signs of age, etc. Certainly, over time and with the growing influence of Greek culture, this realism was tempered, in some instances, by a little idealisation.
However, it should be noted that, due to the poor level of craftsmanship of many products in the period between the end of the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD (including, in fact, those originating from Oltrepò), many traces of both analytical realism and idealisation ended up being erased, resulting in essentially formulaic images: faces, for example, tend to appear triangular, eyes are very sunken, and the mouth is reduced to a slit. In this case, the task of conferring historical personality is entrusted to the inscription, which recalls the name and career of the person represented.
Volti - parte 2 - img
Volti - parte 3 - img
