Mobility, Displacements and Identity in and around the Medieval Italian Countryside (6th to 10th centuries)

This article is concerned with peasants’ ideas and outlooks, the conflicts in which they par- ticipated, the decisions that they made, and the individual and collective actions that they took, including decisions about emigrating or staying put in view of certain political or cli- matic/environmental constraints. Its target region is Italy between the sixth and the tenth centuries. The investigation is based on written and archaeological evidence. The first part of the paper attempts to illustrate the living conditions, the social stratifications and the technological knowledge of peasantries and discusses the nature of village societies by look- ing at peasant initiatives in terms of both collective action against the lord of the moment and individual careerism as a way to climb the social ladder. The second part of the paper accounts for larger repopulation/depopulation processes, on the one hand, and individual regional and micro-mobility, on the other. It shows how the peasantry was an actual political player in that they negotiated their displacements and mobilizations with the neighbouring lordly powers. Contextually, the possibility that environmental and climatic hazards might have acted as undercurrent forces of far-reaching rural migrations is taken into account. Finally, it sheds some light on peasants »on the road« and the reasons behind their mobility, ranging from everyday affairs – sometimes even not related to farming – to their desire to leave in search of their fortune. There emerges a picture of a rural Italy that was anything but static and immutable, where farmers formed a not-negligible factor of change in settlement patterns and power dynamics.