Spanning much of the third quarter of the century, the pontificates of Benedict III (855–858), Nicholas I (858–867) and Hadrian II (867–872) reveal a declining papal involvement in the patronage of architecture, though also considerable engagement with ecclesiastical issues of the day, including dramatically renewed contacts with Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean in the aftermath of the definitive end of Byzantine Iconoclasm and the ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’. In addition to the growing importance of the Roman secular aristocracy, whose domestic housing has been rediscovered in recent archaeology, evidence is surveyed for the continuing presence of a substantial Greek community in Rome, and for interest in the translation of Greek texts in the circle of the papal librarian, Anastasius. Among the most prominent survivals from these years is the tomb of St Cyril, the Byzantine missionary to the Slavs, in the lower church of San Clemente.

Chapter 8 describes the net effect of scholastic and material changes on the way that Theodosian Age readers approached and interpreted books, showing how suspicion of documents and archives became institutionalized, and how rules for deciding between competing authorities appear in a wide variety of traditions: from theology to law to Talmud.

This chapter surveys the engagement with material culture of three popes in the second quarter of the ninth century – Eugenius II, Gregory IV and Sergius II – spanning the years 824 through to 847. Although not as prolific as Paschal I in terms of patronage, all have left at least one significant project to have survived to the present day. Eugenius II’s marble clerical enclosure at Santa Sabina initiates a discussion of stone furnishings in Rome’s early medieval churches; Gregory IV’s apse mosaic in San Marco provides interesting insights into his participation in contemporary ecclesiastic politics in northern Italy, and other initiatives testify to continuing preoccupations with urban infrastructure and the cult of relics; and Sergius II’s newly reconstructed church of San Martino ai Monti attests to the continuing presence in Rome of significant teams of builders and decorators.

Our survey revealed very few sites belonging to the Early Medieval period (AD 700-1000) apart from Tuscania, indicating a combination of population decline and abandonment of the countryside for the security of the town. There was significant demographic growth in the High Medieval period (AD 1000-1200): 38 sites, together with 30 sites with ‘generic Medieval’ material likely to belong to this phase. The new foundations, distributed throughout the survey area, comprised nucleated but unfortified settlements, a habitation form about which the documentary record is largely silent. In the Late Medieval period (AD 1200-1500: 16 sites), new foundations were established within a few kilometres of Tuscania with little evidence for settlement in the countryside beyond. Most farmers preferred to live in defensible castelli, or within the vicinity of Tuscania. As elsewhere in Italy, the second half of the 2nd millennium has witnessed the increasing abandonment of many small farms by peasant (contadini) families in the face of urban growth and industrialization, with globalization in recent decades accelerating their replacement and absorption by agribusinesses, and the flight to the countryside by middle class commuters from Rome.

This brief ‘afterword’ draws together the various themes set out in the book, concluding that over the course of the ninth century the Roman Church goes from one of its highest points to what is arguably its medieval nadir. Some analysis is provided of the various factors which contributed to this dramatic decline.

No attempt to evaluate the longue durée of human settlement can ignore the environment as both a formative influence and as a cultural artefact. The environmental programme of the project collected data to complement the regional geomorphological and palynological record on patterns of landscape change in response to climate change and the influence of human activities. The geomorphological fieldwork focused on the catchment of the Marta river that flows from Lake Bolsena past Tuscania to the Tyrrhenian sea near Tarquinia. The Late Glacial environment c.15,000 years ago consisted of a steppe landscape.After a sedimentary hiatus in the Early and Mid Holocene, sediments started to be laid down again in the Later Etruscan period c.500-300 BC, reflecting the extensive nature of Etruscan agriculture.Significant human impacts began in the Roman Republican period. Then and during the Early/Mid Imperial periods the Marta and other rivers in the area were unstable braided and wandering gravel-bedded rivers quite unlike the modern rivers. Their dynamism largely reflected a colder wetter climate than today but also woodland clearance and increased arable cultivation.This combination pre-conditioned the landscape’s sensitivity to alluviation in the Late Medieval and Post Medieval periods.

This chapter is devoted entirely to the Roman church of Santa Prassede, the principal surviving architectural project of Pope Paschal I (817–824). Its function as a major urban repository for the relics of the city’s Early Christian saints and martyrs, more than 2000 of which were brought here from the extramural catacombs, determines both the architectural model (Saint Peter’s) and many aspects of the decoration in mosaic, mural painting and sculpture. Special attention is devoted to the San Zeno chapel, the burial site of Paschal’s mother, Theodora, whose mosaic programme, including her portrait, is completely preserved and reflects that function. Consideration is given to Richard Krautheimer’s suggestion that this church constitutes evidence for a ‘Carolingian renascence’ of architectural forms associated with the first Christian emperor, Constantine.