(no subject)

[a_kleber]

The economic history of Rome in the period between the fifth and the ninth centuries has been described as a process of reduction from the status of central point in a world economy to that of a regional capital – in fact the capital of a region that was smaller than modern Lazio. Both the archaeological and the written records show that in those centuries the city increasingly came to rely only on local resources, as regards food supply and artifacts of various kinds. The process reached its peak in the eighth century, contemporary with the establishment of the temporal government of the popes.

- Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium