Produce of
the soil
The Norman conquerors were attracted
by what at the time was famous as rich agricultural land. Parts of Apulia in
fact still exported corn to Constantinople. Campania was a rich area for tillage
and appropriately it bore the name terra di lavoro. Sicily produced grain,
fruit, silk, cotton etc. However, the staples of all the agricultural systems
were cereals, wheat and barley, and while vines were commonly grown in country
areas for the needs of the population, the lord’s table, to sell, and for the
needs for the liturgy, this became a specialist crop only in certain small
southern areas of the peninsula.
Olive plantations date back to Antiquity, but the choice of chestnut trees came
in the wake of forest clearance in the more rugged areas. Their fruit provided a
well-known flour to supplement bread made with grain. Other fruit trees were
also grown, like walnut or apple. Having become the ornamental tree in the
orchards of Campania, the lemon tree was introduced following contacts with the
Moslem and Byzantine world, as were the silk tree and the mulberry. Lastly, the
date palm is actually reproduced on Sicilian coins minted at the end of the
Norman monarchy.
The textile craft industry also had flax and hemp produced locally in the
wetlands, and cotton too, a crop requiring mastery of the irrigation system set
up by the Moslem peasants of Sicily.
Everywhere, food was supplemented by the horticultural produce of vegetable
gardens, while the introduction of leguminous plants noted on fallow land is a
sign generally associated with agricultural advances, of particular benefit as
fodder for draught animals used for ploughing, and their by-products – hides,
leather, wool etc. There were well-established systems for moving to summer
pastures along long-established paths like the tratturi of Molise. And one
completely exotic animal turned up among the domestic fauna of the 12th c.
Mezzogiorno: the buffalo, acclimatized in the wetlands where buffalo cow’s milk
is today a regional speciality of Campania.
