Page 91 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Poor Agriculture for Rich People?

when they suddenly became construction workers. The weavers, on the
other hand, continued their activity for a long time. When their skills were
supplanted by the introduction of cotton and ready-made clothing, they al-
so became workers (Fornasin 1998b). They were presumably equivalent to
about a quarter of Carnia’s male working population.
The men who did not leave, that is, at least two thirds of the active male
population, and those who could not leave remained in the village: the
children and the old men. Along with them, all the women remained. The
schedule of departures and returns coincided with the busiest season on
the meadows: summer. Absences and presences, therefore, were respect-
ful of the organization of agricultural and pastoral work within families.
Forage production in the summer determined an additional threshold, as
we have already anticipated: that of the number of animals that could be
maintained during the winter when they had come down from the moun-
tain pastures, when the men would be away from their homes.
Moreover, the existence of businesses and families dedicated to produc-
tion in the agricultural sector, as the case of the Billiani demonstrates, are
further evidence of the need not to accentuate expulsive factors, such as
the scarcity of agricultural production as the main driver of male emigra-
tion (Viazzo 1989, 121–52), which even in this context proved to be an op-
portunity rather than a constraint (Fornasin 1998a).

Somplago and the Billiani
Somplago is theclosest villageto LakeCavazzo:the Friulian name, Som-
plât, literally means ‘on top of the lake.’ Today, as in the past, the village
has a centralized shape: the houses were – and are, even after the 1976
earthquake that destroyed the village – built close to each other.
In October 1606 the inhabitants of Somplago numbered 127 and the ‘big’
animals 84, distributed among 21 fuochi, (literally ‘fires,’ meaning ‘hearths’
and therefore corresponding to ‘families,’ ‘households’), that is, four to
each; seven of these had the surname Billiani, one of which was headed
by a widow (asv, Provveditori sopra beni comunali, b. 471, Denuncie de beni
comunali, vol. V, cc. 475–6r).
A prosopographical history of the Billiani family would certainly help
to better understand, in the light of the account books we will examine,
what kinships they managed to weave throughout two centuries in which
they played the role of the hegemonic and richest family in the community
and, in all evidence, in the economy of the communities around Cavazzo
Lake. We will dwell for now on some initial elements and clues. The first is

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