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The use of formal modelling and computational simulation in studies of the Roman economy has become more common over the last decade. But detailed critical evaluations of this innovative approach are still missing and much needed. What kinds of insights about the Roman economy can it lead to that could not have been obtained through more established approaches, and how do simulation methods constructively enhance research processes in Roman Studies? This edited volume addresses this need through critical discussion and convincing examples. It presents the Roman economy as a highly complex system, traditionally studied through critical examinations of material and textual sources, and understood through a wealth of diverging theories. A key contribution of simulation lies in its ability to formally represent diverse theories of Roman economic phenomena, and test them against empirical evidence. Critical simulation studies rely on collaboration across Roman data, theory, and method specialisms, and can constructively enhance multivocality of theoretical debates of the Roman economy. This potential is illustrated, avoiding computational and mathematical language, through simulation studies of a wealth of Roman economic phenomena: from maritime trade and terrestrial transport infrastructures, through the economic impacts of the Antonine Plague and demography, to local cult economies and grain trade. Through these examples and discussions, this volume aims to provide the common ground, guidance, and inspiration needed to make simulation methods part of the tools of the trade in Roman Studies, and to allow them to make constructive contributions to our understanding of the Roman economy.
The use of formal modelling and computational simulation in studies of the Roman economy has become more common over the last decade. But detailed critical evaluations of this innovative approach are still missing and much needed. What kinds of insights about the Roman economy can it lead to that could not have been obtained through more established approaches, and how do simulation methods constructively enhance research processes in Roman Studies? This edited volume addresses this need through critical discussion and convincing examples. It presents the Roman economy as a highly complex system, traditionally studied through critical examinations of material and textual sources, and understood through a wealth of diverging theories. A key contribution of simulation lies in its ability to formally represent diverse theories of Roman economic phenomena and test them against empirical evidence. Critical simulation studies rely on collaboration across Roman data, theory, and method specialisms, and can constructively enhance multivocality of theoretical debates of the Roman economy. This potential is illustrated, avoiding computational and mathematical language, through simulation studies of a wealth of Roman economic phenomena: from maritime trade and terrestrial transport infrastructures, through the economic impacts of the Antonine Plague and demography, to local cult economies and grain trade. Through these examples and discussions, this volume aims to provide the common ground, guidance, and inspiration needed to make simulation methods part of the tools of the trade in Roman Studies, and to allow them to make constructive contributions to our understanding of the Roman economy.
In this volume, papers by leading Roman historians and archaeologists discuss trade within the Roman Empire and beyond its frontiers between c.100 BC and AD 350, focusing especially on the role of the Roman state in shaping the institutional framework for trade. As part of a novel interdisciplinary approach to the subject, the chapters address its myriad facets on the basis of broadly different sources of evidence - historical, papyrological, andarchaeological - demonstrating how collaborations with the elite holders of wealth within the empire fundamentally changed its political character in the longer term.
This open access book demonstrates the application of simulation modelling and network analysis techniques in the field of Roman studies. It summarizes and discusses the results of a 5-year research project carried out by the editors that aimed to apply spatial dynamical modelling to reconstruct and understand the socio-economic development of the Dutch part of the Roman frontier (limes) zone, in particular the agrarian economy and the related development of settlement patterns and transport networks in the area. The project papers are accompanied by invited chapters presenting case studies and reflections from other parts of the Roman Empire focusing on the themes of subsistence economy, demography, transport and mobility, and socio-economic networks in the Roman period. The book shows the added value of state-of-the-art computer modelling techniques and bridges computational and conventional approaches. Topics that will be of particular interest to archaeologists are the question of (forced) surplus production, the demographic and economic effects of the Roman occupation on the local population, and the structuring of transport networks and settlement patterns. For modellers, issues of sensitivity analysis and validation of modelling results are specifically addressed. This book will appeal to students and researchers working in the computational humanities and social sciences, in particular, archaeology and ancient history.
The recycling and reuse of materials and objects were extensive in the past, but have rarely been embedded into models of the economy: this volume is the first to explore these practices in the Roman economy, drawing on a variety of methodological approaches and new scientific developments in a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study.
The first volume in a new series, Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy: a collection of essays, edited by the series editors, focusing on the economic performance of the Roman empire, and suggesting how we can derive a quantified account of economic growth and contraction in the period of the empire's greatest extent and prosperity.
This book is the first to address, from a variety of perspectives, the economy of the Roman city of Pompeii. It uses archaeological and textual evidence to discuss topics as diverse as agriculture in the fertile plains at the foot of mount Vesuvius, diet and health, manufacturing, urban investment, consumption, trade and money.
This interdisciplinary edited volume presents twelve papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing the interconnected relationship between religion and the Roman economy over the period c. 500 BC to AD 350. The connection between Roman religion and the economy has largely been ignored in work on the Roman economy, but this volume explores the many complex ways in which economic and religious thinking and activities were interwoven, from individuals to institutions. The broad geographic and chronological scope of the volume engages with a notable variety of evidence: epigraphic, archaeological, historical, papyrological, and zooarchaeological. In addition to providing case studies that draw from the rich archaeological, documentary, and epigraphic evidence, the volume also explores the different and sometimes divergent pictures offered by these sources (from discrepancies in the cost of religious buildings, to the tensions between piety and ostentatious donation). The edited collection thus bridges economic, social, and religious themes. The volume provides a view of a society in which religion had a central role in economic activity on an institutional to individual scale. The volume allows an evaluation of impact of that activity from both financial and social viewpoints, providing a new perspective on Roman religion - a perspective to which a wide range of archaeological and documentary evidence, from animal bone to coins and building costs, has contributed. As a result, this volume not only provides new information on the economy of Roman religion: it also proposes new ways of looking at existing bodies of evidence.
This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period. Combining a wide range of research traditions from all over Europe and utilizing evidence from Italy, the western provinces, and the Greek-speaking east, this edited collection is divided into four sections. It first considers the scholarly history of Roman crafts and trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on Germany and the Anglo-Saxon world, and on Italy and France. Chapters discuss how scholarly thinking about Roman craftsmen and traders was influenced by historical and intellectual developments in the modern world, and how different (national) research traditions followed different trajectories throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The second section highlights the economic strategies of craftsmen and traders, examining strategies of long-distance traders and the phenomenon of specialization, and presenting case studies of leather-working and bread-baking. In the third section, the human factor in urban crafts and trade-including the role of apprenticeship, gender, freedmen, and professional associations-is analysed, and the volume ends by exploring the position of crafts in urban space, considering the evidence for artisanal clustering in the archaeological and papyrological record, and providing case studies of the development of commercial landscapes at Aquincum on the Danube and at Sagalassos in Pisidia.
Marzano explores the exploitation of marine resources in the Roman world and its role within the economy. Bringing together literary, epigraphic, archaeological, and legal sources, she shows that these marine resources were an important feature of the Roman economy and paralleled phenomena taking place in the Roman agricultural economy on land.