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This book focuses on those features of the Roman economy that are less traceable in text and archaeology, and as a consequence remain largely underexplored in contemporary scholarship. By reincorporating, for the first time, these long-obscured practices in mainstream scholarly discourses, this book offers a more complete and balanced view of an economic system that for too long has mostly been studied through its macro-economic and large-scale – and thus archaeologically and textually omnipresent – aspects. The topic is approached in five thematic sections, covering unusual actors and perspectives, unusual places of production, exigent landscapes of exploitation, less-visible products and artefacts, and divergent views on emblematic economic spheres. To this purpose, the book brings together a select group of leading scholars and promising early career researchers in archaeology and ancient economic history, well positioned to steer this ill-developed but fundamental field of the Roman economy in promising new directions.
Duncan-Jones presents a series of studies and debates on interlocking themes which explore central areas of the Roman economy and the ways those areas connect and interact. The studies are grouped into five sections: Time and Distance, Demography and Manpower, Agrarian Patterns, The World of Cities, and Tax-payment and Tax-assessment.
This collection of essays is the first volume in a new series, Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Edited by the series editors, it focuses on the economic performance of the Roman empire, analysing the extent to which Roman political domination of the Mediterranean and north-west Europe created the conditions for the integration of agriculture, production, trade, and commerce across the regions of the empire. Using the evidence of both documents and archaeology, the contributors suggest how we can derive a quantified account of economic growth and contraction in the period of the empire's greatest extent and prosperity.
This volume studies information as an economic resource in the Roman World. Information asymmetry is a distinguishing phenomenon of any human relationship. From an economic perspective, private or hidden information, opposed to publicly observable information, generates advantages and inequalities; at the same time, it is a source of profit, legal and illegal, and of transaction costs. The contributions that make up the present book aim to deepen our understanding of the economy of Ancient Rome by identifying and analysing formal and informal systems of knowledge and institutions that contributed to control, manage, restrict and enhance information. The chapters scrutinize the impact of information asymmetries on specific economic sectors, such as the labour market and the market of real estate, as well as the world of professional associations and trading networks. It further discusses structures and institutions that facilitated and regulated economic information in the public and the private spheres, such as market places, auctions, financial mechanisms and instruments, state treasures and archives. Managing Asymmetric Information in the Roman Economy invites the reader to evaluate economic activities within a larger collective mental, social, and political framework, and aims ultimately to test the applicability of tools and ideas from theoretical frameworks such as the Economics of Information to ancient and comparative historical research.
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.
Focuses on the economic history of the community of Rome from the Iron Age to the early Republic.
Imperial Rome has a name for wealth and luxury, but was the economy of the Roman Empire as a whole a success, by the standards of pre-modern economies? In this volume W. V. Harris brings together eleven previously published papers on this much-argued subject, with additional comments to bring them up to date. A new study of poverty and destitution provides a fresh perspective on the question of the Roman Empire's economic performance, and a substantial introduction ties the collection together. Harris tackles difficult but essential questions, such as how slavery worked, what role the state played, whether the Romans had a sophisticated monetary system, what it was like to be poor, whether they achieved sustained economic growth. He shows that in spite of notably sophisticated economic institutions and the spectacular wealth of a few, the Roman economy remained incorrigibly pre-modern and left a definite segment of the population high and dry.
Rio Grande pueblo societies took shape in the aftermath of significant turmoil and migration in the thirteenth century. In the centuries that followed, the size of Pueblo settlements, level of aggregation, degree of productive specialization, extent of interethnic exchange, and overall social harmony increased to unprecedented levels. Economists recognize scale, agglomeration, the division of labor, international trade, and control over violence as important determinants of socioeconomic development in the modern world. But is a development framework appropriate for understanding Rio Grande archaeology? What do we learn about contemporary Pueblo culture and its resiliency when Pueblo history is viewed through this lens? What does the exercise teach us about the determinants of economic growth more generally? The contributors in this volume argue that ideas from economics and complexity science, when suitably adapted, provide a compelling approach to the archaeological record. Contributors consider what we can learn about socioeconomic development through archaeology and explore how Pueblo culture and institutions supported improvements in the material conditions of life over time. They examine demographic patterns; the production and exchange of food, cotton textiles, pottery, and stone tools; and institutional structures reflected in village plans, rock art, and ritual artifacts that promoted peaceful exchange. They also document change through time in various economic measures and consider their implications for theories of socioeconomic development. The archaeological record of the Northern Rio Grande exhibits the hallmarks of economic development, but Pueblo economies were organized in radically different ways than modern industrialized and capitalist economies. This volume explores the patterns and determinants of economic development in pre-Hispanic Rio Grande Pueblo society, building a platform for more broadly informed research on this critical process.