Ancient economic history

The Economy of Endowments: the case of Roman associations,” In Koenraad Verboven, Katelijn Vandorpe and Véronique Chankowski-Sable (eds.), ‘Pistoi dia tèn technèn’. Bankers, loans and archives in the Ancient World. Studies in honour of Raymond Bogaert, Studia Hellenistica 44. Leuven, Peeters, 2008: 231-256. For reviews of the book, see, e.g., Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.05.02.

Third-millennium Mesopotamia has provided an impressive quantity of sources for the study of ancient slavery, among them a collection of standards (the so-called Laws of Ur-Namma). Despite the volume of documents, Mesopotamian slavery remains elusive in its general traits. This is partly due to the nature of the sources, but also to the approaches and interpretations of modern scholars. Slavery in ancient Mesopotamia has been the focus of several studies in the 1960s and 1970s that interpreted the sources using comparative approaches and Marxist analyses. Since then, the topic has seldom been revisited. In this article, I present the status quaestionis with an overview of the available sources and related studies, together with a sketch of the different types of bonded and forced labor in the Neo-Sumerian period (21st cent. bce).

Despite initiating the discussion and introducing the first definition examined in Plato’s Republic, Cephalus is quickly compelled to leave the discussion. Many scholars read the dramatic action of this opening exchange as a coup d’ tat in which Socrates overthrows Cephalus’ reign over the community and usurps his ancestral command over the conversation. In contrast, I contend that Cephalus presents a competing moral claim as a representative of the class of moneymakers.

La gestione di attività commerciali e finanziarie a Roma da parte di schiavi liberati è un fenomeno descritto da numerose fonti antiche. Attraverso l'analisi di quanto tramandato da testi letterari ed epigrafici, l'opera guida il lettore alla comprensione delle dinamiche che contraddistinsero le vite di uomini e donne i quali, superata una condizione di grave svantaggio sociale in seguito alla manomissione, riuscirono ad accumulare fortuna e a tramandare il proprio nome ai posteri. Le storie personali di questi liberti rappresentano una risorsa inestimabile per lo studio della società romana.

La moissonneuse gallo-romaine, appelée vallus chez Pline XVIII, 296 et vehiculum chez Palladius VII, 2, a de tout temps intéressé les historiens, interpellé les agronomes et fasciné le grand public, en particulier lorsque l'on a découvert le relief de Buzenol en 1958. La machine, il est vrai, est unique en son genre à travers les pratiques agricoles occidentales, de l'Antiquité au XIX e siècle. En effet, de tout temps et partout jusqu'au début du XX e siècle, on moissonne à la faucille, à la sape ou à la faux, à l'exception de la Gaule romaine septentrionale où les épis d'épeautre se fauchent avec une barre de coupe montée sur roues, propulsée de l'arrière par un animal, asinien ou bovidé. Idée de génie ? Peut-être. Invention étonnante, assurément. Mais au fil des siècles, si l'idée et le principe sont à l'origine des moissonneuses modernes mises au point vers 1800-1850, son efficacité agricole dans l'Antiquité sera parfois contestée, en particulier au milieu du XX e siècle, par un courant historiographique appelé "primitivisme" qui refuse globalement toute capacité technologique à l'Antiquité et fait volontiers du vallus une cible privilégiée. Aujourd'hui, après vingt ans de recherches pluridisciplinaires et d'expérimentations sur le terrain, le débat est (momentanément ?) clos à l'avantage du vallus, efficace pour la moisson des céréales vêtues, en particulier l'épeautre et l'amidonnier, ou, à tout le moins, à conditions analogues, nettement plus rapide que la faux et la faucille, sans plus de gaspillage et avec moins d'effort. Le présent essai parcourt deux mille ans d'histoire et d'historiographie de cette machine iconique, histoire tantôt glorieuse, tantôt chaotique, au fil de mouvements épistémologiques ou idéologiques dont le vallus fut, quelque part, une redoutable pierre de touche.

Ausgehend von den vv. 218ff. der Iphigenie bei den Taurern zeigt der Beitrag, wie in dem Drama die tragische Dimension des menschlichen Daseins als eine unwirtliche zu Tage tritt. Diese offenbart eine wirtliche Ökonomie, die diesem Dasein ein Fundament geben kann, das nicht zunächst nach dem ausgerichtet ist, was recht und billig erscheint, sondern, allem voran, im sinnstiftenden Reichtum eines tragischen Schicksals wurzelt, das dem Menschen sein Eigenes und Freies zu gewähren vermag.

La présente contribution vise à préciser les aspects géographiques et chronologiques liés à l’apparition, au développement et au déclin d’un type de construction en pierre sèche localement appelée « torre ». Ces édifices monumentaux, qui présentent une forme de tour tronconique, sont élevés selon un cahier des charges architectural précis, et trouvent leur strict équivalent en Sardaigne avec les milliers de nuraghi monotorre du Bronze ancien et moyen. La publication du détail du maigre corpus des torre de Corse, ainsi que la révision des données chronologiques fournies par les fouilles et les prospections opérées ces cinquante dernières années, seront également l’occasion de souligner l’importance prise par ces monuments dans l’évolution de la construction du discours archéologique depuis les années 1960 et les travaux de Roger Grosjean.

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This paper challenges conventional views of a rise in aristocratic power in Late Antiquity.  I argue that, far from giving senatorial families more independence from state institutions, emperors managed to reduce the power of the nobilitas and tie its members more closely to the imperial court. As an office-holding aristocracy whose material interests and value-system were inextricably intertwined with the institutions of monarchy, the late Roman senate more closely resembled the governing élite of the Chinese empire than the hereditary aristocracies of later European history.

Im antiken Griechenland ebenso wie im alten China wurde das jeweils andere Ende des Eurasischen Kontinents als Heimat übernatürlicher Wesen betrachtet. In den historiographischen Werken beider Kulturen mischten sich diese mythischen Vorstellungen oft mit neuem Wissen über fremde Völker, das im Rahmen von Entdeckungsreisen und Fernhandel gewonnenen wurde, aber nur schwer in das bestehende geographische Weltbild eingeordnet werden konnte.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden wichtige historiographische und geographische Schriftquellen aus dem griechischen und chinesischen Kulturraum parallel auf ihre Darstellung des jeweils Anderen untersucht. Die aus den Texten extrahierten Fremdbilder werden in ihrer Entwicklung analysiert und in ihren kulturellen Funktionen miteinander verglichen. Neben Gemeinsamkeiten und Besonderheiten der Fremdvorstellungen steht der Einfluss der zentralasiatischen Seidenstraßen als Hauptverbindungen zwischen Europa und Ostasien im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtungen.

The introduction outlines the current debate over the size and nature of the agricultural economy and its importance within the Roman economy as a whole, addressing the use of models and summarising some of the possible approaches from available datasets, such as the study of patterns of large-scale investment from sites with batteries of multiple oil and wine presses which indicate elite investment in market-oriented agricultural production. It situates each of the chapters in the volume within this wider framework of study, and discusses regional variation and chronological trends, issues of land and labour, whether or not the Roman state had any conscious economic policy towards agriculture, and the articulation of agrarian production with other sectors of the economy.

Cereals, chiefly barley, covered roughly three-quarters of the food requirements of ancient Greeks. The agrarian practices were modelled on this basic need. However, although recent studies have stressed their efforts to maximize production , climatic conditions and the scarcity of animal manure doomed the ancient Greek world to a low productivity. So the more populous poleis had to import large quantities of grain. This was the case of classical Athens, which particularly after the loss of empire in 404 BC was forced to set up a new policy. Its most important aspects were the good relations with Bosporan Kingdom in Crimea (the main producer of Triticum compactum, the most suitable grain for bread-making) and the legislation about the maritime and retail trade. This policy was relatively successful, but dependence on grain imports was for Athens a major factor of political and military weakness.

The collapse of the Roman heavy bronze coinage weight standards during the 3rd century BC is a well-known fact. Between the series following the Roman libra of 288 scruples’ standard (c. 323 g), assigned by M. Crawford to the years 280-270 BC, and some of the light series of the years 210-200 BC, the weight loss is over 90%. The Roman state initially experienced an obvious monetary panic as it lacked the means to fund its war effort after Trasimene and Cannae. In a matter of few years, its subsequent decisions affecting its coinage structure testify to a heightened awareness of what was at stake as far as the financial aspect of the war was concerned. Through the debasement of the bronze coinage, the recourse to a short-lived gold coinage and the establishment of a stable silver coinage, the Republic managed to raise additional resources and reduce its liabilities while improving its financial capacities. In doing so, it designed a monetary policy aimed at supporting a successful war economy.

This volume presents an introduction and nine papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing methods of analysing the organisation and performance of the agrarian sector of the economy of the Mediterranean world under Roman imperial rule in the period c. 100 BC to AD 350. The papers exemplify a range of possible approaches to studying and, within limits, quantifying aspects of agricultural production in the Roman world, and casting light on the structure and performance of that sector of the economy, on the basis of widely different sources of evidence – historical, papyrological and archaeological. The volume aims to move substantially beyond the simple assumption that agriculture was the dominant sector of the ancient economy, and to explore what was special and distinctive about the Roman economy in terms, for example, of state involvement and institutional infrastructure, or the phenomenon of market-oriented surplus production based around the villa system. What is especially new and distinctive about this book is its focus on marshalling a large quantity of evidence, both archaeological and documentary, to address large questions of the structure and performance of the agricultural economy of the Roman world. In particular, it offers a means of analysing investment in agricultural facilities, and tracks variation in patterns across time and across regions within the empire.

Macro-models make a significant contribution to our understanding of economic performance and economic inequality in the Roman empire. Comparative framing is essential for guiding our thinking on these matters by imposing some discipline on our conjectures. The application of Bayesian modeling improves on earlier estimates of Roman imperial GDP. The scope for estimating Roman income inequality is strongly constrained by GDP estimates and historical comparanda.

The introduction of modern notions into the history of the ancient world is not an individual feature of Mikhail Rostovtzeff as an historian but was characteristic of many scholars from the generation of his teachers, and then of his students, and therefore should be viewed against this broader backdrop. With the emergence of economic history, political economists K. Rodbertus and K. Bücher interpreted the
economic development of antiquity in terms of the then prevailing notions of progress, and corresponding to this historical period was a very primitive economic order and closed-household economy. Such an archaization of the ancient economy was opposed by Eduard Meyer, an outstanding historian of the ancient world, who not only saw many capitalist elements in antiquity (they were previously discerned by T. Mommsen and later by his students M. Weber, J. Beloch, U. Wilken, R. Pöhlmann etc.) but who in principle rejected the theory of progress in favor of the theory of cycles, or two parallel periods in world history. M. Rostovtzeff shared this theory in his early article “Capitalism and the National Economy in the Ancient World” (1900) which contains many ideas that he later developed in his major works on the social and economic history of Hellenism and the Roman Empire.
Evaluating the discussions about Hellenistic and Roman capitalism, we should consider the struggle between primitivists and modernizers to be an integral part of and a powerful stimulus to the scholarly understanding of antiquity, which uses explanatory models. In the second half of the nineteenth century the concept of capitalism had not yet been fully developed and therefore its scope and content in the works of Rostovtzeff, his associates and critics did in face vary significantly. The doctrine of socio-economic formations (slaveholding, feudal, capitalist etc.), habitual to Soviet scholars, was developed only in the 1930s, thus forcing many Soviet historians to abandon their previous views of the historical process.
The leading historian of ancient economy after Rostovtzeff, M. Finley, though used Weberian concepts, tended rather to side with the primitivists. In general he insisted on the self-sufficiency of cells of the ancient economy and denied any tangible technological progress or economic growth throughout ancient history. By the end of the twentieth century it became clear that the model proposed by Finley needed at very least the same modification as Rostovtzeff’s theory. Unlike Rostovtzeff’s theories, his histories remain unsuperceded.

The Marble Stoa at Hierapolis was a representative marble portico, which was funded by a local elite family in the middle of the 1st century AD. The aim of this paper is to assess the socio-economic dimensions of this building project by a tentative reconstruction of its logistics, schedule and labour force. Pre-industrial construction techniques and the management of building materials and human resources are put into perspective by the comparison with data derived from 19th century building manuals. The
construction effort is estimated in man-hours and man-days. Based on this estimate, a model for the organization of the building site, the most probable duration of the building project and the seasonal demands for unskilled and skilled workers are elaborated. This estimate is finally translated into hypothetical building costs by drawing upon the evidence for wages and prices under the early Empire. The results of this analysis do not only add to our understanding of wider socio-economic processes, but also to a more differentiated assessment of local euergetism in Roman Asia Minor.

Balance pan weights are used in both manufacture and trade and therefore are a correlate of economic activity.  Ancient examples can provide insight into the nature and extent of ancient economies.  Many weights have been discovered at the site of Nippur and most are here analyzed for the first time.  The site was a religious center through much of the Bronze Age and religious institutions are known to have played a role in ancient economics.  This role may have been in opposition to or concurrent with that of private and state enterprise.  Common weight forms at Nippur are those that are typical across the ancient Near East, but a single system of weight measurement is strongly indicated in statistical analysis.  This is in contradiction to most analyzed sites further north, where many systems are simultaneously in play.  It seems to indicate Nippur’s relative isolation within a socio-economic system, reflecting a general lack of incoming merchants or craftsmen from distant regions.

Studies dedicated to professor Piotr Dyczek on the occasion of his 65th birthday.

Changes in geopolitical situation in the Black Sea basin as a result of the Roman expansionist policy in Asia Minor caused the transformation of trade relations in the region. Greek cities of the south Black Sea littoral merged in the Roman Empire received a new impetus to economic development. Commercial wine production required a significant amount of containers for transportation. Heraclea Pontica was one of the main wine exporter in the area under consideration in the Roman period. Amphorae from Sinope were also widespread in the Black Sea region in the 2nd–3rd centuries AD, though they were not very numerous. In the Roman period, the cities of Bosporus became popular suppliers of wine and salsamenta. Containers that presumably belong to the Zeest types 72–73 are found in the Kingdom of Bosporus and the cities of the northern coast of the Black Sea (Chersonesus, Neapolis Scythica and Olbia) as well as in Novae, Histria etc.

This volume contains seventeen papers by leading Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing approaches to and methods of analysing the performance of the economy of the Mediterranean world under Roman imperial rule in the period c. 100 BC to AD 350. An introductory chapter defines the constituents and characteristics of economic integration, growth and decline in the Roman economy, and the ways in which quantifiable and proxy data can be used to measure them. This is followed by analyses of approaches in specific economic sectors: demography, urbanisation and settlement patterns, the agrarian economy, patterns of trade and commerce, metal supply and coinage. The volume offers a comprehensive survey of the opportunities for advancing understanding of the economic and technological development of the Mediterranean world under Roman rule by combining old and new evidence from archaeological and documentary sources.

This volume presents a collection of studies focussing on population and settlement patterns in the Roman empire in the perspective of the economic development of the Mediterranean world between 100 BC and AD 350. The analyses offered here highlight the issues of regional and temporal variation in Italy, Spain, Britain, Egypt, Crete, and Asia Minor from classical Greece to the early Byzantine period. The chapters fall into two main groups, the first dealing with the evidence for rural settlement, as revealed by archaeological field surveys, and the attendant methodological problems of extrapolating from that evidence a view of population; and the second with city populations and the phenomenon of urbanization. They proceed to consider hierarchies of settlement in the characteristic classical pattern of city plus territory, and the way in which those entities are defined from the highest to the lowest level: the empire as 'city of Rome plus territory', then regional and local hierarchies, and, more precisely, the identity and the nature of the 'instruments' which enables them to function in economic cohesion.

Introduction:
http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/13/9780199602353_chapter1.pdf

A lead piece from the River Garigliano at Minturnae shows Apollo presenting a little figure standing on an altar with toilet set of two strigils and an aryballos suspended from a carrying ring. He holds out the same set to Apollo. This is one of the diagnostic images of the Italo-Baetican series, found both in central Italy and in Hispania Ulterior Baetica in the second and first centuries BC. In central Italy, the Italo-Baetican issues helped provide liquidity in the context of the insufficiency of small change for the need of growing markets in the cities of the region that began in the middle of the second century, as wealth from successful conquest flowed into Italy, and its cities swelled. Those striking these non-state issues must have done so from a specific need for small change, which further suggests a structured commercial context. A review of the iconography suggests that this commercial milieu – and perhaps a corporate group or groups within it – may also have had shared cultic references that underwrote group self-image and solidarity.

This interdisciplinary volume presents eighteen papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman empire in the period c. 100 BC to AD 350, and in particular the role of the Roman state, in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army.

An introductory chapter by the editors sets the scene within the context of scholarly debate over the scale, nature and importance of Roman trade since the mid twentieth centuries. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections. Many of the major institutional factors are discussed in the first section: taxation by Alan Bowman (chapter 2); the legal structures by Boudewijn Sirks (chapter 3); market regulation and transaction costs by Elio Lo Cascio (chapter 4); Republican financial institutions by Philip Kay (chapter 5). A picture begins to emerge of heavy state involvement in establishing institutional frameworks conducive to trade, including provision of transport infrastructure, and, notably, interventions in the market to distort flows of particular goods, whether staples such as grain or olive oil, or luxuries such as marble, to particular concentrations of demands, principally Rome and the army garrisons. But this seems to have been done by the engagement of private contractors, in a way which stimulated private trade on the back of it: Colin Adams’ chapter on Nile transport (chapter 6) points out the incentives or subsidies carrying a private cargo as a supplement to a state cargo, and thus how the imbrication of state and private transport subsidised private trade.

The second and third sections concentrate on internal and external (long-distance) trade, respectively. Among the underlying questions of economic performance, we include: how widely available were different kinds of goods, and what determined differences in availability? How successfully did transport infrastructure provision enable goods to be moved, or did high transport costs deter long-distance land movement? The (predominantly archaeological) evidence reviewed in Part II gives the impression that access to resources via long-distance trade corrected some imbalances in natural reserves, for example in timber (chapter 7), and that traded goods (glass, chapter 9; pottery, chapters 10–12; and metals) were widely and effectively distributed. In normal circumstances, the transport systems, institutional framework, market concentrations of demand, worked pretty well for a preindustrial society. But there is anecdotal evidence of famines which could not be alleviated in time, given the slow transport and communication speeds of a preindustrial world. Although much of the evidence for the scale and reach of Roman trade comes from pottery, since that is one of the most archaeologically durable and traceable commodities, a particularly important feature of this volume is that several papers show what can be done with other goods: timber (William Harris, chapter 7), glass (Daniele Foy, chapter 9), stone (Ben Russell, chapter 8), and even the service industry in cleaning textiles (Ivan Radman, chapter 13). A chapter by Emanuele Papi (ch. 14)  examines a particular province, Mauretania Tingitana, and demonstrates how recent archaeological work and a synthesis of what is known about amphorae production sites radically alter the perception of that province as largely isolated from Mediterranean trading networks.

The third and final section deals with trade beyond the boundaries of the empire, especially with India and the far East, a topic on which a mass of new data has become available in the last decade, largely as a result of archaeological excavations. David Graf provides a magisterial survey of the evidence for the development, extent and nature of trade via the so-called ‘Silk Roads’ (chapter 15) The Silk Road trade at the Chinese end originated epiphenomenally on the practice of state tribute and diplomatic embassies, as tribute in kind and diplomatic gifts were resold by their enterprising recipients. As trade developed along the routes westward and gained its own momentum, its value was harnessed by the Chinese and Roman states in the form of heavy customs dues.
Roberta Tomber and Dario Nappo argue, on the basis of ceramic and numismatic evidence respectively, that contrary to a widespread view trade between the Roman world and India had not declined by the mid second century, but remained buoyant at least until the Antonine period. Barbara Davidde’s paper illustrates the role that Arabian ports played in this trade with India and also with the products of Arabia. Qana’ was receiving Campanian, Laodicaean and Egyptian wine, and even wine from Spain and the Black Sea. Some of this was clearly traded in return for frankincense from the interior of Yemen; but some will have been bought for onward shipment to the ports of northern India, and Indian goods would have gone the other way.

Overall, the papers suggest a mixed picture of the development of patterns of trade across the empire, especially in the third and fourth centuries, and no definitive or widely applicable conclusion about ‘economic collapse’. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in east and west, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the empire.