Research context
This research programme addresses the fundamentals of the Roman imperial economy and will provide a detailed analysis of major economic activities (agriculture, trade, commerce, mining), utilising quantifiable bodies of artefactual and documentary evidence and placing them in the broader structural context of regional variation, distribution, size and nature of markets, supply and demand.
The chronological parameters are 100 BC to AD 300, covering the period of greatest imperial expansion and economic growth (to c.AD 200), followed by a century conventionally perceived as one of contraction or decline. Geographically, we will draw on material selected from all over the Mediterranean world: Egypt, north Africa, Spain and Italy will be our most fruitful sources of data, which will be gleaned almost entirely from published archaeological and documentary sources.
Thirty years after Moses Finley's Ancient Economy, it is clear that new insights must be gained not by debates over alleged economic 'primitivism' or 'rationalism', but by careful definition of the indicators of economic growth and decline in the Roman world and by analysis of evidence which allows measurement and quantification, yielding conclusions about the rate and volume of growth and contraction over time. The potential of powerful ICT tools can be exploited in order to establish sophisticated models and a sound evidential basis for understanding the scale and complexity of Roman economic behaviour over a vast geographical area.
Research questions
The project will provide a detailed basis for assessing the rate and volume of economic growth in the earlier empire and the extent of contraction after AD 200. We will also consider to what extent the Roman economy was integrated across the whole empire rather than a number of disparate but linked regional economies; and how far it was structurally integrated, that is, are state mechanisms of economic control and the behaviour of 'free market' local economies part of a coherent economic 'system'. In addressing these general questions we will focus on several underlying issues which will, in combination, offer a set of carefully framed definitions.
These include:
- the constituents of economic growth
- levels of sophistication and rationality in ancient economic strategies
- inter-operation of regional markets
- the extent to which recent analysis of economic institutions and behaviour is applicable to the Roman economy, in terms of:
- intensity of production in agriculture and manufacture
- markets
- supply and demand
- movement of goods over what distances
- distribution of population and the effects of urbanisation
- behaviour of currency and prices
- institutional control and free markets
- the application of developments in ancient technology which we believe to be much more significant than is recognised.
Ancient economic historians in the past have been too pessimistic in thinking that they lack sufficient reliable statistical or quantifiable data for the Roman economy. A major part of our programme comprises the identification of a limited number of significant bodies of published direct and proxy data, archaeological and documentary (particularly Greek papyri), within the four diagnostic areas of study and analysis of their validity and their parameters.
The key areas are:
- Agrarian economy
- Urbanisation and demography
- Metal and money supply
- Trade
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