Roman Port Societies

Roman Port Societies
Author: Pascal Arnaud
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2020-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108486223

The first in-depth analysis of the epigraphic evidence for the societies of the ports of the Roman Mediterranean.

Roman Port Societies

Roman Port Societies
Author: Pascal Arnaud
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2020-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108787827

In this book, an international team of experts draws upon a rich range of Latin and Greek texts to explore the roles played by individuals at ports in activities and institutions that were central to the maritime commerce of the Roman Mediterranean. In particular, they focus upon some of the interpretative issues that arise in dealing with this kind of epigraphic evidence, the archaeological contexts of the texts, social institutions and social groups in ports, legal issues relating to harbours, case studies relating to specific ports, and mercantile connections and shippers. While much attention is inevitably focused upon the richer epigraphic collections of Ostia and Ephesos, the papers draw upon inscriptions from a very wide range of ports across the Mediterranean. The volume will be invaluable for all scholars and students of Roman history.

The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic

The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic
Author: Harriet I. Flower
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 519
Release: 2014-06-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107032245

This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.

Reconstructing a Maritime Past

Reconstructing a Maritime Past
Author: Matthew Harpster
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2022-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000813657

Reconstructing a Maritime Past argues that rather than applying geo-ethnic labels to shipwrecks to describe “Greek” or “Roman” seafaring, a more intriguing alternative emphasizes a maritime culture’s valorization of the Mediterranean Sea. Doing so creates new questions and research agendas to understand the past human relationship with the sea. This study makes this argument in three sections. Chapters 1 and 2, contrasting intellectual histories of maritime archaeological interpretive approaches common in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, propose that the former perspective – which embodies contemporary and fluid perceptions of culture – is a better theoretical framework for future research. Chapters 3–5 re-interpret the corpus of submerged sites in the Mediterranean Sea with this approach, arguing that this dataset does not represent “Phoenician,” “Muslim,” or “Byzantine” seafaring, but the practices of a maritime culture. Key to this section is the author’s method that utilizes superimposed polygons to model patterns of maritime activity, generating centennial results at different scales. Having built the models of a maritime culture’s valorization of the Mediterranean Sea, Chapter 6 contains the first comparisons of these models to other datasets, questioning the relevance of textual media to understand maritime activity, while finding closer analogues with other archaeological corpora. By deconstructing interpretive methods in maritime archaeology, offering a new synthesizing interpretive approach that is scalable and decoupled from past perceptions, and critically examining the applicability of various media to illuminate the past maritime experience, this book will appeal to scholars at various stages of their careers.

The Real Estate Market in the Roman World

The Real Estate Market in the Roman World
Author: Marta García Morcillo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2023-03-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000845540

As it is today, the property market was a key and dynamic economic sector in Ancient Rome. Its study demands a deep understanding of Roman society, of the normative frameworks and the notions of wealth, value, identity and status that shaped individual and collective mentalities. This book takes a multisided insight into real estate as the subject of short- and long-term economic investments, of speculative businesses ventures, of power abuses and inequalities, of social aspirations, but also of essential housing needs. The volume discusses thoroughly relevant and new literary, legal, epigraphic, papyrological and archaeological evidence, and incorporates comparative historical perspectives and methodologies, including economic theory and current, critical sociological debates about the functioning of modern real estate markets and issues linked to its commodification and regulation. In pursuing this line of enquiry, the contributions that make up the book investigate the impact of ideas such as profit, risk, security and trust in transfers, management and use of residential houses, commercial buildings and productive estates in urban and rural contexts. The work further evaluates the legal responses to and the public enforcement strategies concerning such activities, the high mobility of fortunes and unstable property-rights that resulted from one-off but also structural, political, financial, economic and institutional crises that marked the history of the Roman Republic and Principate. This book aims to demonstrate the relevance of the study of pre-modern real estate markets today, and will be of significant interest to readers of economic history as well as Roman law, Roman archaeology, the history of urbanism and social history.

Neighbourhoods and City Quarters in Antiquity

Neighbourhoods and City Quarters in Antiquity
Author: Annette Haug
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2023-08-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 3111248097

Studies on ancient urbanity either concerns individual buildings or the city as a whole. This volume, instead, addresses a meso-scale of urbanity: the socio-spatial organisation of ancient cities. Its temporal focus is on Late Republican and Imperial Italy, and more specifically the cities of Pompeii and Ostia. Referring to a praxeological and phenomenological perspective, it looks at neighbourhoods and city quarters as basic categories of design and experience. With the terms 'neighbourhood and 'city quarter' the volume proposes two different methodological approaches: Neighbourhood here refers to the face-to-face relation between people living next to each other - thus the small-scale environment centred around a house and an individual. Neighbourhoods thus do not constitute a (collectively defined) urban territory with clear borders, but are rather constituted by individual experiences. In contrast, city quarters are understood as areas that share certain characteristics.

Shipwrecks, Legal Landscapes and Mediterranean Paradigms

Shipwrecks, Legal Landscapes and Mediterranean Paradigms
Author: Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2022-05-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004515801

Now available in Open Access thanks to the support of the University of Helsinki. This book changes our understanding of the Roman conceptions about the sea by placing the focus on shipwrecks as events that act as bridges between the sea and the land. The study explores the different Roman legal definitions of these spaces, and how individuals of divergent legal statuses interacted within these areas. Its main purpose is to chart and analyse the Roman conception of the maritime landscape from the Late Republican until the Severan period. This book integrates maritime history and ethnography with the physical remains of past maritime systems, such as shipwrecks, ports, villages, fortifications, and documented legal rulings.

The Socio-Economics of Roman Storage

The Socio-Economics of Roman Storage
Author: Astrid Van Oyen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2020-05-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1108851452

In a pre-industrial world, storage could make or break farmers and empires alike. How did it shape the Roman empire? The Socio-Economics of Roman Storage cuts across the scales of farmer and state to trace the practical and moral reverberations of storage from villas in Italy to silos in Gaul, and from houses in Pompeii to warehouses in Ostia. Following on from the material turn, an abstract notion of 'surplus' makes way for an emphasis on storage's material transformations (e.g. wine fermenting; grain degrading; assemblages forming), which actively shuffle social relations and economic possibilities, and are a sensitive indicator of changing mentalities. This archaeological study tackles key topics, including the moral resonance of agricultural storage; storage as both a shared and a contested concern during and after conquest; the geography of knowledge in domestic settings; the supply of the metropolis of Rome; and the question of how empires scale up. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Roman archaeology and history, as well as anthropologists who study the links between the scales of farmer and state.