Ancient economies (Archaeology)

Archaeological investigations carried out at Case Bastione (Enna, central Sicily) provide a key insight into the cultural and environmental changes that occurred during the transition from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age. Preliminary data of an ongoing paleoenvironmental reconstruction through archaeobotanical analyses are here presented. The selective exploitation of vegetation, the adaptation of lifestyle to local resources, and changing climatic conditions are analysed using different on-site and off-site environmental and archaeological proxies. The environment around the site was constituted by mixed oak woodland. Dietary preferences were reconstructed through the analysis of carpo-remains. Isotopic values provide new data on the 4.2 ka BP event and its effects on vegetation in central Sicily. In a whole, first results from Case Bastione give new light to human choices of vegetal resources exploitation. Comparison of the local results with the regional pollen data support the hypothesis that the growth in population and settlement in the inland part of the island since the Late Copper Age may reflect changing climatic conditions in coastal areas.

This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy.  Four themes are discussed. The first of these is the position of Pompeii and its agricultural environment, discussing the productivity and specialization of agriculture in the Vesuvian region, and the degree to which we can explain Pompeii’s size and wealth on the basis of the city’s economic hinterland. A second issue discussed is what Pompeians got out of their economy: how well-off were people in Pompeii?  This involves discussing the consumption of everyday consumer goods, analyzing archaeobotanical remains to highlight the quality of Pompeian diets, and discussing what bone remains reveal about the health of the inhabitants of Pompeii. A third theme is economic life in the city: how are we to understand the evidence for crafts and manufacturing? How are we to assess Pompeii’s commercial topography? Who were the people who actually invested in constructing shops and workshops? In which economic contexts were Pompeian paintings produced? Finally, the volume discusses money and business: how integrated was Pompeii into the wider world of commerce and exchange, and what can the many coins found at Pompeii tell us about this? What do the wax tablets found near Pompeii tell us about trade in the Bay of Naples in the first century AD? Together, the chapters of this volume highlight how Pompeii became a very rich community, and how it profited from its position in the centre of the Roman world.

The past few decades have witnessed a growing realisation that market based measures of human well-being—measures that centre on income and consumption
distributions—miss some other perhaps even more essential elements of human well-being. This insight has found a prominent expression in the work of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s so-called capability approach. At the same time, the market-based measure of inequality as a function of the distribution of material remains in graves and other locations remain dominant in archaeology. In this
paper, we explore the significance of the capability approach, and the associated concept of human well-being based on the idea of capabilities, to the archaeology of social inequality and socialmalintegration.We discuss these notions using the case study of the Late Neolithic Bosnian tell site Okolište and argue that there, in c. 5200–4600 BCE, the monopolisation of certain critical goods led to a critical capability inequality,
malintegration and to a prolonged period of social unrest and decline.

Regular excavations of the ancient settlement in Jiyeh on the Phoenician coast, carried out by the Polish-Lebanese mission since 2008, as well as results of some earlier archaeological investigations there, allowed to discuss various aspects of economic activity of the local population in the Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine times. The obtained materials justify putting forward several hypotheses concerning the agriculture, craffts and trade carried out by the inhabitants of the settlement. It seems that olive oil and wine, together with the locally manufactured coarse pottery vessels and other productts, sold within the territory of the neighbouring towns (Sidon and Berytus), could have been the main source of profit allowing the inhabitants to purchase imported goods, such as fine pottery and marble coming from different parts of the Mediterranean. Moreover, the settlement in Jiyeh, due to its favourable geographical location, may have played an important intermediary role in the trade exchange between the villages located to the east, on the slopes of Mount Lebanon, and urban centres along the Mediterranean coastline.

Vaisselle précieuse, bijoux en or et pierres gravées, décor des demeures, vins et produits gastronomiques recherchés, parure monumentale des villes et mobilier luxueux des tombes, toutes ces manifestations du luxe se caractérisent par des matériaux coûteux, rares, travaillés par des artisans de talent. Leur possession relève de l’ostentation et du superflu. Pourtant, le seuil à partir duquel un artefact entre dans la catégorie du luxe n’est pas toujours clair : il change selon l’époque, le lieu, l’échelle. Le luxe de la parure individuelle, de la maison privée, de groupes professionnels, du prince ou de la cité ne s’expriment pas de la même manière et n’ont pas la même vocation.
Cet ouvrage rassemble 14 communications d’un colloque qui s’est tenu au musée de l’Arles antique en 2017, autour de l’exposition sur le Luxe antique et le trésor de Berthouville. En se fondant sur des découvertes et des travaux récents, il interroge cette notion complexe du luxe à travers l’étude de grands trésors, des pratiques funéraires, des monuments, de la circulation des richesses et de leur thésaurisation.

From the Trojan War to the sack of Rome by Alaric, from the fall of Constantinople to the bombing of European cities in World War II and now the devastation of Syrian towns filmed by drones, the destruction of cities and the slaughter of civilian populations are among the most dramatic events in world history. The goal of this conference is to reassess the impact of physical destruction on ancient Greek cities and its demographic and economic implications. The problem of “destruction layers” will  be addressed from the point of view of stratigraphy and micromorphology. Using well-documented case studies, archaeologists and historians will compare literary and archaeological data in order to evaluate the scale of physical damage and demographic losses sustained by ancient cities. They will then attempt to estimate the impact of warfare on economic activity, trade and the expansion of markets, trying to understand to what extent warfare inhibited regional settlement patterns, demography, and the growth of regional and inter-regional trade.

The Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation is pleased to announce the organisation of its first Summer School on Ancient Greek and Roman Numismatics, to take place at its premises in Athens, from 3 to 12 July 2017.
The detailed programme of the Summer School, participation fees and the application procedure will be announced in January 2017 on the NHRF website (www.eie.gr).
For more information contact us on: numismatics@eie.gr

An imposing amount of studies and researches in the second half of the twentieth century has focused on the productivity in Roman Africa of a variety of consumer products, along with the analysis of regions, cities and their economies. The success of  African goods during the Caesarian-Augustan age and up to the late antiquity, recorded in the written tradition and confirmed by the stratigraphy of many sites in the Mediterranean, has been the subject of a substantial amount of contributions that have accompanied for more than sixty years the study of material culture of the Roman imperial age. This session, which can not consider every product of the Maghreb, will focus mainly on the ceramic, not only on account of its large diffusion, the fossil marker for dating contexts all around the Mediterranean and well inside Europe for several centuries, but also because the evidence is more consistent than that found for other types of sources, and reflects the ability of African regions to develop a high yield agriculture, and manufacturing activities related to fisheries, as shown by transport amphorae (carrying oil, olives, wine, fish sauces), as well as crafts tied to the production of more or less valuable objects, aimed - at various levels - at regional, inter-regional and inter-provincial markets.
If during a  more or less recent past most studies were mainly focused on data collected at the sites of consumption (and thus on the indestructible ceramic), centered on the type and histories of each production (fine table ware, lamps,  kitchenware and coarse ware), recent studies have been, on one hand, directed towards a review of the known types and towards a more thoughtful analysis of the contexts of discovery, perfecting the production framework and anchoring to a trustworthy time frame certain types and classes in circulation; on the other hand they have focused on the production centers in order to get a better geographic characterization of those same types and classes, applying a wealth of suitable methodologies, surveys of large tracts of land, surveys and excavations of old and new workshops, laboratory analysis. The results draw a scenery in which a great variety of productive facies and distribution models reflect the complexity of the cultural, social and economic contexts, both micro- and macro-regional, both at the provincial and inter-provincial levels. This session aims to describe these lines of research, focusing on the organization of production and commerce in the region, their similarities and differences, and on a list of questions still unsolved, the solution of which will call for a further revision of published data, and for brand new information.