The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production

This book presents an introduction and nine chapters 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 chapters 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 book 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.