Writing agrarian histories of the Roman world: seasonality and scale as tools of analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 228-238
Author(s):  
Cam Grey
Keyword(s):  
Labor History ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Written Materials

Agrarian labor history of Greco-Roman antiquity—indeed, labor history of the period more broadly—does not look very much like the agrarian labor histories of other periods. Many explanations might be adduced for why this is so, including the very particular circumstances that led to the development of ancient history as a discipline separate from (yet intimately related to) the humanistic intellectual traditions of classical studies in the last decades of the nineteenth century. But arguably the most fundamental constraining factor is the nature of the available evidence. Simply put, the wealthy, leisured elites responsible for the overwhelming bulk of the written materials available to us from the ancient Mediterranean world were emphatically uninterested in the sector of the population whose labor underpinned and sustained their privileged position.

FORMATION OF CULTURE OF THE CITY OF JIZAK

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-65
Author(s):  
Dilbar Abdurasulova ◽  
◽  
Akbar Màjidov
Keyword(s):  
Ancient History ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Chinese Travelers

This article provide that Uzbekistan is one of the oldest centers of culture, in particular, the works of Greco-Roman historians, Arab and Chinese travelers and geographers serve invaluable source for studying the ancient history of Jizzak

A systematic method for estimating the populations of Greek and Roman settlements

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 301-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Hanson ◽  
S. G. Ortman
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Vital Statistics ◽  
Systematic Method ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urbanization Rate

The last few years have seen a growing interest in the urbanism of the Greek and Roman world. This has led to a consensus of sorts about some of its vital statistics, such as the sizes of the populations of the most important settlements and the size of the overall urban population, the urbanization rate (i.e., the share of individuals that lived in urban, rather than rural, contexts), and the total population. A good example comes from W. Scheidel in the Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world. According to him, it is likely that c.1.5 million people lived in the 5 largest cities of the Greco-Roman world by the 2nd c. A.D. These included Rome, which is usually agreed to have had a population of about 1 million; Alexandria, which might have had c.500,000; Antioch, which could have had at least 150,000; and Carthage and Ephesus (Scheidel does not give explicit figures for those).

Lead pollution and the Roman economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 354-364
Author(s):  
Damian Pavlyshyn ◽  
Iain Johnstone ◽  
Richard Saller
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Somatic Energy

More than a decade ago, the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP)1 and the Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world put the question of the performance of the Roman economy at the center of historical debate, prompting a flood of books and articles attempting to assess the degree of growth in the economy.2 The issue is of sufficient importance that it has figured in the narratives of economists analyzing the impact of institutional frameworks on the potential for growth.3 As the debate has continued, there has been some convergence: most historians would agree that there was some Smithian growth as evidenced by urbanization and trade, while acknowledging that production remained predominantly agricultural and based primarily on somatic energy (i.e., human and animal).4 This is, of course, a very broad framework that does not differentiate the Roman empire from other complex pre-industrial societies. The challenge is to refine the analysis in order to put content into the broad description of “modest though significant growth”5 and to offer a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the economy.

Carlos Poveda's Menu

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-83
Author(s):  
marjorie ross
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Art Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Domestic Landscapes ◽  
Contemporary Artists

Carlos Poveda's Domestic Landscapes are linked to a history of food and art that reaches back to Greco-Roman antiquity and becomes empowered with contemporary artists who sculpt or paint their works in edible materials to be devoured by spectators. Poveda's Landscapes, however, offer food that is symbolic——inedible. He reinvents the organic by using industrial refuse that he converts, colors, and models in a cauldron in a process as akin to alchemy as to cooking. His is not a faithful transcription of meals in the style of classical still lifes, but rather an artistic overlapping of emotions, that surround the idea of the edible. Looking at his sculptures we may feel revulsion, but what sickens us is not so much his creation as the awareness it brings of our intrinsically predatory nature. He gives us an art form that not only fails to provoke appetite but also touches our deepest culinary memories and leads us back to a primal past by asserting the significance of food in our collective memory. Ultimately, our strongest reaction to his work may be the fear that we won't be able to digest the absurdity of our daily life.

Roman Terracotta Lamps: the Organization of an Industry

1980 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 126-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. V. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Progress ◽  
Made In

It should be plain that important progress is to be made in the economic and social history of the Greco-Roman world through more systematic studies of the material remains. In the field of ancient manufacture and commerce, M. I. Finley has called for ‘a more sophisticated effort to approach quantification and pattern-construction’, and other historians too are well aware of what needs to be done. Doing it, however, can be difficult, for such projects, if approached with a scholarly desire for precision, bristle with complications, and the results can often be no more than tentative. Such is the case with this study of the terracotta lamp industry. For their part, the archaeologists who have studied groups of terracotta lamps, whether from particular sites or particular museums, have not altogether succeeded in fitting the material into the known framework of Roman life (this is not to suggest a primacy of written over material sources, simply that both are indispensable in economic history).

scholarly journals The Pythagoreans in the light and shadows of recent research

1970 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Holger Thesleff
Keyword(s):  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Greek Thought ◽  
History Of

It has been said' that "Pythagoras casts a long shadow in the history of Greek thought". Indeed, the shadow both widens and deepens spectacularly in course of time. He has not only been considered—on disputable grounds, as we shall see as the first European mystic. No other personality of the Greco–Roman world (except Christ, and perhaps Alexander the Great) has been credited with such powers and all-round capacities.

scholarly journals Assuming the Role of an Orientalist: Alexander Mishulin’s Articles about the History of the Ancient East

2021 ◽  
Vol 163 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
S.B. Krikh ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
School Textbook ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Common Basis ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient States

The popular articles written by A.V. Mishulin (1901–1948), a Soviet historian of antiquity, were analyzed. These articles are focused on the history and culture of the Ancient East states (Egypt, India, and China) with account of their impact on the establishment of Soviet historical science. Their role in A.V. Mishulin’s research activity is very important, because they were used in his school textbook of ancient history. A.V. Mishulin consistently adhered to the idea that slavery was a common basis of all ancient states, but he also believed that the slave-owning systems in the Ancient East and Greco-Roman world were different. Through a brief description of the Ancient East states, he emphasized the following two main aspects: all ancient societies exploited slaves, which inevitably resulted in the mass uprisings as a consequence of exhaustion of the slave-owning mode of production. To prove the validity of his ideas, A.V. Mishulin used historical material (such as the Papyrus Leiden). Therefore, the history of the Ancient East and Greco-Roman world more or less correlated with each other in A.V. Mishulin’s school textbook, which influenced the subsequent organization of school textbooks of history in the Soviet Union.

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