scholarly journals Taskscapes, Landscapes, and the Politics of Agricultural Production in Roman Mosaics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kilian Mallon
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
Agricultural Work ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Imperial Period

In recent years archaeologists have put forward explanations of the design and impact of mythological and allegorical scenes in mosaics as part of elite Roman visual culture. While scenes of labor have served as evidence to accompany archaeological data on rural life, depictions of labor have received comparatively less attention as part of Roman ideological structures. Through an analysis of mosaics of the imperial period, this article demonstrates the value of adapting Timothy Ingold’s concept of taskscape for understanding the elite strategies of cultural hegemony underlying depictions of agricultural work in Roman art and showcases an approach to the Roman economy rooted in this particular body of anthropological theory. Elites used a set of visual strategies, Roman taskscape features, to promote their ongoing control over agricultural production, a strategy that endured across the Roman world for generations.

Capital, Investment, and Innovation in the Roman World

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Capital Investment ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Agriculture Water

Investment in capital, both physical and financial, and innovation in its uses are often considered the linchpins of modern economic growth, while credit and credit markets now seem to determine the wealth—as well as the fate—of nations. This book asks whether it always thus, and whether the Roman economy—large, complex, and sophisticated as it was— looked anything like today’s economies in terms of its structural properties. Through consideration of the allocation and uses of capital and credit and the role of innovation in the Roman world, the contributors to this volume go to the heart of the matter. How was capital in its various forms generated, allocated, and employed in the Roman economy? Did the Romans have markets for capital goods and credit? Did investment in capital lead to innovation and productivity growth? The authors consider multiple aspects of capital use in agriculture, water management, trade, and urban production, and of credit provision, finance, and human capital in different periods of Roman history, in Italy and elsewhere in the Roman world. Using many different types of written and archaeological evidence, and employing a range of modern theoretical perspectives and methodologies, the contributors, an international team of historians and archaeologists, have produced the first book-length contribution to focus exclusively on (physical and financial) capital in the Roman world, a volume that is aimed at experts in the field as well as at economic historians and archaeologists specializing in other periods and places.

scholarly journals How Much Is Enough? First Steps to a Social Ecology of the Pergamon Microregion

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 479
Author(s):  
Julian Laabs ◽  
Daniel Knitter
Keyword(s):  
Carrying Capacity ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Complementary Region ◽  
The City

In this study, we present a transparent and reproducible approach to model agricultural production with respect to environmental characteristics and available labour. Our research focuses on the city of Pergamon and its surroundings, with an emphasis on the transition between the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Period, where widespread demographic changes took place. We investigated the degree of local self-sufficiency using different concepts of a city’s complementary region. Using simple topographic derivatives, we derive a measure of environmental suitability that we translate into a carrying capacity index. Our results show that workforce was not a limiting factor for local self-sufficiency. However, environmental carrying capacity may have been limiting in a scenario with a large population. An active investment into the environment, e.g., by the construction of terraces, could have helped to increase the degree of self-sufficiency. Future research should investigate the level of resilience of such a coupled socio-ecological system in relation to environmental and socio-cultural dynamics.

Tra ruralizzazione ed urbanizzazione: progetti integrati cittŕ-campagna

TERRITORIO ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 171-177
Author(s):  
Alessandra Giannini
Keyword(s):  
Urban Agriculture ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Rural Living ◽  
Marginal Areas ◽  
Country Life ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship

- Country life is (and has been) the object of utopian visions, set against the rise of urban living. The paradigms of the myth of rural life can be traced back to Howard's Garden City and to Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City. These examples of the paradigm blend into a broader and trans-disciplinary contemporary discourse on the myth of rural living. Since the end of the 1990s, the subject of the relationship between the rural and the urban has developed into plans that could be called ‘country utopias'. The system of agricultural production and the countryside is evolving today towards new forms of integration and hybridisation with urban areas. Planning practices are emerging today in the definition of the characters and traits of urban agriculture designed to create town and country interaction particularly in marginal areas, strips located on the borders between town and country. These modifications are leading to the definition of new rural figures, together with plans capable of giving new life to liminal and marginal areas between town and country by creating new models of ‘rururban' living.

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Image Analysis ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Visual Semiotics ◽  
The World

Roman imagery and iconography are typically studied under the more general umbrella of Roman art and in broader, medium-specific studies. This handbook focuses primarily on visual imagery in the Roman world, examined by context and period, and the evolving scholarly traditions of iconographic analysis and visual semiotics that have framed the modern study of these images. As such topics—or, more directly, the isolation of these topics from medium-specific or strictly temporal evaluations of Roman art—are uncommon in monograph-length studies, our goal is that this handbook will be an important reference for both the communicative value of images in the Roman world and the tradition of iconographical analysis. The chapters herein represent contributions from a number of leading and emerging authorities on Roman imagery and iconography from across the world, representing a variety of academic traditions and methods of image analysis.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Paul Erdkamp ◽  
Koenraad Verboven ◽  
Arjan Zuiderhoek
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Capital Goods ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Large Complex ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic

Investment in capital, both physical and financial, and innovation in its uses are often considered the linchpin of modern economic growth, while credit and credit markets now seem to determine the wealth—as well as the fate—of nations. Yet was it always thus? The Roman economy was large, complex, and sophisticated, but in terms of its structural properties, did it look anything like the economies we know today? Through consideration of the allocation and uses of capital and credit and the role of innovation in the Roman world, this volume explores how capital in its various forms was generated, allocated, and employed in the Roman economy; whether the Romans had markets for capital goods and credit; and whether investment in capital led to innovation and productivity growth.

Innovation and Investment in the Roman Rural Economy Through the Lens of Marzuolo (Tuscany, Italy)*

2020 ◽  
Vol 248 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-40
Author(s):  
Astrid Van Oyen
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Human Capital Development ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Capital Development ◽  
Investment Behaviour

Abstract: The presence, uptake and economic impact of innovations in the Roman world have been much debated. Not subject to debate, however, is the agency behind innovation, which is assumed to be the large, elite landowner. Evidence of experimentation at the rural terra sigillata production site of Marzuolo (Tuscany, Italy) does not fit dominant models of external investment in the Roman world and challenges the directionality of innovation. Instead, this article makes the case that experimentation at Marzuolo was driven by intensification on the part of local smallholders, but was curbed by a lack of capital investment. A later, scaled-up terra sigillata production phase at the same site, linked to infrastructural investments, shows predatory investment behaviour by a landowner who appropriated a tried and tested facility. Recasting innovation as an open-ended process of trial and error that is centred on human capital development, labour and relations of production, changes the terms of study of the Roman economy and aligns it with broader conversations in economic history.

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