This book is the first general work to be published on technology in Late Antiquity. It seeks to survey aspects of the technology of the period and to respond to questions about technological continuity, stagnation and decline. The book opens with a comprehensive bibliographic essay that provides an overview of relevant literature. The main section then explores technologies in agriculture, production (metal, ceramics and glass), engineering and building. Papers draw on both archaeological and textual sources, and on analogies with medieval and early modern technologies. Reference is made not only to the periods which preceded it, but to the transition to the Early Middle Ages and to the technological heritage of Late Antiquity to the Islamic world. Several papers focus on Italy, whilst others consider North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Near-East.

Scientists, historians and archaeologists are at last beginning to collaborate seriously on studies of the long-term history of the environment. The fruit of an international conference held in Rome in 2011, The Ancient Mediterranean Environment between Science and History brings together scientists and scholars who are interested in the interaction of their several disciplines as well as in specific problems such as the effects of climate change and other environmental factors on historical developments and events, the sources of the energy and fuel used in ancient civilizations, and the effects of humans on the lands around the Mediterranean. The collection balances broad Mediterranean-wide studies and tightly focused studies of particular regions in Italy and Jordan.

Ancient Economies, Modern Methodologies is a collection of essays which focuses on the art of questioning; it is about ideas and analytical experiment. Ancient economic history has developed enormously since the publication of M.I. Finley’s The Ancient Economy in 1973. Much new material has been brought to bear on the debate on the character of economic life in the Greek and Roman world. But, at the same time, discussions have been going round in circles. This is because not enough attention has been given to the questions ancient historians ask and the concepts with which they approach the economy. In this collection, an attempt is made to renew the terms of the debate by presenting a wide variety of new analytical approaches to ancient economic history ranging from literary theory, cross-cultural comparison, statistical analysis of archaeological data to neo-institutional economics and model-building.

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 and are familiar with today? Through consideration of the allocation and uses of capital and credit and the role of innovation in the Roman world, the individual essays comprising this volume go straight to the heart of the matter, exploring such questions as 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. Their authors consider multiple aspects of capital use in agriculture, water management, trade, and urban production, and of credit provision, finance, and human capital, covering different periods of Roman history and ranging geographically across Italy and elsewhere in the Roman world. Utilizing many different types of written and archaeological evidence, and employing a range of modern theoretical perspectives and methodologies, the contributors, an expert 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 not only at specialists in the field, but also at economic historians and archaeologists specializing in other periods and places.

In this volume, papers by leading Roman historians and archaeologists discuss trade within the Roman Empire and beyond its frontiers between c.100 BC and AD 350, focusing especially on the role of the Roman state in shaping the institutional framework for trade. As part of a novel interdisciplinary approach to the subject, the chapters address its myriad facets on the basis of broadly different sources of evidence - historical, papyrological, andarchaeological - demonstrating how collaborations with the elite holders of wealth within the empire fundamentally changed its political character in the longer term.

Why did weeds matter in the Carolingian empire? What was their special significance for writers in eighth- and ninth-century Europe and how was this connected with the growth of real weeds? In early medieval Europe, unwanted plants that persistently appeared among crops created extra work, reduced productivity, and challenged theologians who believed God had made all vegetation good. For the first time, in this book weeds emerge as protagonists in early medieval European history, driving human farming strategies and coloring people's imagination. Early medieval Europeans' effort to create agroecosystems that satisfied their needs and cosmologies that confirmed Christian accounts of vegetable creation both had to come to terms with unruly plants. Using diverse kinds of texts, fresh archaeobotanical data, and even mosaics, this interdisciplinary study reveals how early medieval Europeans interacted with their environments.

The Roman economy was operated significantly above subsistence level, with production being stimulated by both taxation and trade. Some regions became wealthy on the basis of exporting low-value agricultural products across the Mediterranean. In contrast, it has usually been assumed that the high costs of land transport kept inland regions relatively poor. This volume challenges these assumptions by presenting new research on production and exchange within inland regions. The papers, supported by detailed bibliographic essays, range from Britain to Jordan. They reveal robust agricultural economies in many interior regions. Here, some wealth did come from high value products, which could defy transport costs. However, ceramics also indicate local exchange systems, capable of generating wealth without being integrated into inter-regional trading networks. The role of the State in generating production and exchange is visible, but often co-existed with local market systems. Contributors are Alyssa A. Bandow, Fanny Bessard, Michel Bonifay, Kim Bowes, Stefano Costa, Jeremy Evans, Elizabeth Fentress, Piroska Hárshegyi, Adam Izdebski, Luke Lavan, Tamara Lewit, Phil Mills, Katalin Ottományi, Peter Sarris, Emanuele Vaccaro, Agnès Vokaer, Mark Whittow and Andrea Zerbini.

Imperial Rome has a name for wealth and luxury, but was the economy of the Roman Empire as a whole a success, by the standards of pre-modern economies? In this volume W. V. Harris brings together eleven previously published papers on this much-argued subject, with additional comments to bring them up to date. A new study of poverty and destitution provides a fresh perspective on the question of the Roman Empire's economic performance, and a substantial introduction ties the collection together. Harris tackles difficult but essential questions, such as how slavery worked, what role the state played, whether the Romans had a sophisticated monetary system, what it was like to be poor, whether they achieved sustained economic growth. He shows that in spite of notably sophisticated economic institutions and the spectacular wealth of a few, the Roman economy remained incorrigibly pre-modern and left a definite segment of the population high and dry.

The book deals with the characters and evolution of the European economy from the high Middle Ages until the start of modern growth in the 19th century. Europe is always set in a global context and the European specific features are analysed on the background of the world economy. The main aim of the book is to present a clear picture of the structure and organisation of the European pre-modern economy, specifying its features, institutions, constraints and differences with other traditional coeval economies. The path followed starts from the demographic characters, the techniques, the sectors (agriculture, trade, industry), the output, and continues with the demand side (consumption, investment, public expense). The last chapter recalls the main features of the pre-modern economy in a more formal way. The book is the only available work dealing with the formation of the European economy and its features over the long term, that is from the 10th until the 19th century.