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This volume is a collection of studies which presents new analyses of the nature and scale of Roman agriculture in the Mediterranean world from c. 100 BC to AD 350. It provides a clear understanding of the fundamental features of Roman agricultural production through studying the documentary and archaeological evidence for the modes of land exploitation and the organization, development of, and investment in this sector of the Roman economy.
Moving substantially beyond the simple assumption that agriculture was the dominant sector of the ancient economy, the volume explores what was special and distinctive about it, especially with a view of its development and integration during a period of expansion and prosperity across the empire. The papers exemplify a range of possible approaches to studying and, within limits, quantifying aspects of Roman agricultural production, marshalling a large quantity of evidence, chiefly archaeological and papyrological, to address important questions of the organization and performance of this sector in the Roman world.
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OXFORD STUDIES ON THE ROMAN ECONOMY General Editors Alan Bowman Andrew Wilson
OXFORD STUDIES ON THE ROMAN ECONOMY The innovative monograph series reflects a vigorous revival of interest in the ancient economy, focusing on the Mediterranean world under Roman rule (c.100 bc to ad 350). Carefully quantified archaeological and documentary data will be integrated to help ancient historians, economic historians, and archaeologists think about economic behaviour collectively rather than from separate perspectives. The volumes will include a substantial comparative element and thus be of interest to historians of other periods and places.
The Roman Agricultural Economy Organization, Investment, and Production
Edited by
ALAN BOWMAN and
ANDREW WILSON
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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Oxford University Press 2013 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–966572–3 Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Preface This, the third volume in the series Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy, like its two predecessors, originates in the research programme entitled The Economy of the Roman Empire: Integration, Growth and Decline, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2005–10 and directed by the Series Editors. The aims and nature of the research project are described in the preface to the first volume, Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Problems (eds A. K. Bowman and A. I. Wilson, 2009), to which the reader is referred for more details. This volume focuses on the Roman agrarian economy, and in particular on systems of organization, and the nature and scale of agricultural production, and investment in it. Most of the chapters were or