Miko Flohr | Universiteit Leiden (original) (raw)
Monograph by Miko Flohr
The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-qualit... more The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the places where they worked in the city, and their everyday lives on the shop floor and beyond.
Through focusing on the lower segments of society, Flohr uses everyday work as the major organizing principle of the narrative: the volume discusses the decisions taken by those responsible for the organization of work, and how these decisions subsequently had an impact on the social lives of people carrying out the work. It emphasizes how socio-economic differences between cities resulted in fundamentally different working lives for many of their people, and that not only were economic activities shaped by Roman society, they in turn played a key role in shaping it.
Using an in-depth and qualitative analysis of material remains related to economic activities, with a combined study of epigraphic and literary records, this volume portrays an insightful view of the socio-economic history of urban communities in the Roman world.
Edited Volumes by Miko Flohr
This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Medi... more This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the fi rst centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history.
The contributions explore how these cities developed landscapes full of civic memory and ritual, saw commercial priorities transforming the urban environment, and began to expand signifi cantly beyond their wall circuits. These interrelated developments not only changed how cities looked and could be experienced, but they also affected the functioning of the urban community and together contributed to keeping increasingly complex urban communities socially cohesive. By focusing on the transformation of urban landscapes in the Late Republican and Imperial periods, the volume adds a new, explicitly historical angle to current debates about urban space in Roman studies. Confronting archaeological and historical approaches, the volume presents developments in Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, thus significantly broadening the geographical scope of the discussion and offering novel theoretical perspectives alongside well- documented, thematic case studies.
Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World will be of interest to anyone working on Roman urbanism or Roman history in the Late Republic and early Empire.
M. Flohr and A. I. Wilson (eds), The Economy of Pompeii (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017
This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches... more This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy. Four themes are discussed. The first of these is the position of Pompeii and its agricultural environment, discussing the productivity and specialization of agriculture in the Vesuvian region, and the degree to which we can explain Pompeii’s size and wealth on the basis of the city’s economic hinterland. A second issue discussed is what Pompeians got out of their economy: how well-off were people in Pompeii? This involves discussing the consumption of everyday consumer goods, analyzing archaeobotanical remains to highlight the quality of Pompeian diets, and discussing what bone remains reveal about the health of the inhabitants of Pompeii. A third theme is economic life in the city: how are we to understand the evidence for crafts and manufacturing? How are we to assess Pompeii’s commercial topography? Who were the people who actually invested in constructing shops and workshops? In which economic contexts were Pompeian paintings produced? Finally, the volume discusses money and business: how integrated was Pompeii into the wider world of commerce and exchange, and what can the many coins found at Pompeii tell us about this? What do the wax tablets found near Pompeii tell us about trade in the Bay of Naples in the first century AD? Together, the chapters of this volume highlight how Pompeii became a very rich community, and how it profited from its position in the centre of the Roman world.
Wilson, A. I. and Flohr, M. (eds) (2016). Urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, Oxford University Press, Feb 11, 2016
This interdisciplinary volume presents sixteen papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, dis... more This interdisciplinary volume presents sixteen papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.
After an introduction by the editors, which discusses recent developments in the study of Roman craftsmen and traders and their changing place in Roman economic history, the remainder of the volume is divided into four sections. The first three chapters discuss the scholarly history of Roman crafts and trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, identifying different national traditions in the scholarship and showing how they influenced the development of thinking in very different ways in different regions, something which this book aims to overcome by promoting a greater interchange of ideas and perspectives between traditions.
A chapter by Flohr and Wilson discusses the development of academic debate in Germany and the Anglo-Saxon world, highlighting the role of new sets of evidence and changing scholarly ideologies in pushing forward scholarly discourse. This broad chapter sets the stage for the two following chapters. Carla Salvaterra and Alessandro Cristofori sketch the development of debates on craftsmen and traders in twentieth century Italy, with particular emphasis on the fascist era and the marxist fashion in the 1970s. Jean-Pierre Brun discusses the historical development of debate among francophone scholars in the light of recent French approaches to the archaeology of crafts in Roman Italy.
The second section highlights the economic strategies of craftsmen and traders. The first two chapters discuss this issue in general terms. Candace Rice discusses strategies to overcome information deficiencies by people involved in maritime trade over longer distances. Kai Ruffing analyzes the phenomenon of specialization among urban craftsmen and retailers, with a particular emphasis on epigraphic and papyrological evidence from Asia Minor and Egypt. The other two chapters focus on specific trades: Carol van Driel-Murray investigates the marketing strategies of shoemakers in the Northern provinces based on preserved shoeware, while Nicolas Monteix discusses strategies by how bakers to aimed to enhance the efficiency of their workshops, based on archaeological evidence from Pompeii.
Subsequently, there are five chapters highlighting the human factor in urban crafts and trade, with particular reference to labour organisation. A chapter by Christel Freu discusses the phenomenon of apprenticeship. This is followed by a chapter by Lena Larsson Lovén on women’s work. Wim Broekaert analyzes the role of freedmen and their former owners in urban economic life. Nicolas Tran and Ilias Arnaoutoglou discuss the role of professional associations – the former in the port city of Arles, and the latter in Hierapolis in Asia Minor.
The final section discusses the position of crafts in urban space. It starts with two complementary chapters by Penelope Goodman and Kerstin Dross-Krüpe discussing the phenomenon of artisanal clustering from, respectively, an archaeological and papyrological perspective. The other two chapters present case studies of the commercial landscape of two cities: Orsolya Lang sketches the historical development of the civilian town of Aquincum, while Jeroen Poblome focuses on the urban context of the Potters’ Quarter at Sagalassos.
Together, the papers present a range of possible approaches to studying aspects of the socioeconomic lives of craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, on the basis of widely different sources of written and material evidence.
More than 250 years after its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academi... more More than 250 years after its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academic discourse and the popular imagination. This volume brings together a collection of ten papers that advance, challenge and revise the present conceptions of the city's art, industry and infrastructure.
The discussions of domestic art in this book, a perennial topic for Pompeian scholars, engage previously neglected subjects such as wall ornaments in domestic decoration, the sculpture collection in the house of Octavius Quartio, and the role of the covered walkways in luxury villa architecture. The famous cupid's frieze from the house of the Vettii is given a novel and intelligent reinterpretation. The place of industry at Pompeii, in both the physical and economic landscapes has long been overlooked. The chapters on building practice in inhabited houses, on the presence of fulling workshops in atrium houses, and on the urban pottery industry serve as successful contributions to a more complete understanding of the life of the ancient city.
Finally, this volume breaks new ground in the consideration of the urban infrastructure of Pompeii, a topic that has won serious attention only in the last decades, but one that is playing an increasingly central role in Pompeian studies. The final three chapters offer a reassessment of the Pompeian street network, a scientific analysis of the amount of lead in Pompeian drinking water, and a thorough analysis of the water infrastructure around the forum that supported its architectural transformation in the last decades before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. 200p, 99 illus. (Oxbow Books 2011)
Journal Articles by Miko Flohr
Hermeneus, 2019
Na een relatieve rust van meerdere decennia verricht men in Pompeii sinds een paar jaar weer op k... more Na een relatieve rust van meerdere decennia verricht men in Pompeii sinds een paar jaar weer op kleine schaal opgravingen in het vulkanische sediment van 79 n.Chr. In de zomer van 2017 werden hierbij tijdens werkzaamheden direct ten zuiden van de stad de resten van een groot grafmonument gevonden met een sensationeel lange en gedetailleerde inscriptie. Deze wordt op grond van een vermoedelijke verwijzing naar de nasleep van ook door Tacitus genoemde rellen in het Pompeiaanse amfitheater (59 n.Chr.) en een verkapte verwijzing naar keizer Nero gedateerd in de laatste tien jaar van het bestaan van de stad. De tekst vertelt uitgebreid over de daden en gunsten van een niet bij naam genoemde weldoener, en geeft en passant gedetailleerde informatie over de stad en haar inwoners. Dit artikel presenteert een eerste Nederlandse vertaling van de inscriptie, en bespreekt hoe de tekst een ander licht werpt op het Pompeii van de vroege keizertijd.
American Journal of Archaeology, 2019
This article investigates how consumer demand shaped markets for high-quality domestic decoration... more This article investigates how consumer demand shaped markets for high-quality domestic decoration in the Roman world and highlights how this affected the economic strategies of people involved in the production and trade of high-quality wall decoration, mosaics, and sculpture. The argument analyzes the consumption of high-quality domestic decoration at Pompeii and models the structure of demand for decorative skills in the Roman world at large. The Pompeian case study focuses on three categories of high-quality decoration: Late Hellenistic opus vermiculatum mosaics, first-century C.E. fourth-style panel pictures, and domestic sculpture. Analyzing the spread of these mosaics, paintings, and statues over a database of Pompeian houses makes it possible to reconstruct a demand profile for each category of decoration and to discuss the nature of its supply economy. It is argued that the market for high-quality decoration at Pompeii provided few incentives for professionals to acquire specialist skills and that this has broader implications: as market conditions in Pompeii and the Bay of Naples region were significantly above average, the strategic possibilities for painters, mosaicists, and sculptors in many parts of the Roman world were even more restricted and, consequently, their motivation to invest in skills and repertoire remained limited.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
This article assesses the impact of innovation on Roman society. It starts from a critical engage... more This article assesses the impact of innovation on Roman society. It starts from a critical engagement with past debate about technological progress, which over the past decades has been too strongly focused on economic growth, and a re-appreciation of the literary evidence for innovation, which points to a culture in which technological knowledge and invention were thought to matter. Then, it highlights two areas where the uptake of technology had a direct impact on everyday life: material culture, where the emergence of glass-blowing, a proliferation of metal-working, and innovation in pottery-production changed the nature and amount of artefacts by which people surrounded themselves, and construction, where building techniques using opus caementicium, arches and standardized building materials revolutionized urban and rural landscapes. A concluding discussion highlights the role of integration of the Mediterranean under Roman rule in making innovation possible, and the role of consumer demand in bringing it about.
Forma Urbis, XIX, 9, 42-44, Sep 2014
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2013
A fiercely debated aspect of Pompeii's history, is the nature of the city's textile economy. This... more A fiercely debated aspect of Pompeii's history, is the nature of the city's textile economy. This paper presents a new perspective, in which the Pompeian textile economy is contextualized and discussed in relation to local, regional and supra-regional economic networks.
Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie, 2013
Babesch 82.1, 129-148., 2007
This article concentrates on the social and spatial environments in which manufacturing took plac... more This article concentrates on the social and spatial environments in which manufacturing took place in Pompeii in the last years of its existence. Investigating five different types of workshops (bakeries, fulleries, dyeries, tanneries and lanifricariae), it emerges that manufacturing took place throughout the city in a wide range of contexts and that workshops often were situated in buildings also used for domestic purposes, either houses or apartments with a shop. This suggests that craftsmen lived and worked in relative autonomy and that the urban elite had less control over them than is usually assumed.
FOLD&R Fasti On Line Documents & Research, 214, 2011
After two successful campaigns in 2006 and 2007, the 2008 campaign constituted the third and fina... more After two successful campaigns in 2006 and 2007, the 2008 campaign constituted the third and final season of the 'Cleaning the Laundries' project. The general aim of the project was to come to a better understanding of the recognizable Pompeian fulling workshops by investigating the remains of work installations on or above the AD 79 floor level, which are often hidden below modern deposits, such as sand and debris. The results of the first two seasons had already confirmed that by carefully removing these modern layers and cleaning the ancient remains underneath a lot of additional information about the history and use of these workshops could be gathered and it had also become clear that such data could add significantly to our understanding of fullones and fullonicae at Pompeii. In 2006, three small fullonicae were investigated in tabernae I 4, 7, VI 15, 3 and IX 6, a.1; the 2007 season focused on two large fullonicae in houses VI 8, 20.21.2 and VI 14, 21.22 and another small workshop in taberna VII 2, 41 1
FOLD&R FastiOnLine documents & research, Jan 1, 2008
The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-qualit... more The World of the Fullo takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the places where they worked in the city, and their everyday lives on the shop floor and beyond.
Through focusing on the lower segments of society, Flohr uses everyday work as the major organizing principle of the narrative: the volume discusses the decisions taken by those responsible for the organization of work, and how these decisions subsequently had an impact on the social lives of people carrying out the work. It emphasizes how socio-economic differences between cities resulted in fundamentally different working lives for many of their people, and that not only were economic activities shaped by Roman society, they in turn played a key role in shaping it.
Using an in-depth and qualitative analysis of material remains related to economic activities, with a combined study of epigraphic and literary records, this volume portrays an insightful view of the socio-economic history of urban communities in the Roman world.
This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Medi... more This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the fi rst centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history.
The contributions explore how these cities developed landscapes full of civic memory and ritual, saw commercial priorities transforming the urban environment, and began to expand signifi cantly beyond their wall circuits. These interrelated developments not only changed how cities looked and could be experienced, but they also affected the functioning of the urban community and together contributed to keeping increasingly complex urban communities socially cohesive. By focusing on the transformation of urban landscapes in the Late Republican and Imperial periods, the volume adds a new, explicitly historical angle to current debates about urban space in Roman studies. Confronting archaeological and historical approaches, the volume presents developments in Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, thus significantly broadening the geographical scope of the discussion and offering novel theoretical perspectives alongside well- documented, thematic case studies.
Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World will be of interest to anyone working on Roman urbanism or Roman history in the Late Republic and early Empire.
M. Flohr and A. I. Wilson (eds), The Economy of Pompeii (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017
This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches... more This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy. Four themes are discussed. The first of these is the position of Pompeii and its agricultural environment, discussing the productivity and specialization of agriculture in the Vesuvian region, and the degree to which we can explain Pompeii’s size and wealth on the basis of the city’s economic hinterland. A second issue discussed is what Pompeians got out of their economy: how well-off were people in Pompeii? This involves discussing the consumption of everyday consumer goods, analyzing archaeobotanical remains to highlight the quality of Pompeian diets, and discussing what bone remains reveal about the health of the inhabitants of Pompeii. A third theme is economic life in the city: how are we to understand the evidence for crafts and manufacturing? How are we to assess Pompeii’s commercial topography? Who were the people who actually invested in constructing shops and workshops? In which economic contexts were Pompeian paintings produced? Finally, the volume discusses money and business: how integrated was Pompeii into the wider world of commerce and exchange, and what can the many coins found at Pompeii tell us about this? What do the wax tablets found near Pompeii tell us about trade in the Bay of Naples in the first century AD? Together, the chapters of this volume highlight how Pompeii became a very rich community, and how it profited from its position in the centre of the Roman world.
Wilson, A. I. and Flohr, M. (eds) (2016). Urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, Oxford University Press, Feb 11, 2016
This interdisciplinary volume presents sixteen papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, dis... more This interdisciplinary volume presents sixteen papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.
After an introduction by the editors, which discusses recent developments in the study of Roman craftsmen and traders and their changing place in Roman economic history, the remainder of the volume is divided into four sections. The first three chapters discuss the scholarly history of Roman crafts and trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, identifying different national traditions in the scholarship and showing how they influenced the development of thinking in very different ways in different regions, something which this book aims to overcome by promoting a greater interchange of ideas and perspectives between traditions.
A chapter by Flohr and Wilson discusses the development of academic debate in Germany and the Anglo-Saxon world, highlighting the role of new sets of evidence and changing scholarly ideologies in pushing forward scholarly discourse. This broad chapter sets the stage for the two following chapters. Carla Salvaterra and Alessandro Cristofori sketch the development of debates on craftsmen and traders in twentieth century Italy, with particular emphasis on the fascist era and the marxist fashion in the 1970s. Jean-Pierre Brun discusses the historical development of debate among francophone scholars in the light of recent French approaches to the archaeology of crafts in Roman Italy.
The second section highlights the economic strategies of craftsmen and traders. The first two chapters discuss this issue in general terms. Candace Rice discusses strategies to overcome information deficiencies by people involved in maritime trade over longer distances. Kai Ruffing analyzes the phenomenon of specialization among urban craftsmen and retailers, with a particular emphasis on epigraphic and papyrological evidence from Asia Minor and Egypt. The other two chapters focus on specific trades: Carol van Driel-Murray investigates the marketing strategies of shoemakers in the Northern provinces based on preserved shoeware, while Nicolas Monteix discusses strategies by how bakers to aimed to enhance the efficiency of their workshops, based on archaeological evidence from Pompeii.
Subsequently, there are five chapters highlighting the human factor in urban crafts and trade, with particular reference to labour organisation. A chapter by Christel Freu discusses the phenomenon of apprenticeship. This is followed by a chapter by Lena Larsson Lovén on women’s work. Wim Broekaert analyzes the role of freedmen and their former owners in urban economic life. Nicolas Tran and Ilias Arnaoutoglou discuss the role of professional associations – the former in the port city of Arles, and the latter in Hierapolis in Asia Minor.
The final section discusses the position of crafts in urban space. It starts with two complementary chapters by Penelope Goodman and Kerstin Dross-Krüpe discussing the phenomenon of artisanal clustering from, respectively, an archaeological and papyrological perspective. The other two chapters present case studies of the commercial landscape of two cities: Orsolya Lang sketches the historical development of the civilian town of Aquincum, while Jeroen Poblome focuses on the urban context of the Potters’ Quarter at Sagalassos.
Together, the papers present a range of possible approaches to studying aspects of the socioeconomic lives of craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, on the basis of widely different sources of written and material evidence.
More than 250 years after its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academi... more More than 250 years after its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academic discourse and the popular imagination. This volume brings together a collection of ten papers that advance, challenge and revise the present conceptions of the city's art, industry and infrastructure.
The discussions of domestic art in this book, a perennial topic for Pompeian scholars, engage previously neglected subjects such as wall ornaments in domestic decoration, the sculpture collection in the house of Octavius Quartio, and the role of the covered walkways in luxury villa architecture. The famous cupid's frieze from the house of the Vettii is given a novel and intelligent reinterpretation. The place of industry at Pompeii, in both the physical and economic landscapes has long been overlooked. The chapters on building practice in inhabited houses, on the presence of fulling workshops in atrium houses, and on the urban pottery industry serve as successful contributions to a more complete understanding of the life of the ancient city.
Finally, this volume breaks new ground in the consideration of the urban infrastructure of Pompeii, a topic that has won serious attention only in the last decades, but one that is playing an increasingly central role in Pompeian studies. The final three chapters offer a reassessment of the Pompeian street network, a scientific analysis of the amount of lead in Pompeian drinking water, and a thorough analysis of the water infrastructure around the forum that supported its architectural transformation in the last decades before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. 200p, 99 illus. (Oxbow Books 2011)
Hermeneus, 2019
Na een relatieve rust van meerdere decennia verricht men in Pompeii sinds een paar jaar weer op k... more Na een relatieve rust van meerdere decennia verricht men in Pompeii sinds een paar jaar weer op kleine schaal opgravingen in het vulkanische sediment van 79 n.Chr. In de zomer van 2017 werden hierbij tijdens werkzaamheden direct ten zuiden van de stad de resten van een groot grafmonument gevonden met een sensationeel lange en gedetailleerde inscriptie. Deze wordt op grond van een vermoedelijke verwijzing naar de nasleep van ook door Tacitus genoemde rellen in het Pompeiaanse amfitheater (59 n.Chr.) en een verkapte verwijzing naar keizer Nero gedateerd in de laatste tien jaar van het bestaan van de stad. De tekst vertelt uitgebreid over de daden en gunsten van een niet bij naam genoemde weldoener, en geeft en passant gedetailleerde informatie over de stad en haar inwoners. Dit artikel presenteert een eerste Nederlandse vertaling van de inscriptie, en bespreekt hoe de tekst een ander licht werpt op het Pompeii van de vroege keizertijd.
American Journal of Archaeology, 2019
This article investigates how consumer demand shaped markets for high-quality domestic decoration... more This article investigates how consumer demand shaped markets for high-quality domestic decoration in the Roman world and highlights how this affected the economic strategies of people involved in the production and trade of high-quality wall decoration, mosaics, and sculpture. The argument analyzes the consumption of high-quality domestic decoration at Pompeii and models the structure of demand for decorative skills in the Roman world at large. The Pompeian case study focuses on three categories of high-quality decoration: Late Hellenistic opus vermiculatum mosaics, first-century C.E. fourth-style panel pictures, and domestic sculpture. Analyzing the spread of these mosaics, paintings, and statues over a database of Pompeian houses makes it possible to reconstruct a demand profile for each category of decoration and to discuss the nature of its supply economy. It is argued that the market for high-quality decoration at Pompeii provided few incentives for professionals to acquire specialist skills and that this has broader implications: as market conditions in Pompeii and the Bay of Naples region were significantly above average, the strategic possibilities for painters, mosaicists, and sculptors in many parts of the Roman world were even more restricted and, consequently, their motivation to invest in skills and repertoire remained limited.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
This article assesses the impact of innovation on Roman society. It starts from a critical engage... more This article assesses the impact of innovation on Roman society. It starts from a critical engagement with past debate about technological progress, which over the past decades has been too strongly focused on economic growth, and a re-appreciation of the literary evidence for innovation, which points to a culture in which technological knowledge and invention were thought to matter. Then, it highlights two areas where the uptake of technology had a direct impact on everyday life: material culture, where the emergence of glass-blowing, a proliferation of metal-working, and innovation in pottery-production changed the nature and amount of artefacts by which people surrounded themselves, and construction, where building techniques using opus caementicium, arches and standardized building materials revolutionized urban and rural landscapes. A concluding discussion highlights the role of integration of the Mediterranean under Roman rule in making innovation possible, and the role of consumer demand in bringing it about.
Forma Urbis, XIX, 9, 42-44, Sep 2014
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2013
A fiercely debated aspect of Pompeii's history, is the nature of the city's textile economy. This... more A fiercely debated aspect of Pompeii's history, is the nature of the city's textile economy. This paper presents a new perspective, in which the Pompeian textile economy is contextualized and discussed in relation to local, regional and supra-regional economic networks.
Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie, 2013
Babesch 82.1, 129-148., 2007
This article concentrates on the social and spatial environments in which manufacturing took plac... more This article concentrates on the social and spatial environments in which manufacturing took place in Pompeii in the last years of its existence. Investigating five different types of workshops (bakeries, fulleries, dyeries, tanneries and lanifricariae), it emerges that manufacturing took place throughout the city in a wide range of contexts and that workshops often were situated in buildings also used for domestic purposes, either houses or apartments with a shop. This suggests that craftsmen lived and worked in relative autonomy and that the urban elite had less control over them than is usually assumed.
FOLD&R Fasti On Line Documents & Research, 214, 2011
After two successful campaigns in 2006 and 2007, the 2008 campaign constituted the third and fina... more After two successful campaigns in 2006 and 2007, the 2008 campaign constituted the third and final season of the 'Cleaning the Laundries' project. The general aim of the project was to come to a better understanding of the recognizable Pompeian fulling workshops by investigating the remains of work installations on or above the AD 79 floor level, which are often hidden below modern deposits, such as sand and debris. The results of the first two seasons had already confirmed that by carefully removing these modern layers and cleaning the ancient remains underneath a lot of additional information about the history and use of these workshops could be gathered and it had also become clear that such data could add significantly to our understanding of fullones and fullonicae at Pompeii. In 2006, three small fullonicae were investigated in tabernae I 4, 7, VI 15, 3 and IX 6, a.1; the 2007 season focused on two large fullonicae in houses VI 8, 20.21.2 and VI 14, 21.22 and another small workshop in taberna VII 2, 41 1
FOLD&R FastiOnLine documents & research, Jan 1, 2008
This article concentrates on the social and spatial environments in which manufacturing took plac... more This article concentrates on the social and spatial environments in which manufacturing took place in Pompeii in the last years of its existence. Investigating five different types of workshops (bakeries, fulleries, dyeries, tanneries and lanifricariae), it emerges that manufacturing took place throughout the city in a wide range of contexts and that workshops often were situated in buildings also used for domestic purposes, either houses or apartments with a shop. This suggests that craftsmen lived and worked in relative autonomy and that the urban elite had less control over them than is usually assumed.
Architecture and the Ancient Economy, 2022
This chapter offers a reassessment of the economic rationale underlying the transformation of bui... more This chapter offers a reassessment of the economic rationale underlying the transformation of building practice in mid-second century BCE Pompeii, when local traditional building practice based on carefully stacked blocks of travertine was replaced by a much more varied building practice that combined mortar with a number of regional building materials, including tuff ashlar. The chapter observes that the new practice partially started from aesthetic considerations, but emerged with a clear economic rationale that both minimized costs and anticipated upon return on investment. Putting these developments in a broader Italic context suggests that the emerging building practice was facilitated by the unique local material circumstances at Pompeii: the developments in building technology were to a large extent local in nature, and should be seen as independent of architectural change. This, in turn, suggests that understanding the building practices and construction economies of the Roman world depends to a significant level on qualitative, but contextualized analyses of developments at the local level.
Handbuch Antike Wirtschaft, 2023
Flohr, M. (2023). ‘Manufacturing in the Roman World’, in K. Ruffing and S. Von Reden (eds), Handb... more Flohr, M. (2023). ‘Manufacturing in the Roman World’, in K. Ruffing and S. Von Reden (eds), Handbuch Antike Wirtschaft. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 719–742.
M. Maiuro and M. Balbo (eds), Popolazione, risorse e urbanizzazione nella Campania Antica. Dall'età preromana alla Tarda Antichità. Bari: Edipuglia, 75–90., 2019
Collana di studi e testi per la storia economica, sociale e amministrativa del mondo antico diret... more Collana di studi e testi per la storia economica, sociale e amministrativa del mondo antico diretta da Elio Lo Cascio
Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World. London: Routledge, 66–85., 2020
Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World (London: Routledge), 198-220, 2020
Approaches to urban commerce in the Roman world have become increasingly sensitive to the positio... more Approaches to urban commerce in the Roman world have become increasingly sensitive to the position of retail, manufacturing, and business in the urban environment. Long gone is the idea that commerce was an unwelcome or foreign element in urban space: whenever scholars have studied the spatial position of crafts and retail more closely, it has become clear that commerce not only could be integrated into urban space without much trouble, but often also developed a central presence throughout the urban landscape, and could be closely associated, physically and visually, with local elites and their urban residences (Laurence 1994; Wallace-Hadrill 1994; Flohr and Wilson 2016). Particularly the taberna, with its wide opening, and its proliferation along the thoroughfares of many cities in Roman Italy, made sure that commerce, already by the late Republic, had become a defining element of urban space. Yet it may be argued that scholarly discourse on urban commercial landscapes in the Roman world has focused to a significant degree on streets, and on the private buildings surrounding these. The public heart of the Roman city-the forum-has, perhaps surprisingly, played a much more marginal role in recent approaches to commercial space. Indeed, recent work on retail and tabernae by Holleran (2012, 2017) and Ellis (2018) acknowledges the existence of commerce in fora, but does not really elaborate on the topic. Conversely, recent discourse on fora tends to emphasize the role of the central urban plaza in politics and civic life. Gros, in what counts as the most authoritative discussion of Roman fora of the last decades, defines the forum, first and foremost, as a lieu de mémoire, where the community defined itself via civic and religious architecture, and through the many commemorative monuments and honorific inscriptions (Gros 1996, 207). In her discussion of the Republican fora of Roman Italy, Lackner (2008, 255, 271) acknowledges the role of commerce on fora, and highlights the presence of tabernae alongside many Italian fora, but offers very little reflection on the issue. Laurence, Esmonde Cleary, and Sears (2011, 170-202, esp. 186) define the forum (with Vitruvius) as a place for negotium-broadly defined-and observe that many Republican fora developed a strongly commercial character, but for the imperial period, they rather emphasize the role of the forum as an 'imperial space' and argue that it functioned to give cities a 'truly impressive
H. Kamermans and L.B. Van der Meer (eds), Designating Place. Archaeological Perspectives on Built Environments in Ostia and Pompeii. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 108–120., 2020
Shops, Workshops and Urban Economic History in the Roman World, 2020
One recent development in the study of Roman crafts and retail is that there seems to be a slight... more One recent development in the study of Roman crafts and retail is that there seems to be a slight shift away from studying the actual work installations towards studying the architectural environments within which these were situated. 1 This development seems to offer a number of opportunities. One of these is that, while comparative approaches to actual work installations or retail practices are often highly complex if not impossible, the study of the architectural and spatial contexts in which they were situated makes it considerably more straightforward for scholars working in varying geographical and chronological contexts to actually confront each other's observations. Moreover, an increasing focus on the place of work in the built environment also makes it easier to engage in debates with scholars working on other topics: more than anything else it is architecture that connects the study of crafts and retail to broader debates about Roman urban communities. It needs no arguing that this is important: not only were there many people spending their working days in shops and workshops, in many places, these people also were, in a physical way, very central to the urban communities, in which they lived, and could be a defining part of the urban atmosphere-particularly in Roman Italy, but to some extent also elsewhere in the Roman world. This article aims to push the role of architecture in debates about urban crafts and retail a little bit further, and brings up the issue of how these architectural contexts changed over time, and how this is to be understood economically. As Steven Ellis has recently argued, this requires a bit of caution: even if we want to think of the construction of shops and workshops as 'investment', we should be wary of uncritical 'economistic' interpretations of these processes as ancient realities may have been more complex. 2 Nevertheless, several developments in Roman architecture and urbanism seem to highlight the flipside of the coin, namely that we also should be wary of too easily dismissing profit as the leading motivation behind certain categories of building projects. Put more strongly: this article argues that one key development in the history of retail and manufacturing in the Roman world lies precisely in the emergence of several architectural forms that seem directly rooted in the desire to invest commercially for profit's sake. If it is true that, to some extent, we may still think of crafts and manufacturing as 'embedded' in social structures and cultural norms-one can for example think of the continuing scholarly emphasis on the role of freedmen in business apparent from the work of Mouritsen and Broekaert-it is precisely their gradual dis-embedding that is the historically unique development of the era. 3 The emergence of commercial elements in architecture, and of truly commercial building types, illustrates how crafts and retail increasingly became a socio-cultural sphere of their own.
The Routledge Handbook of Diet and Nutrition in the Roman World, 2018
The study of (mal)nutrition in the ancient world long was, as Peter Garnsey (1999, 43) called it,... more The study of (mal)nutrition in the ancient world long was, as Peter Garnsey (1999, 43) called it, an ‘undernourished plant’, but since the turn of the millennium there has been a proliferation of studies discussing the quality of Roman food regimes. While Roman diets are being approached from a variety of angles and by a range of specialists, it is the study of skeletal remains that has, in the last decade, had the most impact on the terms of the debate. Progress in our understanding of the skeletal record has been spectacular. Scholars have begun to study evidence for stature on a larger scale, enhancing the statistical and historical significance of their work, and making it possible to assess changes in average human body length over the very long term. Well-known is the work by Koepke and Baten (2005) on the biological standard of living in Europe during the last two millennia. For Italy, Giannecchini and Moggi-Cecchi (2008) have analysed the chronological development of stature between the early Iron Age and the early Middle Ages. Unfortunately, work on a very large and promising dataset of all published skeletal remains from the Roman period by Klein Goldewijk has thus far remained unpublished except for one chart published by Jongman (2007b, 194) and a very short methodological article by Klein Goldewijk and Jacobs (2013). At the same time, scholars have begun to systematically analyse them for indications of ill health that can be associated with structural malnutrition, such as porotic hyperostosis, and dental enamel hypoplasia. While studies like those of Lazer (2009; 2017) at Pompeii, and those of Killgrove (this volume, with references) in the region around Rome highlight the possibilities of such approaches, most of this work is still more-or-less limited to the micro-scale, partially for problems of compatibility and transparency outlined by Killgrove in this volume, partially because this work is labour-intensive and requires specialist skills not common among archaeologists. However, both developments have significantly increased the amount of historical information that can be extracted from the skeletal record.
A Cultural History of Work in Antiquity, 2018
In classical antiquity, as in many premodern societies, much everyday work could be done anywhere... more In classical antiquity, as in many premodern societies, much everyday work could be done anywhere: basic productive activities such as wood-working, bone-carving, pot shaping, spinning, or weaving could be done inside, in rooms also used for other practical and social purposes, or outside, in the open air, anywhere affording appropriate sun or shade. Many of these processes are in principle relatively mobile, too, allowing workers to easily change locations depending on weather, season, or other circumstances. In many premodern societies, key manufacturing processes took place without any formal places for work-in Bourdieu's Berber houses the weaving loom was placed right opposite the main entrance to the house in the primary living room, and weaving was done amidst other domestic activities; in traditional communities in Africa and Asia, use of portable pottery wheels was common until well into the twentieth century, and spinning could be, and often was, done wherever one wanted to be at that specific moment in time. 1 Formal, dedicated work environments are not natural phenomena in human history, but a historical feature. The degree to which everyday work is concentrated in such places depends on the structure and performance of a society's economy, and particularly on the extent to which it is common that everyday consumer goods are made and sold by professionals specializing in their production or distribution and earning income from it. The daily recurrence of certain activities makes it more feasible to reserve a fixed place for them and to invest in a work environment adapted to the needs of everyday practice. This is especially true when specialized manufacturing processes become technologically more complex and require special, nonportable equipment, or when they begin to take place on a larger scale. Such developments towards professionalization and specialization, in turn, tend to be fostered by the emergence and growth of cities, both because of the size of consumer markets and the relative internal integration of urban economies. Obviously, in the very long run, the history of urbanism in the ancient world is characterized precisely by the gradual emergence and subsequent growth of urban communities-a process that continued from the Greek early Iron Age until well into the Roman imperial period, and that went hand in hand with increasing levels of economic complexity, even if there existed substantial differences between different regions of the Greco-Roman world. Unsurprisingly, in cities these developments were paralleled by the emergence of an increasingly wide range of spatial scenarios for manufacturing and retail and in some places even the emergence of what can be called "commercial architecture." This was a key development in the history of work in antiquity, the significance of which has not always been fully appreciated by modern scholarship.
Ostia Antica. Nouvelles études et recherces sur les quartiers occidentaux de la cité Actes du colloque international (Rome-Ostia Antica, 22-24 septembre 2014), 2018
The streets of Roman cities were generally surrounded by shops, and public urban landscapes throu... more The streets of Roman cities were generally surrounded by shops, and public urban landscapes throughout the Roman world were
dominated by everyday commercial life. Whatever the economic basis of individual cities or the urban system as a whole, and however negative the attitudes of elite authors towards manufacturing and retail, there is no doubt that, through their spatial positioning, craftsmen and retailers had a fundamental impact on the public atmosphere in many Roman cities. This also was true for Roman Ostia, from the Republic onwards, throughout its history until the last stages of urban decline. Key element in this spatial dominance of commercial life was the taberna, a
multifunctional commercial facility consisting of one big room with a wide opening to the street, and, often, one or more secondary
rooms behind or above the main room. The taberna tends to leave clearly identifiable remains in the archaeological record, which
allow archaeologists to reconstruct and analyse the commercial landscapes of cities that have been excavated on a larger scale, such as,
in central Italy, Pompeii, Ostia, and a limited number of other sites.
Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture, 2017
This paper reassesses the literary and epigraphic evidence for the urban textile economies of Rom... more This paper reassesses the literary and epigraphic evidence for the urban textile economies of Roman Asia Minor. The argument focuses on three case studies, Tarsus, Miletus and the lower Lycus valley. A closer inspection of the evidence for these places actually urges to rethink their identification as centres of textile manufacturing: the evidence for textile production in these cities is very thin, and claims to the contrary by past scholars like Harry Pleket and T. R. S. Broughton appear untenable on closer inspection. Rather than as centres of textile manufacturing, these cities should be seen as places from which locally and regionally manufactured textiles were exported, and the location of these cities should be understood within the context of regional and supra-regional trade networks.
Work, Labour, and Professions in the Roman World, 2016
Flohr, M. and Wilson, A. I. (2017). 'Introduction: investigating an urban economy', in M. Flohr and A. I. Wilson (eds), The Economy of Pompeii (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, 1-19.
This introductory chapter to "The Economy of Pompeii" sets the agenda of the volume, and introduc... more This introductory chapter to "The Economy of Pompeii" sets the agenda of the volume, and introduces the reader to the historiography of the Pompeian economy and to recent developments in Pompeian studies, before introducing the chapters of this volume and discussing some of the trends emerging from the volume, and how they relate to current developments in scholarship on the Roman economy.
in Dross-Krüpe, K.; Nösch, M.-L. (ed.) Textiles, Trade and Theories. From the Ancient Near East t... more in Dross-Krüpe, K.; Nösch, M.-L. (ed.) Textiles, Trade and Theories. From the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean. Münster: Ugarit, 49-62
Flohr, M. and Wilson, A. I. (2016). 'Roman craftsmen and traders: towards an intellectual history', in A. I. Wilson and M. Flohr (eds), Urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, 23–54., Feb 11, 2016
This chapter discusses the development of the debate on craftsmen and traders in general terms, f... more This chapter discusses the development of the debate on craftsmen and traders in general terms, focusing specifically on the German and Anglo-Saxon scholarly traditions. It assesses the relative impact of new evidence and new ideas on discourse about Roman urban craftsmen and traders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it also highlights the key role played by certain individual scholars and their networks, such as Mommsen, Meyer, and Frank.
Flohr, M. and Wilson, A. I. (2016). 'Introduction', in A. I. Wilson and M. Flohr (eds), Urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, 1–19., Feb 11, 2016
The introductory chapter by the two editors sets the agenda of the volume, and introduces the rea... more The introductory chapter by the two editors sets the agenda of the volume, and introduces the reader to current developments in the field, before introducing the four sections of this volume and discussing the ways in which these and the individual chapters elaborate upon these developments.
in Dross-Krüpe, K. (ed.) Textile trade and distribution in antiquity. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1-16.
Human waste, like animal manure, has value in certain contexts -the solid waste, as a fertilizer ... more Human waste, like animal manure, has value in certain contexts -the solid waste, as a fertilizer or fuel, and liquid, as a chemical agent in sorne industrial processes. Despite the natural hturum disgust for our own excreta, 1 therefore, many societies make use of human excrement, and the ancient world was no different. This chapter examines the extent to which solid and liquid waste from latrines was collected and used, how this was organized, and how this activity functioned economically. A final section looks at the costs of building and the operation of public latrines.
These pages publish the database I used to estimate Pompeii's population and to discuss the relat... more These pages publish the database I used to estimate Pompeii's population and to discuss the relation between house size and patterns of investment and consumption (Flohr 2017). It has been made available online to make it possible for scholars and students to check the evidential underpinning of my argument. Users may want to keep in mind that the database was designed for a number of specific analyses on a rather macro-scale level, and that it therefore does not catalogue and categorize with German precision each and every room in the city's excavated area.
'Een gulle gever zonder naam. De nieuwe grafinscriptie uit Pompeii', samen met Miko Flohr, in: Hermeneus 91, 2019, 26-32 , 2019
new Dutch translation and archaeological commentary on the new funeral inscription from Pompeii
The 79 CE volcanic eruption of Somma-Vesuvius completely destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herc... more The 79 CE volcanic eruption of Somma-Vesuvius completely destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and a large number of rural and suburban villas. While the human remains found by the excavators attest that many inhabitants fell victim to the disaster, there was a considerable amount of time between the loud Plinian explosion early in the afternoon, which marked the beginning of the eruption and the Peléan phase of pyroclastic flows and surges in the next morning that eventually ended the lives of those unable or unwilling to leave their hearth and home. The tantalizing question is, of course: what happened in between? How did people in Pompeii respond to the abrupt explosion and the subsequent rains of pumice and ash that hit the city? In what places did they seek refuge? What did they take with them or leave behind? Is there a methodology that may help us to find patterns in individual or collective responses to the situation within the archaeological material? The collocation of human remains may provide crucial information, but is it really possible to trace human responses in the archaeological record of Pompeii?
mikoflohr.org, 2020
Place matters, and it is kind of ironical how we, in the Netherlands, and in larger parts of Nort... more Place matters, and it is kind of ironical how we, in the Netherlands, and in larger parts of North-Western Europe (never mind North-America), have somehow decided, long ago, that our collective historical narratives start from Greece and Rome, far away in the Mediterranean. In a way, we have artificially appropriated a past that is wholly or partially unrelated to the land where our families come from and we have made it our own. Additionally, we have asked people arriving in our country from elsewhere (like my father’s family) to buy into this narrative even if it essentially excludes the places where they (also) come from. It is surely a tempting narrative – I am certainly not the only European with roots in the Far East to study Greco-Roman ‘classics’. But it is also a bit odd, if you think about it – it is strange to spend your professional life within a historical tradition that has nothing to say about the land where part of your family comes from.
Personally, I only gradually came to be bothered by the geographical boundaries of ‘our’ ancient world. Of course, I learned about Rome’s intensive trade with India in the first and second centuries CE, and I read stuff about China under the Qin and Han emperors, but the actual position of Rome, and its empire, in the wider world of the early first millennium CE is something that only came onto my radar over the course of the last two years or so; perhaps, this is due to the increasingly heated debates about the extent to which European perceptions of the past are still firmly rooted in ideas defined in the era of European colonial empires. Should not a post-colonial view on the history of the world also have implications for the way in which we approach the Ancient Mediterranean, and if so, which?
mikoflohr.org, 2020
Very little of the pre-colonial history of Indonesia is part of the western historical canon. Som... more Very little of the pre-colonial history of Indonesia is part of the western historical canon. Some people will know that before Islam became the dominant religion on Java – which happened only in the 15th century – the island was under Hindu-Buddhist influence. A few, perhaps, will know that there once was an empire that ruled over larger parts of the Indonesian archipelago from its base in Trowulan, East Java (incidentally, that is within walking distance of the place where in 1920 my grandmother would be born). This so-called Majapahit Empire had its golden age in the 14th century and it was the last in a series of Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms that had ruled over parts of Java from the fourth century CE onwards.
In the first century CE, all of this was in the far future. ‘Indianization’ (as it is called by some) had not yet truly begun, and there is no evidence that the Indian religions had established a meaningful presence in Indonesia. In fact, no historical sources from the period exist: the oldest texts on Java date to the reign of an early fifth century (CE) king of the kingdom of Tarumanagara, who was called Purnawarman. They are written in Sanskrit using the so-called Pallava-script – indeed, both the language and the script came from India
mikoflohr.org, 2020
If the evidence from early first millennium CE West Java discussed last week leaves no doubt that... more If the evidence from early first millennium CE West Java discussed last week leaves no doubt that parts of the island were integrated into the larger regional maritime networks of the era, there was no unequivocal evidence of stuff from beyond India arriving in Java – there is a clear possibility that some of the artifacts discovered at Batujaya came from the Far West, but no direct proof. Yet over the course of the last two decades, more archaeological work has been done elsewhere in Indonesia, and most of these projects have equally been interested in the long-distance contacts between the Indonesian archipelago, Asia, and the rest of the ‘old’ world.
An interesting case is that of Sembiran and Pacung on Bali. Bali, of course, lies immediately east of Java, but in the larger scheme of things that means that it is further away from the main trans-Asian seafaring routes, and therefore, its integration in ‘global’ networks of exchange was a bit more complicated. To put it a bit more bluntly: while North-West Java is relatively well-connected to a variety of places simply because of its location, Bali had mostly one claim to fame, and that is that it was (roughly) en route to the Maluku Islands, where unique spices could be obtained, and one of the debates amongst scholars is how intensive this spice trade had become in the early first Millennium CE.
Despite the spectacular new excavations that are currently unfolding in the northern part of the ... more Despite the spectacular new excavations that are currently unfolding in the northern part of the city, the most significant discovery at Pompeii in recent decades was made just over a year ago, outside the main southern city gate, where a large and well-preserved funerary monument was dug up alongside the road that probably connected Pompeii to its harbour. It contained a uniquely long inscription, which, so we knew, was a detailed eulogy for an unnamed individual who had done incredible things for the Pompeian community (the name probably featured somewhere on the monument, but it has not been found back). As of this week, we finally have access to the full latin text, and, in my own rough translation (based on the text and Osanna's Italian translation, it reads something like this: When he got his toga virilis, he gave a banquet for the Pompeian people with 456 triclinia accommodating 15 man each. He gave a gladiatorial munus so lavish and splendid that it could be compared to any splendid colony beyond the city, as he had 416 gladiators in the arena – and as this munus coincided with a price hike in the annona, he fed them for a period of four years. The care for his citizens was dearer to him than his family matters: when a modius of triticum (grain) cost five denarii, he bought, and he offered it to the people for one and a half, and to make sure that his liberality would reach everyone, he personally distributed, through his friends, quantities of bread equivalent to one and a half denarius to the people. For a munus that he gave before the senatusconsultum (in 59 CE?), for all days of the games, he gave beasts of any kind, in a mixed composition. Moreover, when the Caesar (Nero) had ordered to lead away all families to more than two hundred miles from the city, he permitted only him to bring the Pompeians back to their country. Also, when he married his wife, he gave the decuriones fifty nummi, and, for the people, twenty denarii to the augustales and twenty nummi to the pagani. Twice, he gave big games without any burden to the community. Yet when the people recommended, and the ordo unanimously agreed that he would be elected patron of the city, and the duovir brought the issue forward, he personally intervened, saying that he would not be able to bear being the patron of his citizens. The translation needs quite a bit of fine-tuning, and some parts of the Latin text are only partially understandable – but the general message of the eulogy should be clear enough. Yet, what does it mean, and what does it tell us about Pompeii? The inscription is very nicely written, in full sentences and with very few abbreviations – it is almost true prose, compared to the formulaic texts full of standardized abbreviations that dominate our epigraphic record – clearly, we are in the first century CE, when the epigraphic habit is in full development. Some of the phrasing is strange. I am fascinated by the use of the word 'caesar' as sole reference to the emperor, which as far as I know is not common – usually you get an entire range of names and titles – and therefore meaningful; it points to the reality of damnatio memoriae, but in a more subtle way than the excisings that we know from Geta in the third century. Here, the damned emperor has no name, and
Información del artículo Long reviews - Room contents and domestic behaviour at Pompeii.
100 bce-250 ce . Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv + 295, illus. i... more 100 bce-250 ce . Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv + 295, illus. isbn 9780674050334. £33.95/US\ $45.00.
This book offers an uncompromisingly optimistic account of Roman economic history, putting the Ro... more This book offers an uncompromisingly optimistic account of Roman economic history, putting the Roman world, roughly, on a par with the most developed economies of early modern Europe-the Netherlands, England and France. Peter Temin uses contemporary economic theory to reassess our understanding of the economy of the Roman Empire, arguing that the economy of the Roman Empire was a well-integrated market economy that was able to enhance living standards to levels that were unknown before and would be unachievable for more than a millennium afterwards. The book takes a very extreme position that will, undoubtedly, attract criticism, but hopefully, particularly because of its use of modern economic theory, also foster debate.
This conference builds upon recent and ongoing discourse in the study of Roman urbanism to explor... more This conference builds upon recent and ongoing discourse in the study of Roman urbanism to explore the relation between architecture and society in the Roman world. While recent decades have seen spectacular developments in the theories and concepts that inform the study of Roman urbanism, not all spheres of urban life have profited equally, a lot of discourse has gravitated around a limited number of showcase sites (particularly Pompeii and Ostia), and there have been relatively few attempts to draw links with the world beyond Central Italy. This conference focuses on four spheres of activities—religion, politics, commerce, and movement— and brings together specialists focusing on several parts of the Roman world, with a particular focus on the more densely urbanized regions in the Mediterranean. Approaches will vary between micro-scale and more wide-ranging, and issues on the agenda will particularly include the identification of regional trends, and the impact of the built urban development on local communities.
Shops, Workshops and Urban Economic History in the Roman World
Roman colonization and expansionism in the Republican period, and its impact on the ancient Medit... more Roman colonization and expansionism in the Republican period, and its impact on the ancient Mediterranean and beyond, are intensely debated in current ancient historical and archaeological research. Traditional, diffusionist views from the late 19th and especially the 20th century have recently been heavily criticized, and many socio-economic and cultural developments in ancient Italy (e.g. agricultural developments, 'romanization') have been disconnected from Roman conquest and expansionism. Although this development has been extremely important and salutary, this session departs from the idea that we should be careful not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Very recent and ongoing research can be seen as pointing at real Roman impact in various spheres - if in different ways and places than often assumed. In this session, we investigate whether, and if so to what extent, we can invert the causal logic between a series of new socio-economic and cultural developments in the ancient Mediterranean and Roman colonization. In particular, we will explore the notion that Roman expansionism actively targeted hotspots in both economic ánd cultural networks of special interest in the conquered areas. Seeing local cultural resources at equal footing with more standard local economic resources, and exploring the ways the Roman conquest further enabled and energized these hotspots, stimulates us to rethink the primary workings of Roman expansionism.
The material remains of Roman urban shops and workshops long played a marginal role in classical ... more The material remains of Roman urban shops and workshops long played a marginal role in classical archaeology, but in recent years, they have enjoyed a marked increase of scholarly attention. Influenced by debates about the nature of ancient urban economies, scholars began to study the archaeological evidence for urban retail and manufacturing with an unprecedented vigour from the late 1990s onwards, and increasingly began to experiment with novel ways of interpreting it. Still, opinions diverge as to the actual interpretative power of archaeologically identifiable shops and workshops: their real contribution to our understanding of the history of Roman urban economies is a matter of debate. On the one hand, scholars have increasingly expressed pessimism about the possibilities to use archaeological remains as a starting point for quantifying output in absolute terms, and about the extent to which shops and workshops were oriented towards local or supra-local markets; on the other hand, they have increasingly begun to assess aspects of shop-and workshop design in relation to investment strategies and profitability, and to explore the economic history of urban commercial landscapes. At this point, a critical challenge ahead lies in counterbalancing the fragmentation of discourse: while good evidence comes from all directions, and in a variety of forms, and while the available categories of evidence are being studied in a variety of places, archaeologists have difficulty in connecting the threads, and – more than those studying crafts and retail on the basis of epigraphy and literary texts – suffer to develop a comparative perspective over larger geographical areas. Hence, it is time to put this interpretative integration explicitly on the agenda. This session will bring together scholars who have studied this evidence from a variety of angles and in a variety of places in the Roman Mediterranean. It will discuss the ways in which recent developments in the study of urban shops and workshops have (and have not) challenged our conceptualization of urban economic history in the Roman world, and it will explore possible avenues to further deepen our understanding of the changing nature of Roman urban commerce, and to bridge spatial and chronological distances between local sets of evidence.
Roman colonization and expansionism in the Republican period, and its impact on the ancient Medit... more Roman colonization and expansionism in the Republican period, and its impact on the ancient Mediterranean and beyond, are intensely debated in current ancient historical and archaeological research. Traditional, diffusionist views from the late 19th and especially the 20th century have recently been heavily criticized, and many socioeconomic and cultural developments in ancient Italy (e.g. agricultural developments, 'romanization') have been disconnected from Roman conquest and expansionism. Although this development has been extremely important and salutary, this session departs from the idea that we should be careful not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Very recent and ongoing research can be seen as pointing at real Roman impact in various spheres-if in different ways and places than traditionally assumed. In this session, we investigate whether, and if so to what extent, we can invert the causal logic between a series of new socioeconomic and cultural developments in the ancient Mediterranean and Roman colonization. In particular, we will explore the notion that Roman expansionism actively targeted hotspots in both economic and cultural networks of special interest in the conquered areas. Seeing local cultural resources at equal footing with more standard local economic resources, and exploring the ways the Roman conquest further enabled and energized these hotspots, stimulates us to rethink the primary workings of Roman expansionism.
Proposals for contributions, from provinces and elsewhere alike, are welcome.
See http://www.aiac2018.de/ for the procedure and https://www.academia.edu/31419127/The_impact_of_Roman_expansion_and_colonization_on_ancient_Italy_in_the_Republican_period._From_diffusionism_to_networks_of_opportunity for the position paper with examples regarding republican Italy.
This paper discusses the development of could be called the 'religious landscape' of Pompeii in t... more This paper discusses the development of could be called the 'religious landscape' of Pompeii in the long last century of the city's existence. It does so with the aim of assessing how the actual material remains of permanent religious structures can be used to explore the relation between urban development and religious change. The argument will build upon developments in scholarship about Roman urban space, which has become increasingly sensitive to the micro-histories of everyday life, particularly-for better and for worse-at Pompeii. Starting from the definitive incorporation of Pompeii in Rome's empire in 80 BCE, it will explore to which extent we can actually trace the way in which Pompeii's religious landscape changed in the early imperial period, and how such a narrative of spatial change can be linked to (or rather reflects) changes in religious practice. This, in turn, can hopefully add a new dimension to scholarship about religion in Pompeii, and make the debate more sensitive to the reality of chronological change and its complex impact on the religious landscape, and religious practice. There is a substantial bibliography on the archaeology of religious life at Pompeii, covering both the monumentalization of temples and other cult facilities in public space, and the material remains of ritual in the domestic sphere. In recent decades, William van Andringa's 2009 monograph is both the most ambitious and most detailed discussion of the archaeology of religious practice in Pompeii (and Herculaneum), and sketches a vivid picture of a city where 'the gods were everywhere'. 1 More importantly, Van Andringa was the first to develop a true 'archaeology of religion' at Pompeii: in line with developments in other branches of Pompeian studies, his approach moved beyond the traditional Pompeianist emphasis on architecture and art by incorporating a much larger number of evidence types, such as remains of altars and artefact assemblages. This made it possible to cover a much broader spectrum of religious practice. At the same time, Van Andringa was, remarkably enough, the first to present a more-or-less integrated analysis of the various sets and contexts of religious practice in Pompeii. Indeed, most scholarship touching upon religious life at Pompeii uses the city as a case study as part of an analysis of one, more limited, aspect of religious practice. In this way, Flower's recent book on the Roman lares uses the street altars of Pompeii to discuss how religion operated at the Roman street corner. 2 Similarly, Gradel uses the evidence from Pompeii in his discussion of the nature of emperor worship in Roman Italy. 3 However, from the perspective of the present argument, most of this scholarship suffers from two shortcomings. In the very first place, discourse on religious practice in Pompeii has overwhelmingly approached the city from a cultural systems perspective, thus not only quietly (or even explicitly) assuming that Pompeii in its cultural whereabouts reflected an average Roman (provincial) town-an extremely problematic idea in itself, given the exceptionally un-typical history of the bay of Naples region-but also supposing an absence of historical change: in these approaches, what we see at Pompeii was not a very specific reflection of local, regional, Roman, and pan-Mediterranean developments in religious practice, but simply reflects the way things worked in Roman Italy. Only in those domains of religion that are closely associated with the political sphere, some degree of change is acknowledged-e.g. as a result of the foundation of the colony in 80
The Unification of the Mediterranean World (400 BC - 400 AD
The Unification of the Mediterranean World (400 BC - 400 AD
Senses of the Empire, 2017
Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World, 2020
Approaches to urban commerce in the Roman world have become increasingly sensitive to the positio... more Approaches to urban commerce in the Roman world have become increasingly sensitive to the position of retail, manufacturing, and business in the urban environment. Long gone is the idea that commerce was an unwelcome or foreign element in urban space: whenever scholars have studied the spatial position of crafts and retail more closely, it has become clear that commerce not only could be integrated into urban space without much trouble, but often also developed a central presence throughout the urban landscape, and could be closely associated, physically and visually, with local elites and their urban residences (Laurence 1994; Wallace-Hadrill 1994; Flohr and Wilson 2016). Particularly the taberna, with its wide opening, and its proliferation along the thoroughfares of many cities in Roman Italy, made sure that commerce, already by the late Republic, had become a defining element of urban space. Yet it may be argued that scholarly discourse on urban commercial landscapes in the Roman world has focused to a significant degree on streets, and on the private buildings surrounding these. The public heart of the Roman city-the forum-has, perhaps surprisingly, played a much more marginal role in recent approaches to commercial space. Indeed, recent work on retail and tabernae by Holleran (2012, 2017) and Ellis (2018) acknowledges the existence of commerce in fora, but does not really elaborate on the topic. Conversely, recent discourse on fora tends to emphasize the role of the central urban plaza in politics and civic life. Gros, in what counts as the most authoritative discussion of Roman fora of the last decades, defines the forum, first and foremost, as a lieu de mémoire, where the community defined itself via civic and religious architecture, and through the many commemorative monuments and honorific inscriptions (Gros 1996, 207). In her discussion of the Republican fora of Roman Italy, Lackner (2008, 255, 271) acknowledges the role of commerce on fora, and highlights the presence of tabernae alongside many Italian fora, but offers very little reflection on the issue. Laurence, Esmonde Cleary, and Sears (2011, 170-202, esp. 186) define the forum (with Vitruvius) as a place for negotium-broadly defined-and observe that many Republican fora developed a strongly commercial character, but for the imperial period, they rather emphasize the role of the forum as an 'imperial space' and argue that it functioned to give cities a 'truly impressive
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This article argues that tabernae publicae were a common phenomenon in Roman cities, and that the... more This article argues that tabernae publicae were a common phenomenon in Roman cities, and that the proliferation of tabernae associated with public buildings or otherwise built on public ground suggests that local governments in many cities were a key player on the market for the rental of commercial space. Reasons for this were the amount of tabernae they owned, and the quality of their property portfolio, which generally included the best situated tabernae in town. This article highlights the role of tabernae around fora and macella, the commercial buildings built by the authorities, and the commercialization of the environment of public baths. There is a particular emphasis on the archaeological evidence from Roman Italy, but this is combined with the literary and epigraphic record to highlight not only the amounts and contexts of tabernae publicae but also the way in which they brought in substantial amounts of tax money (vectigalia) for local governments. It is suggested that this tax money was particularly useful to bring down the costs of building and maintaining monumental public architecture.
Moses Finley once famously claimed that, because of the quality of the data, attempting to write ... more Moses Finley once famously claimed that, because of the quality of the data, attempting to write the history of individual ancient towns was a 'cul-de-sac'. 1 Instead, he championed the idea that the ancient city needed to be approached on a conceptual level, so that the role of the city as a 'pivotal institution' in the Greco-Roman world could be understood. Several decades of fierce debate about what precisely this role might have been followed Finley's discussion of the nature of the ancient city. Essentially, however, the most important conclusion emerging from this debate has been that, ultimately, Greco-Roman urbanism was too varied for a conceptual approach to yield historically meaningful results: it was not so much Finley's theory that ancient cities were Weberian 'consumer cities' that was misguided, but rather the idea that a single ideal type was the best approach to understanding Roman urbanism, and particularly Roman urban economies. 2 In other words, trying to write the history of an individual town, however complicated it is, is not a cul-de-sac, but an essential part of debating the history of Roman urbanism, and of urban economies in the Roman world. Indeed, over the past decades, several scholars have examined the economic histories of specific towns in the Roman world, sometimes with significant impact on the debate. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was the work of Leveau on Caesarea, Jongman's book on the economy and society of Pompeii, and the monograph of Engels on Roman Corinth. 3 Around the turn of the millennium, Mattingly and others investigated the economy of Leptiminus, and Wilson those of Sabratha and Timgad. 4 More recently, there has been
American Journal of Archaeology, 2019
This article investigates how consumer demand shaped markets for high-quality domestic decoration... more This article investigates how consumer demand shaped markets for high-quality domestic decoration in the Roman world and highlights how this affected the economic strategies of people involved in the production and trade of high-quality wall decoration, mosaics, and sculpture. The argument analyzes the consumption of high-quality domestic decoration at Pompeii and models the structure of demand for decorative skills in the Roman world at large. The Pompeian case study focuses on three categories of high-quality decoration: Late Hellenistic opus vermiculatum mosaics, first-century C.E. fourth-style panel pictures, and domestic sculpture. Analyzing the spread of these mosaics, paintings, and statues over a database of Pompeian houses makes it possible to reconstruct a demand profile for each category of decoration and to discuss the nature of its supply economy. It is argued that the market for high-quality decoration at Pompeii provided few incentives for professionals to acquire specialist skills and that this has broader implications: as market conditions in Pompeii and the Bay of Naples region were significantly above average, the strategic possibilities for painters, mosaicists, and sculptors in many parts of the Roman world were even more restricted and, consequently, their motivation to invest in skills and repertoire remained limited. 1
Work, Labour, and Professions in the Roman World, 2017
The Unification of the Mediterranean World (400 BC - 400 AD
This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches... more This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy. Four themes are discussed. The first of these is the position of Pompeii and its agricultural environment, discussing the productivity and specialization of agriculture in the Vesuvian region, and the degree to which we can explain Pompeii's size and wealth on the basis of the city's economic hinterland. A second issue discussed is what Pompeians got out of their economy: how well-off were people in Pompeii? This involves discussing the consumption of everyday consumer goods, analyzing archaeobotanical remains to highlight the quality of Pompeian diets, and discussing what bone remains reveal about the health of the inhabitants of Pompeii. A third theme is economic life in the city: how are we to understand the evidence for crafts and manufacturing? How are we to assess Pompeii's commercial topography? Who were the people who actually invested in constructing shops and workshops? In which economic contexts were Pompeian paintings produced? Finally, the volume discusses money and business: how integrated was Pompeii into the wider world of commerce and exchange, and what can the many coins found at Pompeii tell us about this? What do the wax tablets found near Pompeii tell us about trade in the Bay of Naples in the first century AD? Together, the chapters of this volume highlight how Pompeii became a very rich community, and how it profited from its position in the centre of the Roman world. Contributors to this volume - Wim Broekaert is a postdoctoral researcher in Ancient History at Ghent University Girolamo Ferdinando De Simone is director of the Apolline project Steven J.R. Ellis is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati Domenico Esposito is postdoctoral researcher at the institute for classical archaeology at the Free University, Berlin Miko Flohr is postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute for History of Leiden University Richard Hobbs is curator of the Romano-British collections at The British Museum Willem Jongman is Reader in Economic History at the University of Groningen Estelle Lazer is an Honorary Research Associate in Ancient History at the University of Sydney Nicolas Monteix holds a position as associate professor in Roman history and archeology at the University of Rouen Eric Poehler is Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Nick Ray is Assistant Director of the Oxford Roman Economy Project, University of Oxford Damian Robinson is Director of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford Erica Rowan is Levantis Associate Research Fellow at the Department of Classics and Ancient History in the University of Exeter Koenraad Verboven is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Ghent Andrew Wilson is Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, at the University of Oxford
Oxford Handbook Topics in Classical Studies, 2016
This article assesses the impact of innovation on Roman society. It starts from a critical engage... more This article assesses the impact of innovation on Roman society. It starts from a critical engagement with past debate about technological progress, which over the past decades has been too strongly focused on economic growth, and a re-appreciation of the literary evidence for innovation, which points to a culture in which technological knowledge and invention were thought to matter. Then, it highlights two areas where the uptake of technology had a direct impact on everyday life: material culture, where the emergence of glass-blowing, a proliferation of metal-working, and innovation in pottery-production changed the nature and amount of artefacts by which people surrounded themselves, and construction, where building techniques using opus caementicium, arches and standardized building materials revolutionized urban and rural landscapes. A concluding discussion highlights the role of integration of the Mediterranean under Roman rule in making innovation possible, and the role of con...
Urban Craftsmen and Traders in the Roman World, 2016
This chapter discusses the development of the debate on craftsmen and traders in general terms, f... more This chapter discusses the development of the debate on craftsmen and traders in general terms, focusing specifically on the German and Anglo-Saxon scholarly traditions. It assesses the relative impact of new evidence and new ideas on discourse about Roman urban craftsmen and traders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it also highlights the key role played by certain individual scholars and their networks, such as Mommsen, Meyer, and Frank.
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2003
Among the most significant material evidence for manufacturing and production activities in Roman... more Among the most significant material evidence for manufacturing and production activities in Roman towns are the remains of workshops dedicated to fulling. The layout of these so-called fullonicae is often relatively well preserved and provides detailed information about the daily activities in these workshops. Together with the remains of bakeries and a few other identifiable urban workshops, fullonicae allow us to discuss important aspects of the social and economic contexts of production in Roman cities. However, despite the potential of the evidence and the significance of the subject, there has been little discussion of Roman fulling, and the contribution of M. Bradley in JRA 15 (2002) 21-44 is only the second to discuss Roman fullonicae in general. Bradley focuses on the cultural and economic context of fullones (fullers) and fullonicae in Roman society. Although his narrative will prove to be a useful contribution to the debate on Roman fulling, there are good reasons to quest...
Mnemosyne, 2014
This book offers an uncompromisingly optimistic account of Roman economic history, putting the Ro... more This book offers an uncompromisingly optimistic account of Roman economic history, putting the Roman world, roughly, on a par with the most developed economies of early modern Europe-the Netherlands, England and France. Peter Temin uses contemporary economic theory to reassess our understand ing of the economy of the Roman Empire, arguing that the economy of the Roman Empire was a well-integrated market economy that was able to enhance living standards to levels that were unknown before and would be unachiev able for more than a millennium afterwards. The book takes a very extreme position that will, undoubtedly, attract criticism, but hopefully, particularly because of its use of modern economic theory, also foster debate. After an introductory chapter, which introduces both the debate and some key concepts, the book is divided into three sections. The first of these focuses on prices in the Roman world. In the second chapter, Temin makes a case for the existence of an integrated Roman Mediterranean wheat market on the basis of two series of prices, both of which suggest that there was a correlation between grain price and distance to Rome. Using regression analysis, Temin argues that there is a 5% chance that these patterns were a coincidence, which leads him to conclude (p. 50) that there was "something approaching a unified grain market in the Roman Mediterranean". Chapter three focuses on price behaviour in Hellenistic Babylon. Analyzing the series of commodity prices from Babylon between 464 and 72 b c e , Temin concludes that their random variation from year to year indicates that there was a market economy in ancient Babylon. Gradual increase of price levels in the Seleucid period is thought to suggest that political and economic stability were becoming harder to achieve. The subsequent chapter four applies a similar exercise on the Roman empire, starting from the assumption-based on the conclusion of the preceding chapter-that most of the prices in our records are market prices. It investigates when inflation started to play a role, and what triggered it. Temin concludes that inflation started in the late second century, and was paralleled by measurable political instability. In discussing causality, he makes the Antonine Plague an important event, but emphasizes that subsequent infla tion was episodic rather than continuous. The next section of the book focuses on markets in the Roman empire and their institutions. It consists of four chapters, the first of which is devoted to the grain trade. This chapter particularly focuses on the institutions used to mitigate issues of asymmetric information and control of agents. Temin argues here that the Roman market was comparable to Early Modern European and
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014
The World of the 'Fullo' takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with h... more The World of the 'Fullo' takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the places where they worked in the city, and their everyday lives on the shop floor and beyond. Through focusing on the lower segments of society, Flohr uses everyday work as the major organizing principle of the narrative: the volume discusses the decisions taken by those responsible for the organization of work, and how these decisions subsequently had an impact on the social lives of people carrying out the work. It emphasizes how socio-economic differences between cities resulted in fundamentally different working lives for many of their people, and that not only were economic activities shaped by Roman society, they in turn played a key role in shaping it. Using an in-depth and qualitative analysis of material remains related to economic activities, with a combined study of epigraphic and literary records, this volume portrays an insightful view of the socio-economic history of urban communities in the Roman world.
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2012