Dario Nappo | Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II" (original) (raw)
Books by Dario Nappo
This volume draws upon the scholarship on the international trade between the Roman Empire and Ea... more This volume draws upon the scholarship on the international trade between the Roman Empire and Eastern regions such as Arabia, Ethiopia and India. Such trade has been often described by ancient sources as a flourishing and very expensive one. More in detail, the book focuses on the life and the development of the ports on the Red Sea, controlled by Rome. These ports acted for centuries as international hubs, linking points between West and East, and they were the gates though which the eastern merchandise would reach the Roman markets. Keeping these remote settlements alive required a big effort on the part of the imperial administration, and some degree of planning to choose how and when to invest in the area. So, over the centuries, the geography of such ports changed dramatically. Most works published so far have explained such changes in terms of decline and economic shrinking, due to the “late antique phase” of the Roman Empire. This monograph looks for a different explanation and stretches the analysis into the late antique period, showing hot it was not simply a period of decline and economic recession, but rather of reorganisation. The volume aims finally to reach a new and more full level of understanding of the Roman economic policy in the Red Sea between the first century BC and the sixth AD.
Edited volumes by Dario Nappo
The Roman Empire has been recently considered a valid case study for the application of global hi... more The Roman Empire has been recently considered a valid case study for the application of global history and globalisation theories by Roman historians and archaeologists. This approach highlights the characteristics of the Roman Empire as an interconnected world, where numerous cultural, economic, and religious exchanges took place, creating everywhere a common cultural veneer considered as ‘Roman’. According to these theories, during the Roman period the Mediterranean knew a high level of economic, cultural, technological, juridical, and religious connection. What happened when these connections were partially interrupted by a ‘crisis’ period?
This book aims to challenge the concepts of globalisation in the Roman Empire, analysing the periods of ‘crisis’ and ‘recovery’ between the 3rd and the 5th century CE. Modern scholarship usually assumes that this connectivity came to an abrupt interruption during a period of crisis. Despite abundant scholarly works on the subject, no satisfactory and shared theory of crisis exists. Combining globalisation and crisis as objects of analysis, we aim to explore whether the diverse range of trading and cultural connections – implied by globalisation theories – would continue or be disrupted once the imperial world supposedly almost collapsed. The discussion follows a number of principal themes, including the transformations of the Roman Empire, the nature of interconnections between Rome and its provinces, the creation of new forms of connection, and the development of new identities.
Whether ‘crisis’ and ‘recovery’ are the appropriate words to describe these phenomena is one of our main concerns: how can we theoretically define the concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘recovery’? How were these two concepts related to each other? Shall we use these terms to define the phenomena that affected the Roman Empire between the 3rd and the 5th century CE? Despite being apparently opposite phenomena, crisis and connectivity were both characterising the later phase of the Roman Empire. Our aim is to collect a number of essays that will address these complex phenomena from different points of view.
ECONOMIA E FRONTIERA NELL'IMPERO ROMANO, a cura di Dario Nappo e Giovanna D. Merola , 2021
Il volume raccoglie i testi presentati al Convegno “Economia e frontiera nel mondo romano”, tenut... more Il volume raccoglie i testi presentati al Convegno “Economia e frontiera nel mondo romano”, tenutosi nel mese di ottobre del 2019 presso l’Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. Il Convegno ha rappresentato il momento conclusivo del progetto di ricerca “INDevelopment” (di durata biennale, parte del programma STAR), che si proponeva di dare conto della specificità delle aree di frontiera, soprattutto dal punto di vista economico. In queste zone il sistema romano entrava in rapporto con realtà sociali, culturali ed economiche differenti; tale contatto creava fenomeni peculiari di intercambio (commercio transfrontaliero, importazioni ed esportazioni di merci, scambi culturali) e di controllo (attraverso le milizie, ma anche con provvedimenti fiscali).
Non c’è nel volume una pretesa di esaustività o di organicità. Piuttosto, l’intenzione dei curatori è stata quella di raccogliere una serie di “casi economicamente extra-ordinari”, per dare testimonianza di una realtà che nel mondo romano non era classificabile come ordinaria amministrazione: la vita economica di una provincia di frontiera. La rassegna cerca di toccare scenari geograficamente diversi, che vanno dall’Occidente fino all’Oriente e si spingono persino fuori di quelle che sono considerate le tradizionali frontiere romane, toccando il tema dei rapporti commerciali con il continente indiano.
Papers by Dario Nappo
Hormos, 2024
India has always played a very peculiar role in the ideological and propagandistic construction ... more India has always played a very peculiar role in the ideological and propagandistic
construction of the Roman Empire, at least since the time of Augustus. While there have been studies on imperial ideology with respect to India during the principate, historiographical research for late antiquity is still insufficient. This work aims to contribute to the debate over the propagandistic value of India in the imperial discourse of the Latin Panegyrics. It turns out that this geographical region, while maintaining its value as a territory at the edge of the world, with all the images that this entails, takes on some completely new traits and characteristics in the reading of the Panegyrics, sometimes in open contradiction with the traditional imperial propaganda.
Ettore Lepore e la storia antica. Eredità, attualità, prospettive, 2023
Il tema di questo lavoro riguarda la relazione tra la metodologia della ricerca storica di Ettore... more Il tema di questo lavoro riguarda la relazione tra la metodologia della ricerca
storica di Ettore Lepore, talune categorie storiche elaborate dalla riflessione di Antonio Gramsci e il rapporto di queste con la produzione scientifica nel campo della storia romana. Non si tratta di una ricerca esaustiva, ma piuttosto l’obiettivo è quello di mettere in evidenza alcuni degli aspetti meno valorizzati sia della elaborazione teorica di Gramsci sia del loro uso nell’officina storica di Lepore. Il punto di partenza che si propone è una riflessione di Lepore su Gramsci e sull’impatto che questi ebbe sul mondo della cultura in Italia
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2010
Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World, 2021
Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World, 2021
Managing Information in the Roman Economy, 2021
Before/After: Transformation, Change, and Abandonment in the Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean, 2020
The paper focuses on the development and the decline of the ancient settlement of Myos Hormos, wh... more The paper focuses on the development and the decline of the ancient settlement of Myos Hormos, which was a
prominent port on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Many writers from the first centuries BCE and CE agree on describing
it as one of the most important commercial hubs of the area, along the more southern port of Berenike. Still, while
Berenike kept its functionality well into the late antique period, Myos Hormos was abandoned and fell out of use for
no evident reason at some point along the third century CE. This decline has been explained by most scholars as a
consequence of the third century crisis that stroke the Empire, and that triggered a steady regression of the Roman
trading activities in the Red Sea. In this paper a different point of view is offered: the demise of Myos Hormos would
not have anything to do with commercial decline nor with the shrinking of the trading horizon of the Romans, but
it was rather the consequence of an adjustement of the organisation of the Red Sea area that started during the
second century CE.
UOMINI, ISTITUZIONI, MERCATI Studi di storia per Elio Lo Cascio, 2019
A short note on quantitative analysis applied to the ancient economies and the methodological iss... more A short note on quantitative analysis applied to the ancient economies and the methodological issues related to it
A. Wilson and A. Bowman, Trade, Commerce, and State in the Roman World. OUP, 2018
The paper analyses the evidence about export of coinage from the Roman Empire to India, to unders... more The paper analyses the evidence about export of coinage from the Roman Empire to India, to understand what kind of information it is possible to reconstruct about volume and trends of trade.
Incidenza Dell'Antico, 2015
The article compares two customs gates in the Red Sea during Roman and Byzantine rule. The main a... more The article compares two customs gates in the Red Sea during Roman and Byzantine rule. The main assumption is that it is possible to shed some light on some elements of the Roman organisation, starting from the analysis of the Byzantine one.
Da: La Fabbrica della Storia (edd. M.G Castello ed E. Belligni) La ricezione del mondo classico, ... more Da: La Fabbrica della Storia (edd. M.G Castello ed E. Belligni)
La ricezione del mondo classico, in particolare greco, nell'opera del mangaka giapponese Go Nagai.
In each and every discourse on issues such as contact, evolution, transition, migration, integrat... more In each and every discourse on issues such as contact, evolution, transition, migration, integration and encounter, identity plays a central role. Being a manifold, uneasily describable object in itself, identity represents a very difficult object of study and many scholars from different disciplines of the human sciences (psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and linguists) have tried in recent years to give their contribution to the debate born around it. In the two meetings organized in Naples, April 14th 2015 and Turin, October 8-9th 2015 in the framework of the ATrA project, the issue has been discussed by archaeologists, linguists, philologists and anthropologists specifically adopting the perspective of observing and discussing identity through a reflection on its material manifestations in transitional contexts (be it in terms of language, of economical exchanges or of traditional handicraft). This book is a collection of selected papers from those meetings.
The book is downloadable for free from the link below
Frontiers of the Roman World, (O. Hekster and T. Kaizer edd.), Leiden, Brill, 2011.
Studia Historica. Historia Antigua. 2012
REVUE BELGE DE PHILOLOGIE ET D'HISTOIRE 91, 2013, 45-68
This volume draws upon the scholarship on the international trade between the Roman Empire and Ea... more This volume draws upon the scholarship on the international trade between the Roman Empire and Eastern regions such as Arabia, Ethiopia and India. Such trade has been often described by ancient sources as a flourishing and very expensive one. More in detail, the book focuses on the life and the development of the ports on the Red Sea, controlled by Rome. These ports acted for centuries as international hubs, linking points between West and East, and they were the gates though which the eastern merchandise would reach the Roman markets. Keeping these remote settlements alive required a big effort on the part of the imperial administration, and some degree of planning to choose how and when to invest in the area. So, over the centuries, the geography of such ports changed dramatically. Most works published so far have explained such changes in terms of decline and economic shrinking, due to the “late antique phase” of the Roman Empire. This monograph looks for a different explanation and stretches the analysis into the late antique period, showing hot it was not simply a period of decline and economic recession, but rather of reorganisation. The volume aims finally to reach a new and more full level of understanding of the Roman economic policy in the Red Sea between the first century BC and the sixth AD.
The Roman Empire has been recently considered a valid case study for the application of global hi... more The Roman Empire has been recently considered a valid case study for the application of global history and globalisation theories by Roman historians and archaeologists. This approach highlights the characteristics of the Roman Empire as an interconnected world, where numerous cultural, economic, and religious exchanges took place, creating everywhere a common cultural veneer considered as ‘Roman’. According to these theories, during the Roman period the Mediterranean knew a high level of economic, cultural, technological, juridical, and religious connection. What happened when these connections were partially interrupted by a ‘crisis’ period?
This book aims to challenge the concepts of globalisation in the Roman Empire, analysing the periods of ‘crisis’ and ‘recovery’ between the 3rd and the 5th century CE. Modern scholarship usually assumes that this connectivity came to an abrupt interruption during a period of crisis. Despite abundant scholarly works on the subject, no satisfactory and shared theory of crisis exists. Combining globalisation and crisis as objects of analysis, we aim to explore whether the diverse range of trading and cultural connections – implied by globalisation theories – would continue or be disrupted once the imperial world supposedly almost collapsed. The discussion follows a number of principal themes, including the transformations of the Roman Empire, the nature of interconnections between Rome and its provinces, the creation of new forms of connection, and the development of new identities.
Whether ‘crisis’ and ‘recovery’ are the appropriate words to describe these phenomena is one of our main concerns: how can we theoretically define the concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘recovery’? How were these two concepts related to each other? Shall we use these terms to define the phenomena that affected the Roman Empire between the 3rd and the 5th century CE? Despite being apparently opposite phenomena, crisis and connectivity were both characterising the later phase of the Roman Empire. Our aim is to collect a number of essays that will address these complex phenomena from different points of view.
ECONOMIA E FRONTIERA NELL'IMPERO ROMANO, a cura di Dario Nappo e Giovanna D. Merola , 2021
Il volume raccoglie i testi presentati al Convegno “Economia e frontiera nel mondo romano”, tenut... more Il volume raccoglie i testi presentati al Convegno “Economia e frontiera nel mondo romano”, tenutosi nel mese di ottobre del 2019 presso l’Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. Il Convegno ha rappresentato il momento conclusivo del progetto di ricerca “INDevelopment” (di durata biennale, parte del programma STAR), che si proponeva di dare conto della specificità delle aree di frontiera, soprattutto dal punto di vista economico. In queste zone il sistema romano entrava in rapporto con realtà sociali, culturali ed economiche differenti; tale contatto creava fenomeni peculiari di intercambio (commercio transfrontaliero, importazioni ed esportazioni di merci, scambi culturali) e di controllo (attraverso le milizie, ma anche con provvedimenti fiscali).
Non c’è nel volume una pretesa di esaustività o di organicità. Piuttosto, l’intenzione dei curatori è stata quella di raccogliere una serie di “casi economicamente extra-ordinari”, per dare testimonianza di una realtà che nel mondo romano non era classificabile come ordinaria amministrazione: la vita economica di una provincia di frontiera. La rassegna cerca di toccare scenari geograficamente diversi, che vanno dall’Occidente fino all’Oriente e si spingono persino fuori di quelle che sono considerate le tradizionali frontiere romane, toccando il tema dei rapporti commerciali con il continente indiano.
Hormos, 2024
India has always played a very peculiar role in the ideological and propagandistic construction ... more India has always played a very peculiar role in the ideological and propagandistic
construction of the Roman Empire, at least since the time of Augustus. While there have been studies on imperial ideology with respect to India during the principate, historiographical research for late antiquity is still insufficient. This work aims to contribute to the debate over the propagandistic value of India in the imperial discourse of the Latin Panegyrics. It turns out that this geographical region, while maintaining its value as a territory at the edge of the world, with all the images that this entails, takes on some completely new traits and characteristics in the reading of the Panegyrics, sometimes in open contradiction with the traditional imperial propaganda.
Ettore Lepore e la storia antica. Eredità, attualità, prospettive, 2023
Il tema di questo lavoro riguarda la relazione tra la metodologia della ricerca storica di Ettore... more Il tema di questo lavoro riguarda la relazione tra la metodologia della ricerca
storica di Ettore Lepore, talune categorie storiche elaborate dalla riflessione di Antonio Gramsci e il rapporto di queste con la produzione scientifica nel campo della storia romana. Non si tratta di una ricerca esaustiva, ma piuttosto l’obiettivo è quello di mettere in evidenza alcuni degli aspetti meno valorizzati sia della elaborazione teorica di Gramsci sia del loro uso nell’officina storica di Lepore. Il punto di partenza che si propone è una riflessione di Lepore su Gramsci e sull’impatto che questi ebbe sul mondo della cultura in Italia
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2010
Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World, 2021
Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World, 2021
Managing Information in the Roman Economy, 2021
Before/After: Transformation, Change, and Abandonment in the Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean, 2020
The paper focuses on the development and the decline of the ancient settlement of Myos Hormos, wh... more The paper focuses on the development and the decline of the ancient settlement of Myos Hormos, which was a
prominent port on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Many writers from the first centuries BCE and CE agree on describing
it as one of the most important commercial hubs of the area, along the more southern port of Berenike. Still, while
Berenike kept its functionality well into the late antique period, Myos Hormos was abandoned and fell out of use for
no evident reason at some point along the third century CE. This decline has been explained by most scholars as a
consequence of the third century crisis that stroke the Empire, and that triggered a steady regression of the Roman
trading activities in the Red Sea. In this paper a different point of view is offered: the demise of Myos Hormos would
not have anything to do with commercial decline nor with the shrinking of the trading horizon of the Romans, but
it was rather the consequence of an adjustement of the organisation of the Red Sea area that started during the
second century CE.
UOMINI, ISTITUZIONI, MERCATI Studi di storia per Elio Lo Cascio, 2019
A short note on quantitative analysis applied to the ancient economies and the methodological iss... more A short note on quantitative analysis applied to the ancient economies and the methodological issues related to it
A. Wilson and A. Bowman, Trade, Commerce, and State in the Roman World. OUP, 2018
The paper analyses the evidence about export of coinage from the Roman Empire to India, to unders... more The paper analyses the evidence about export of coinage from the Roman Empire to India, to understand what kind of information it is possible to reconstruct about volume and trends of trade.
Incidenza Dell'Antico, 2015
The article compares two customs gates in the Red Sea during Roman and Byzantine rule. The main a... more The article compares two customs gates in the Red Sea during Roman and Byzantine rule. The main assumption is that it is possible to shed some light on some elements of the Roman organisation, starting from the analysis of the Byzantine one.
Da: La Fabbrica della Storia (edd. M.G Castello ed E. Belligni) La ricezione del mondo classico, ... more Da: La Fabbrica della Storia (edd. M.G Castello ed E. Belligni)
La ricezione del mondo classico, in particolare greco, nell'opera del mangaka giapponese Go Nagai.
In each and every discourse on issues such as contact, evolution, transition, migration, integrat... more In each and every discourse on issues such as contact, evolution, transition, migration, integration and encounter, identity plays a central role. Being a manifold, uneasily describable object in itself, identity represents a very difficult object of study and many scholars from different disciplines of the human sciences (psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and linguists) have tried in recent years to give their contribution to the debate born around it. In the two meetings organized in Naples, April 14th 2015 and Turin, October 8-9th 2015 in the framework of the ATrA project, the issue has been discussed by archaeologists, linguists, philologists and anthropologists specifically adopting the perspective of observing and discussing identity through a reflection on its material manifestations in transitional contexts (be it in terms of language, of economical exchanges or of traditional handicraft). This book is a collection of selected papers from those meetings.
The book is downloadable for free from the link below
Frontiers of the Roman World, (O. Hekster and T. Kaizer edd.), Leiden, Brill, 2011.
Studia Historica. Historia Antigua. 2012
REVUE BELGE DE PHILOLOGIE ET D'HISTOIRE 91, 2013, 45-68
The paper investigates the level and the nature of the engagement of the Roman imperial governmen... more The paper investigates the level and the nature of the engagement of the Roman imperial government in the Red Sea trade during the second century AD.
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 23 (2010)
Archaeological research of UNO at Adulis has had as a goal, during the 2014 field season, to cont... more Archaeological research of UNO at Adulis has had as a goal, during the 2014 field season, to continue the setting of the chronological sequence started in 2011 (Zazzaro, Cocca and Manzo 2014), to better understand the connection among the town, the river and the sea, to investigate the local economy and trade networks through archaeological finds. At this aim, excavations started in 2011 in sectors 1 and 3 have been pursued. A new trench, sector 5, was opened to the South of the town, on the river edge, and a short - few hours survey - was conducted towards the coast for recording new archaeological evidence uncovered by the flood in November 2013.
TRAC - Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, 2020
The Roman Empire has been recently considered a valid case study for the application of global hi... more The Roman Empire has been recently considered a valid case study for the application of global history and globalisation theories by Roman historians and archaeologists (Pitts and Versluys 2014, Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture). This approach highlights the characteristics of the Roman Empire as an interconnected world, where numerous cultural, economic, and religious exchanges took place, creating everywhere a common cultural veneer considered as ‘Roman’.
This panel aims to challenge the concepts of globalisation in the Roman Empire, using as case study the ‘crisis’ of the 3rd century CE. Current scholarship assumes that this connectivity came to an abrupt interruption during that period of crisis (Hekster, de Kleijn and Slootjes 2007, Crises and the Roman Empire). Despite abundant scholarly works on the subject, no satisfactory and shared theory of crisis exists. Combining globalisation and crisis as object of analysis, this panel explores whether the diverse range of trading and cultural Roman links, implied by the globalisation theories, would continue or be disrupted once the imperial world supposedly almost collapsed.
Our main questions are how can we theoretically define the crisis that affected the Roman Empire in the 3rd century CE: economic, political, or military? Did it affect the connections across the Roman Empire and how far and how fast did they change? Finally, whether globalisation and crisis were two phenomena mirroring each other, and to what extent was (or was not) a global empire more prone to experience a global crisis?