The resilience of the Roman Empire : regional case studies on the relationship between population and food resources / edited by Dimitri Van Limbergen, Sadi Maréchal and Wim De Clercq.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Limbergen, Dimitri van, editor.

Maréchal, Sadi, editor.

De Clercq, Wim, editor.

Series:

BAR international series ; 0143-3067 3000.

BAR International Series ; 3000

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Population.

Rome--History--Empire, 284-476.

Rome.

Rome (Empire).

History.

Rome--Population.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

v, 145 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 30 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : BAR Publishing, 2020.

Summary:

The Resilience of the Roman Empire' discusses the relationship between population and regional development in the Roman world from the perspective of archaeology. By adapting a comparative approach, the focus of the volume lies on exploring the various ways in which regional communities actively responded to population growth - or decline for that matter - in order to keep going on the land available to them. The theoretical framework - or at least the starting point - for the case studies is the agricultural intensification models developed by Thomas Malthus and Ester Boserup. In order to advance the debate on the validity of these models for identifying the societal and economic pathways of the Roman world, the contributors incorporate the concepts of resilience and diversity into their approach, and shift attention from the longue-durée to how people managed to sustain themselves over shorter periods of time. The aim of the volume is not to discard the theories of Malthus and Boserup, but rather to deconstruct overly strict Malthusian or Boserupian scenarios, and as such introduce novel and more layered ways of thinking by exploring resilience and variability in human responses to population growth/decline in the Roman world.

Contents:

Introduction: food for a growing Empire: reframing an old debate / Dimitri Van Limbergen, Sadi Maréchal and Wim De Clercq

The expansion of agricultural land into marginal areas in northern Gaul / Pierre Ouzoulias

Farming for a growing population: developments in agriculture in the provinces of Germania / Maaike Groot

Viticulture and demography in the Laetanian region (Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis), 1st c. BC - 3rd c. AD / Antoni Martín i Oliveras, Víctor Revilla Calvo, César Carreras Monfort and José Remesal Rodríguez

Growing grapes in populous landscapes: demography, food, land and vine agroforestry in central Adriatic Italy / Dimitri Van Limbergen

Population decline and wine industry: societal transformation on Late Antique Delos (Greece) / Emlyn K. Dodd

Cities and sustenance in Roman Asia Minor / Rinse Willet.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Current Copyright Fee: GBP20.00 0.

ISBN:

9781407357706

1407357700

9781407356945

1407356941

OCLC:

1198093409