Reframing the Roman Economy: New Perspectives on Habitual Economic Practices (Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies)

This book focuses on those features of the Roman economy that are less traceable in text and archaeology, and as a consequence remain largely underexplored in contemporary scholarship. By reincorporating, for the first time, these long-obscured practices in mainstream scholarly discourses, this book offers a more complete and balanced view of an economic system that for too long has mostly been studied through its macro-economic and large-scale – and thus archaeologically and textually omnipresent – aspects. The topic is approached in five thematic sections, covering unusual actors and perspectives, unusual places of production, exigent landscapes of exploitation, less-visible products and artefacts, and divergent views on emblematic economic spheres. To this purpose, the book brings together a select group of leading scholars and promising early career researchers in archaeology and ancient economic history, well positioned to steer this ill-developed but fundamental field of the Roman economy in promising new directions.

Dimitri Van Limbergen is a researcher at Ghent University, Belgium. His main areas of study are Roman archaeology and economic history.

Adeline Hoffelinck is a researcher at Ghent University, Belgium. She researches the transformation of commercial infrastructure in Roman cities during their urbanization.

Devi Taelman is a researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. He is interested in the study of the economy of ornamental stones used in antiquity, and in human-environment interactions in Roman Antiquity.