This volume is an important contribution to Roman economic and agricultural history. In their introduction, the editors explain that it constitutes the proceedings of a conference held at the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome in 2013 and explores three major themes: agricultural production and socio-economic developments, crafts and commercialisation. The volume consists of eighteen chapters divided into five parts.

Part 1, ‘The Economic, Social and Geographic Context’, is made up of three chapters. In the first of these W. Jongman looks at the effects of an increase in the Roman population on land use. He suggests that the Romans achieved an impressive level of prosperity but ‘a vulnerable one’ (p. 27). R. Witcher's chapter applies Michael Woods's concept of the ‘global countryside’ to Roman Italy by means of an examination of connectivity (roads, ports and tratturi) and community (especially the agency of rural communities). He emphasises the difficulty of distinguishing cause and effect in rural development. De Haas concludes Part 1 with an examination of regional variation and broader trends by ‘applying principles from economic geography’ in order to produce ‘an outline of the economic geography of Roman Italy’ (p. 52). He argues that ‘population growth and increasingly elaborate infrastructural networks (over land, river, and sea) provided the necessary preconditions for a high degree of economic integration’ (p. 52). There are many interesting ideas presented here, but I would note in particular the many helpful and thought-provoking maps (e.g. the one on infrastructure accessibility, p. 69).

Part 2 turns to ‘Arable Production and Society’. A. Launaro's chapter first considers the relationship between survey results and demographic trends in Italy between the late Republic and early Empire by asking how proximity to a villa affected trends in the rural free population. The second half of his paper discusses the issue of profitability in agriculture in reference to N. Rosenstein's ‘Aristocrats and Agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic’ (JRS 98 [2008]). He concludes that ‘not only did the free rural population not decline, but more often than not, villas did not replace farms and villages’ (p. 104). He further suggests that the ‘old Italian peasants … became widely involved’ in the economic/agricultural transformations. Next, G. Kron examines family farms in the agricultural writers, archaeological evidence for small family farms and the relationship between wealthy farmers and smallholders. Wealthy farmers needed the smallholders for their knowledge of local conditions and for part-time labour (or as tenants) while also disseminating to those small farmers new techniques, crops and livestock breeds but especially (in this paper) wild game. In the following chapter F. Heinrich looks at the impact of the development of the Roman economy on cereal crop-selection by Italian farmers. Among the major factors, he suggests, would be the relative weight per volume of the cereals and the proportion of shipped wheat that was edible (in the case of cereals that required dehusking). He notes that ‘the shift to hard wheat would have greatly reduced the transport costs of shipping (tax) grain to Rome’ (p. 154). He also explores regional evidence and considerations for cereals in Italy, suggesting ‘Italian cereal production would be mainly focused on domestic consumption’ with other crops having more appeal as sources of income (p. 167). The final chapter in Part 2, by K. Bowes et al., discusses five sites excavated as part of the Roman Peasant Project. The results, including analyses of pollen data, support Kron's views on the importance of ley farming among the Romans. They also are a cautionary tale for anyone who would use field survey results to make arguments about demographic developments. The sites were all, on the basis of field survey, assumed to be small houses but excavation suggests drains, temporary work huts and an ‘agro-processing point’ (p. 176).

Part 3 focuses on rural crafts. J.T. Peña's chapter considers what four pottery production sites in central Italy reveal about rural craft production. Peña notes that our evidence for the organisation of rural pottery production suggests ‘substantial variability’ (p. 227) but is too limited ‘to allow us to demonstrate in any detailed and robust way geographical or chronological patterns’ (p. 229). In Chapter 9, E. Vaccaro, C. Capelli and M. Ghisleni discuss Podere Marzuolo, a site in southern Tuscany where survey and excavations revealed a ceramic workshop producing fine-ware dating to the early Empire. The authors suggest that the settlement was ‘an inland redistribution hub’ (p. 252). The last chapter of this section, by the late S. Santoro, looks at craft production and trade in minor settlements in Abruzzo and Friuli. She shows how important such settlements were ‘in the production and distribution of goods and services on a local, regional, and supra-regional scale’ (p. 263). The minor settlements were ‘another way of living in the Roman territories’ (p. 295) and deserve more attention.

Part 4, the largest part of the volume, turns to ‘Commercialization’. In the first of six chapters, G. Olcese looks at the production and distribution of Graeco-Italic amphorae in south-central Italy from the fourth century bce to the first century ce. This is part of the Immensa Aequora Project. Olcese suggests that, as Rome expanded in Campania, ‘Neapolitan producers and merchants were able to increase their market considerably, profiting from available Roman infrastructural networks’ (p. 319). The next chapter, by M. Pasquinucci and S. Menchelli, surveys the economy of the coastal region between Luna and Volaterrae from the Roman conquest to the early Imperial period. Based on the Pisa sigillata, the authors suggest that ‘this coastal district witnessed intensive economic growth in the late 1^st century bc to the 1^st century ad’ (p. 338). They further argue that there was a ‘high degree of interconnectivity’ (p. 339), leading to considerable ‘economic and social mobility’ (p. 340). Chapter 13 focuses on the wine industry of the Ager Potentinus in the Late Republic and Early Empire. Its authors, D. Van Limbergen, P. Monsieur and F. Vermeulen, argue that increased internal demand for cereals led to changes in viticulture and contributed to the decline in wine exports from the region. Tol's chapter examines the distribution of table ware and amphorae at five ‘case study areas’ in the Pontine region of Lazio between 400 bce and 200 ce in order to demonstrate the great potential a comprehensive database of regional field survey data, in this instance from the Pontine Region Project, has for providing insight into the wine and ceramics trade. R. Veal's chapter is one of the most exciting in the volume since it concerns a frequently overlooked aspect of the Roman economy: firewood and charcoal. Calculating from a range of estimates of population, total fuel consumption, the proportion of fuel consumed as charcoal and forest productivity, she suggests the lowest amount of forest area required to supply Rome in the second century ce was equivalent to ‘one-fifth the area of modern day Lazio’ (p. 399).

In the final chapter of Part 4, M. Crawford returns to an issue he first discussed in 1970, asking ‘Where Were the Coins We Find Actually Used?’ He argues that ‘the actual use of coinage, during the last two centuries bc and the first two centuries ad, was essentially an urban phenomenon’ (p. 406). This short chapter contains several interesting observations, especially in its critique of Millar's analysis of coin use in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. However, Crawford is perhaps somewhat misleading in his claim, made in the first paragraph of the essay, that my Money in the Late Roman Republic (2007) discusses ‘only the presence of coin, not the velocity of its circulation’. True, I do not discuss that issue in the pages he cites, but I discuss it at length in the very next chapter (and a couple of times earlier in the book as well). Nevertheless, I am largely in agreement with his assessment of the relative importance of coinage in town and country.

Part 5 consists of two concluding chapters. The first, by G. Feinman, discusses some of the implications of the volume's contributions for broader debates about the Roman economy while the second, by P. Attema, considers the past and potential future of Italian landscape archaeology.

Overall, this is a well written and handsomely produced volume that Romanists will likely be consulting for many years to come.