This edited volume explores the interactions between space, movement and the economy in Roman towns. It is the result of a homonymous conference held at Porto Recanati and Treia (Italy) in 2018. The editorial team includes an archaeologist (Vermeulen) and a historian (Zuiderhoek). This interdisciplinary collaboration is not only appropriate for the subject matter addressed in the volume, but is also laudable as it emphasises the broader need for integrating archaeology and history. As the title implies, a particular focus is on Roman Italy: nine of the sixteen chapters focus on the peninsula, with three dealing with Asia Minor, one each on Roman Spain and Britain and two on the empire at large. Scholars with an interest in Roman urban archaeology will be particularly interested in the volume since most contributions have a strong archaeological ring to them. This is not only explained by the fact that the majority of the authors are archaeologists, but also by the prominent role archaeological evidence plays in chapters written by historians (the chapter authored by Zuiderhoek is the exception).
The aim of the volume is to assess the interactions between economic processes on the one hand and the spatial arrangement of Roman towns and movement within and between these towns on the other. How did economic processes shape Roman urban space and movement? And vice versa, what can we learn from studying space and movement within/between towns about the Roman (urban) economy? The point of departure for the project seems to have been the recent outpouring of studies on space (under the influence of the so-called ‘spatial turn’) and the subsequent introduction of movement into these studies. The innovative contribution of the volume is to connect these studies with longstanding debates regarding the nature of the ancient economy.
It is worth singling out the chapter that is exceptionally successful in achieving the volume's main aim. A. Wallace-Hadrill, in ‘How Open was the Roman City?’, juxtaposes the spatial and economic differences drawn between ancient and medieval towns. On the one hand, the ancient town had an open street network (based on a rationally planned rectangular street grid) with a place of exchange (the forum) at its heart, but it is considered a ‘consumer city’ in which the urban economy was driven mainly by elite expenditure. On the other hand, the medieval town consisted of a closed or dense network of tangled alleys and cul-de-sacs, while it is characterised as a ‘producer city’ in which the economy relied on commerce. The juxtaposition of these two debates brings out the paradoxical nature of the contrasts drawn in them, which is thought-provoking and opens the way for further study. Wallace-Hadrill's way out of this conundrum is by acknowledging that there were more similarities in the spatial organisation of ancient and medieval towns than the rectangular street grid versus tangled alleys dichotomy suggests.
Other chapters explore the use of spatial data within historical debates. For example, M. Flohr, in ‘Beyond Pompeii and Ostia’, addresses the important question of the representativeness of Pompeii and Ostia – often the starting point of studies on Roman/Italian urban space – for the other 400-odd (mostly smaller) Italian towns. Flohr analyses the spatial distribution of tabernae – (work)shops – as a proxy for commercial investment in these two, as well as six other, Italian towns. The analysis points out that commercial investment in Pompeii and Ostia was on a completely different scale than in the other towns. Consequently, both Pompeii and Ostia are assigned their own category in a four-tiered hierarchy of Italian towns based on their commercial landscape. Flohr then speculates which other Italian towns might have belonged to these categories, which marks an important step towards integrating the Pompeian and Ostian evidence into the broader Italian picture. All the towns discussed are from Latium and Campania – it would have been interesting to read Flohr's thoughts on the place of the large, but very different towns of Cisalpine Gaul in this regard.
A related issue is raised by J. Poblome and R. Willet in ‘Do Economic Activities Impinge on Roman Urban Matrices in Asia Minor?’. They wonder whether the similarities in townscapes across the Roman empire are best considered ‘analogies’ (i.e. functionally the same) or ‘homologies’ (i.e. stylistically the same). This question is thought-provoking as it touches on the fundamental role of the economy within ancient agricultural societies. The body of the chapter discusses the urban hierarchy of Asia Minor and the townscape and economy of Sagalassos (a town in south-central Asia Minor), but feels at times slightly detached from the main question. Poblome and Willet conclude that Roman urbanisation did not converge on economic functions. In other words, the similarities between Roman towns are ‘homologies’, i.e. based on the diffusion of cultural traits rather than the product of trajectories of functional selection.
An important point stressed by several papers is the difficulty of clearly demarcating economic space within towns. The chapter by C.P. Dickenson, ‘Making Space for Commerce in Roman Britain’, is a case in point. He makes an appealing argument for a reappraisal of the functionality of the forum-basilica complexes of Roman Britain. By placing these structures in a wider framework of expressing power relations using architecture, Dickenson convincingly establishes the view that these complexes were multi-purpose spaces, with not only political and legal, but also commercial functions. The chapter by D. Leder-Slotman, ‘Market Buildings in Asia Minor’, also deserves a mention. She deconstructs the supposedly purely economic function of the so-called market buildings in Asia Minor. Finally, Zuiderhoek makes a similar point in his chapter, ‘Elites and Economic Space in Roman Imperial Asia Minor’. He argues that urban elites determined the shape of the cityscape by constructing buildings in their role as magistrates and benefactors. Although these buildings appear primarily to stress the communal ideals of the polis and serve to facilitate the citizen good life, they nonetheless contained a great deal of economic space. This is what Zuiderhoek calls the ‘architectural embeddedness’ of economic space in Graeco-Roman cities (p. 120), which undermines the prevalent idea of a predominantly civic/political ancient cityscape.
While these papers are very successful in problematising a straightforward demarcation of economic space, they simultaneously tend to undermine the premises of some of the other chapters. For example, A. Hoffelinck, in ‘Finding Your Way towards the macellum’, points to the central location (in terms of accessibility) of the macella (‘market buildings’) found in towns in the Roman West. Her analysis presupposes that the choice of location was determined by considerations related to the transportation of goods to the macellum – a corollary of its principal economic function.
Some chapters mainly focus on interpreting archaeological data that relates to the ancient economy. The chapters by G. Lepore and M. Silani, ‘The Roman Colony of Sena Gallica’, P. Basso, ‘Aquileia's Market Spaces’, and C. Corsi, ‘“This Mule Will Ruin Me”’, fall into this category. It is worth highlighting the chapter by S. Malmberg, ‘Understanding Rome as a Port City’, who persuasively argues that we should consider imperial Rome to have been an important port city. The review of an impressive body of archaeological evidence substantiates Malmberg's view. He concludes that Rome had access to at least 4.5 km of quays along the Tiber, which implies that the size of its harbour (solely based on quay length) is larger than, for example, that of imperial Ostia or Hellenistic Alexandria.
The use of advanced theories and modelling recurs in several chapters. In some cases the models provide interesting insights, even though their complexity and the unavoidable brevity of presentation render them inscrutable. Examples include the wind model (a type of Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation) employed by P. Campbell to understand the movement of ships through the harbour of Portus and the axial analysis used by K. Crawford to study movement patterns through the dry areas of Portus (both forming part of a chapter co-authored with the late S. Keay and M. del Carmen Moreno Escobar, ‘Space, Accessibility and Movement through the Portus Romae’). In other cases the methods seem too complex for the evidence available or for the questions asked. For example, T.G. Schattner, in ‘Munigua's Place in the Operational Chain’, explores Munigua's place in the production chain of the goods produced by or imported to the town. Schattner explores four different methodological approaches, but already at the outset concedes that they are inadequate for application to the incomplete ancient evidence. Indeed, the resulting overview of exported and imported goods to and from the town is illuminating, but seems primarily based on the catalogue of goods archaeologically attested at Munigua. Another example is D. Taelman's calculation of the ‘energy cost’ of the transportation, by oxcart, of blocks of marble to several Picene inland towns from the nearest Adriatic harbours (in ‘Transport and Trade’). Complex calculations are performed using many different variables, including the oxen's body weight, loss of efficiency of oxen teams, cart and load mass, distance, type of road surface, geographical relief etc. The calculated energy costs, however, correlate strongly with the distances of the transport; I calculate an R2 value of 0.98 for the two variables, which implies an almost perfect linear correlation. Taelman concludes that transport cost was not a factor when choosing the type of marble bought, a conclusion that might also have been reached by simply using distance instead of energy cost.
From a production point of view, the volume appears very neat – I came across only a very small number of typos. Two editorial choices are worth mentioning. Firstly, the chapters use endnotes, a slight inconvenience for academic readers (probably the volume's predominant if not exclusive audience). Secondly, references to scholarly literature are printed inline. As a consequence, some paragraphs in the chapters that rely heavily on such literature consist for almost half of references, which occasionally hampers the reading experience.
In conclusion, this volume makes a significant contribution to the much-needed integration of archaeological evidence within historical debates. This can only be achieved by collaboration between archaeologists and historians, for which the volume sets a laudable example. Moreover, the chapters that are most successful in bringing the spatial (archaeological) and economic (historical) debates into direct dialogue stand out and are truly inspirational and thought-provoking.
