A crucial question among scholars debating the nature of ancient economies is whether or not the Roman world had in fact experienced some form of economic growth. This process has been routinely associated with (increasing) levels of production, hence the recurring adoption of notions like ‘gross domestic product’ as suitable indicators (i.e. in their variation over time). This kind of growth can indeed result from an increase in the number of producers (aggregate growth) as much as from an intensification of their own individual production (per capita growth). Only the latter type, however, would be considered to be real growth. Being such a fundamental variable in all these equations, one cannot fail to appreciate how instrumental to any informed assessment of the performance of any economy – ancient and modern – demography ultimately is.
As far as the Roman economy is concerned, however, the problem rests in the lack of ancient statistics through which to derive even tentative population estimates. It is by fully acknowledging this concrete limitation that the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OxRep, 2005–12) has programmatically aimed at tapping archaeological and papyrological evidence towards deriving extensive proxy datasets of comparable significance (http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/; also A. Bowman and A. Wilson [edd.], Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Problems [2009]). This ambitious research programme has been partly pursued by way of a series of annual conferences on specific relevant topics. This volume collects seven original contributions from the second colloquium held in 2007 (Price, Witcher, Mattingly, Morley, W., Marzano, B.) plus three more that were invited at a later stage (Attema and de Haas, Hanson, Keay and Earl). The tone of the discussion is clearly set in the introduction by the editors as they suggest how static, large-scale demographic estimates might in fact misrepresent regional and chronological variation and change. In their view, it is only by engaging with a good number of case studies (where evidence is available) that we can inductively outline a larger and more nuanced picture than has been the case so far. Accordingly, the following ten chapters engage with a broad range of case studies from Italy, Greece, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, Britain and Asia Minor in the period 100 b.c. to a.d. 350. As such the aim of this collection was ‘not to answer “big” demographic questions … but to see how we can best use the imperfect available data to quantify economic behaviour and activity’ (p. 14).
The first four chapters are primarily concerned with the evidence of rural settlement and population patterns as revealed by archaeological survey. Of the various approaches employed to estimate population levels across the Greek World (e.g. census returns, graves, size of territories), none seems to S. Price as promising as those establishing a direct relationship between the area of settlement and the likely number of people living in it. Excavation of actual sites together with comparative evidence from later periods would suggest average occupational densities that are in fact lower than those assumed by most field-surveys, thus implying comparably lower population densities than so far proposed. As noted by R. Witcher, these estimates are further complicated by varying levels of archaeological visibility, such that in different circumstances field-survey may overestimate or underestimate the number of sites. The more integrated the sites were within urban and regional economies, the more likely they were to have accessed those classes of material culture (e.g. fineware pottery) that surveyors have traditionally been looking for (i.e. higher visibility). But in this way ‘recovery rates become a creative means through which to investigate social and economic organization’ (p. 69). The issue of the relationship between what is found and the total number of sites that once existed is further explored by D. Mattingly. As he contrasts archaeological visibility conditions across regions subjected to mechanised ploughing (e.g. the northern Mediterranean in general) with those from arid areas (e.g. Tunisia, Libya and Jordan), he observes how varying preservation and visibility conditions (much better in the latter group) have a disproportionate impact on the absolute population figures we derive. Such absolute figures are the target of the analysis of survey data from the Pontine Region (Italy) as performed by P. Attema and T. de Haas. Needless to say, this attempt is based on a series of assumptions: from the likely number of people occupying each site to the effects of modern land use and research intensity on recovery rates. Such assumptions, however, can be better expressed as a range of values rather than precise figures, thus making it possible to outline different scenarios to contrast and compare against everything else we know.
The following six chapters deal with evidence and methodological problems pertaining to city populations and urbanisation. N. Morley stresses how uncertain and arbitrary the assumptions we make in order to estimate urban populations in fact are. On a more general level, he sees urbanisation as the product of the confluence of various processes of social, economic and cultural change which were not necessarily experienced everywhere at the same time. Even though urbanisation had economic consequences (especially in terms of consumption levels), it would be misleading to interpret its development as direct evidence of overall economic growth. This cautious attitude is openly challenged by W., who sees no need to over-problematise these issues as this would only misrepresent the actual correlation between urbanisation rates and economic development. He then proceeds to estimate a plausible minimum for the urban population of the Roman Empire through the application of (low) urban population densities to the intramural areas of cities, thus outlining (high) urbanisation rates that would alter our view of the Roman economy and its performance. Similar assumptions about the direct relationship between size of cities and urban population levels make it possible for A. Marzano to perform a ‘rank-size’ analysis of Roman towns in Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. The resulting ranking has indeed the potential to reveal important variations in the structure of urbanisation across the Roman Empire, thus emphasising, for example, varying degrees of economic integration. The above approaches are then integrated and applied by J. Hanson to the cities of Asia Minor under Roman rule. He interprets the dramatic increase in the number of cities (and in the level of urban life in general) as evidence of the favourable opportunities offered by Rome in terms of improved connectivity and resulting economic integration. Whereas the preceding chapters engage with the relationship between the Roman Empire and urbanisation, S. Keay and G. Earl would rather employ their case study from Roman Spain to investigate the economic impact of towns on their own territories. This process is fraught with several problems pertaining to the definition of both urban hierarchies (see above) and territorial boundaries, although a combination of the presence or absence of different known archaeological and historical attributes is taken to provide a more robust guidance than the sole criterion of size. In the final chapter, B. proceeds cautiously to explore population and settlement patterns in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Despite all the possible interpretative uncertainties involved (all duly and extensively acknowledged), it seems to emerge that the number of people, rates of growth and dimensions of sites quite often appear surprisingly larger than one would otherwise expect.
This volume delivers what it promises by bringing together a good selection of valuable contributions that convey an idea of both the variety of settlement/population patterns to be found across the Roman World and the different approaches adopted to reconstruct them. As always, however, one can feel the underlying – and unresolved – tension between a sense of caution against the potentially misleading use of imperfect evidence and the pull to engage boldly with wider issues.
