This collection of commissioned papers is the first output of a project on ‘Factors of Production in the Roman World’ joint to the universities of Ghent, Brussels (UVB) and Kent. Z.’s introduction notes that in studying, in D. North's terms, the structure and performance of the Roman economy, recent work like the Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (2007) has focused mainly on performance. Their project instead concerns structures, starting here with the ownership and exploitation of land. They adopt, as many now profess to do, the approach of the New Institutional Economics, which Z. specifies as investigating how far Roman institutions, including mentalities, encouraged or limited productive free-market management of land. The tone is more cautious than the gung-ho advocacy of growth found in many studies of performance. After another introductory chapter there follow fifteen specialist papers, over half by the usual suspects about their habitual crimes, the others less familiar and venturing into Late Antiquity. The papers are rather arbitrarily divided into three thematic parts and are summarised in a brief conclusion. There is a helpfully unified bibliography and a short but useful index of subjects.

The introductory paper by E. rather unexpectedly presents a new hypothesis on performance and labour. He argues that increased consumption in the Roman empire can be explained by a non-technological increase in agricultural productivity, in symbiosis with urban growth, through crop specialisation made worthwhile by the larger more stable market and the soaking up of rural underemployment by seasonal urban employment. Seven papers follow in Part 1 on ownership and control of land. K. Harper reviews some statistical data, from hard to virtual, to test the standard story of a long-term concentration of land into few hands. Harper rightly notes that some earlier estates were huge, and that there were ebbs and flows, but there is more than size to our sense that the estates of Melania, or later the Apiones, were unprecedented. L. Tacoma argues that the ousiai of Julio-Claudian Egypt were not gift-estates but private properties given and bequeathed in a patronage network between emperor and friends. This may have been the legal principle (though Roman law allowed usufruct), but in practice ousiai were imperial in that they always reverted to the emperor. More broadly E. Lo Cascio's short paper summarises his view (CEH 2007, ch. 23) that, although the patrimonium grew, it always remained a private institution, privately run. D. Kehoe, drawing on his Law and the Rural Economy (2007), asks whether Roman law supported economic development, and suggests that although the Roman law of tenancy favoured private landlords, competition for tenants between them and the state, despite some privatisation of state land, provided a check on exploitation. So, implicitly, what mattered more was the socio-economic context. É. Jakab launches a two-pronged attack on the pandectist view that the modern (western) concept of absolute property rights derives from Roman law. First, she argues from centuriation and the lex agraria of 111 b.c. that the concept of private ownership only developed when it was socially needed in the Gracchan period because of the contested demarcation of public land, and co-existed alongside possessio and usucapio. Second, she notes that Roman law allowed servitudes, that is restrictions on property in favour of neighbours, designed to foster effective use of the land. Not all will agree, not least with her interpretation of the second-century b.c. evidence, but this certainly makes the reader sit up and pay attention. C. Bruun presents some interesting cases of communal ownership or servitudes to do with rural water supplies, and doubts that economic utility was always the issue. Y. Marano shows how Theodoric's regime, though not the church, was active in maintaining urban aqueducts, baths and water-mills in Ostrogothic Italy.

Part 2, on organisation and modes of exploitation of land, groups five papers. Building on his Peasants and Slaves (2011), A. Launaro tries to weave a consensus picture of the growth of both large estates and population in Republican Italy through an expanded use of tenancy, in effect reviving P.W. De Neeve, Colonus (1984). He is silent, however, on how important an element this was, and the economic implications. A. Marzano illustrates from her Roman Villas (2007), plus some provincial cases, the important contribution to the productivity of villa-estates of oyster beds and quarries among other natural resources. M. Hobson asks anew how to explain the African boom attested by the Mediterranean ubiquity of its ceramics in the second to seventh centuries. Not just olive oil production, but wine, garum and textiles are now seen as key goods, and in a wide-ranging survey of the archaeology Hobson illustrates local variations in types and form of production. This mix of general and local, he suggests, resulted from Hadrian's creation of municipal elites which unlocked private investment. While his cause may be queried, the bold approach and collation of archaeological data are impressive. J. Hoffman-Salz whisks us east to Palmyra to argue that traditional tribal control of pasture and water developed into a private system as the elite invested in constructions to manage water supplies. The evidence, however, is slight and uncertain, and the dichotomy may be too sharp. M. MacKinnon, lastly, offers an overview of the archaeo-faunal evidence for pigs, cattle and sheep across the Roman empire. His fascinating conclusions are a general rise in pork production and consumption, if less marked in the east, and a trend to increased height or strength through selective breeding, but overall an enormous variety of breeds with local choices suited to local conditions and needs.

In the third section on natural resources, I. Tsigarida discusses the disputes around the 90s b.c. between Ephesus and Priene and Roman publicani over saltpans and lagoons, which the senate decided in favour of the cities; sharper attention to the political context might suggest that loyalty rather than productivity was its concern. A. Hirt quarries from his Imperial Mines (2010) a reminder that imperial control of mines and quarries was not monolithic, and adds a suggestion that Hadrian reformed the management in the 130s to increase supplies. The case is tenuous, and Hirt skips his question of whether private control might have been more effective. Finally F. López Sánchez argues that for both Rome and post-Roman powers control of the mining and distribution of gold conferred political power, but power meant spending the gold, so there were never reserve stocks. To go beyond these generalities we now need to try to quantify long-term rises and fall in gold supplies, stores and coinage.

As in a good bran tub there is something in these disparate papers for everyone. My personal favourite five are the eye-opening scans of archaeological data by Hobson and MacKinnon and the thought-provoking theses of E., Harper and Jakab.