The Oxford Roman Economy Project

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The Oxford Roman Economy Project

The Oxford Roman Economy Project is a research project based in the Faculty of Classics, at the University of Oxford. The project, lead by Prof. Alan Bowman and Prof. Andrew Wilson, was originally funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the period from October 2005 to end September 2010, but additional funding through the generosity of Baron Lorne Thyssen now allows it to continue until the end of 2012.

The research programme addresses the fundamentals of the Roman imperial economy and analyses all major economic activities (including agriculture, trade, commerce, and extraction), utilising quantifiable bodies of archaeological and documentary evidence and placing them in the broader structural context of regional variation, distribution, size and nature of markets, supply and demand. The project mainly focuses on the period between100 BC and AD 300, including the era of greatest imperial expansion and economic growth (to c.AD 200), followed by a century conventionally perceived as one of contraction or decline. Geographically, the project draws on material selected from all over the Mediterranean world. A more detailed description of the aims and methods of the project can be found here

The large amounts of data that are studied during the project, which mostly already have been published in some form or another, are stored and organized in a large database, which is currently being made accessible online to the wider scholarly community through this website.

Integral part of the project is a series of conferences, which take place roughly each year and addresses specific aspects of the economy, such as urbanization (2007), agriculture (2008), trade (2009), and metals, mining and coinage (2010). Moreover, in connection with the Oxford Roman Economy Project, Oxford University Press has agreed to inaugurate a series of publications under the general title Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy (OSRE), edited by the two project directors.

News
Team
Working Papers

• Quantification of fish-salting infrastructure capacity in the Roman world
• The uptake of mechanical technology in the ancient world: the water-mill
• Quantifying Egyptian Evidence for Transport

Conferences
Publications
Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy
Bibliographies

• Mining Bibliography 
• Fish Industries and Garum Production Bibliography 
• Wine Production and Trade Bibliography
• Olive Oil Production and Trade Bibliograph

Links