Oxford professor discusses Roman economy

Tufts is one of those very pretty non-Ivy universities that seem to
crop up all over the United States. One of its recruiters once said
"It looks like the place that Andy Hardy or Nancy Drew would have gone
to college".


Wilson has delivered two of the four lectures scheduled, the last two
are described below.


Tufts Daily
Interview | Oxford professor discusses Roman economy with the Daily

Carter Rogers

Published: Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Updated: Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Andrew Wilson Lecturing

Sarah Korones / Tufts Daily

Andrew Wilson, professor of archaeology of the Roman Empire at Oxford
University, delivers a lecture “Roman Technology: The Possibilities
and Limits for Preindustrial Growth” last night in Cabot 206.

Andrew Wilson, a professor of the archaeology of the Roman Empire at
Oxford, is visting campus this week as the speaker for a four-part
lecture series sponsored by the Department of Classics. The last two
installments of the Balmuth Lecture Series will take place tonight at
7:30 p.m. in Cabot 206 and tomorrow at the same time in Braker 001.
While on the Hill, Wilson took a moment to sit down with the Daily's
Carter Rogers.

Carter Rogers: First off, how did you become interested in
archaeology, Roman archaeology and Roman economic archaeology?

Andrew Wilson: I've always been interested in the past. When I was a
kid, my parents would take me around ancient monuments in Britain:
churches, castles, roman sites, prehistoric sites, and family holidays
tended often to be going to look at ancient things in France and
Spain ... I read classics at Oxford and had wanted to be a classical
archaeologist, but somewhere along the line I lost sight of that. It
was a very text-based course in Greek and Latin literature, and I
flirted with the idea of doing Medieval Latin as a doctorate, but I
thought that would end up being too lonely -- a library-based
existence. Somehow I lost sight of the archaeological aim, and I
became a computer consultant for a couple of years. I worked for IBM
between school and university. About a year into that I felt that that
wasn't really satisfying me. I didn't want to spend the next 40 years
doing that. I was spending all my free time reading up about the Roman
world and all my holidays going out to Tunisia to look at Roman ruins,
so I thought, "Let's try to make a career out of this." I gave up my
job and applied back to Oxford to do a doctorate in archaeology. I was
always interested in how things worked, so I did a doctorate on
ancient water systems and aqueducts and so on in Roman North Africa
and from there got generally interested in ancient technology and
mills and in particular, the use of mechanical power and then got
interested in what the effects of that technology were [such as the]
economic impact. I'd also been interested in settlement patterns and
in trade. All of this came together in some interest in the ancient
economy.

CR: Yesterday [Monday], you were talking about the amount of state
involvement in economics at the time ... How great was the state
involvement in economics then compared with now in your mind?

AW: I think less than a current nation-state would do, but for the
ancient world, a remarkably high degree of involvement. It wasn't a
command economy like ancient Mesopotamia, for example; it wasn't a
completely dirigiste economy. But the state does intervene in a number
of ways. It intervenes in markets as a large customer or by
incentivizing certain activity. It provides, and quite intentionally
so, a lot of capital infrastructure in the form of roads, harbor
facilities, canals, which facilitate trade. Even if some of these also
have a military use, and by implication the road system had primarily
been constructed for troop movement, but long distance trade quickly
follows in that wake. I think what we do see in the late Roman world,
the late third century onwards, is a more dirigiste involvement by the
state as economic conditions become harsher. And, trying to recover
from the crisis of the late third century onwards, the state does take
a much more dirigiste line, for example, compelling people whose
fathers were in certain professions to follow in those professions.
That suggests a labor shortage or skill shortage.

CR: Do you think this could parallel the current increase in state
involvement in banking with the current economic crisis?

AW: That's an interesting question. There's not much evidence of
direct state involvement in banking. There clearly are banks in the
Roman world. I suppose the nearest thing is a crisis where the people
bid to collect the taxes overbid and can't collect, and they need to
be bailed out by the state.



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Oxford professor launches lecture series, discusses Roman economy

Carter Rogers

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Published: Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Updated: Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Andrew Wilson, a professor of the archaeology of the Roman Empire
at Oxford, kicked off the classics department’s Balmuth Lecture Series
last night by offering new insights into the Roman economy.
According to Wilson, the understanding of the subject has changed
greatly in recent years.
“The role of the states in the Roman economy has always been a
topic of interest, but new institutional economics provide conceptual
tools to move beyond simple polarization,” he said, speaking to
faculty members in Cabot 206.
In particular, he emphasized the importance of archaeology in
unearthing information about trends and events that are not accurately
recorded in the annals of Roman history.
“Archaeology can … provide considerable light on the ... economic
effects of institutions and state incentives by revealing the impact
on the ground across time and space,” he said.
Wilson also went on a brief foray into the legal realm, discussing
how legal systems and property rights affected economic development,
as they were “fundamental to any form of complex economic activity.”
Roman leaders, for example, put a great deal of time into land
surveying for taxation purposes. Although the Babylonians had a
similar system, “Rome undertook surveying and division of property on
a scale never witnessed before,” Wilson said.
North Africa is the best example of this, according to Wilson. In
that region, modern observers did not glean a full understanding of
the Romans’ use of centuriation, the practice of grid-based land
distribution, until the expansion of aerial photography during World
War II. There is also evidence of centuriation in the Po Valley and
the rest of Italy.
“If Roman conquest … changed the rules of the game as far as
property rights were concerned, the centuriated landscape was the
checkerboard on which that game was played out,” Wilson said.
Wilson’s remarks were the first in the four-part Balmuth Lecture
Series. Wilson will give three more speeches, one each night through
Thursday. Tonight and tomorrow, he will speak in Cabot 206, and
Thursday his lecture will be in Braker 001. All presentations run from
7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Upcoming topics include Roman technology, mass production and the
supply of money.
In introducing Wilson last night, Classics Professor R. Bruce
Hitchner talked about the modern relevance of the speaker’s findings.
“Many of us think that this is an empire that is 2,000 years old
and very remote from our own reality,” he said. “[But] anyone who has
spent any time looking more closely at the archaeology and history of
the empire will recognize [Rome’s ability] to tell us about economic
activity, economic production and even … economic growth.”


and future lecture

February 23

Ice Hockey Tufts at Babson, 4 p.m.

Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures: Economic Growth and Contraction in the
Roman World “The Archaeology of Economic Institutions,” presented by
Andrew Wilson, professor of the archaeology of the Roman Empire,
Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University. Additional lectures
February 24–26. For more information, contact David Proctor at
617-627-3213 or david.proctor@xxxxxxxxxx Cabot Intercultural Center,
Room 206, 7:30–9 p.m.

February 24

Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures: Economic Growth and Contraction in the
Roman World “The Possibilities and Limits for Pre-industrial Growth,”
presented by Andrew Wilson, professor of the archaeology of the Roman
Empire, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University. Additional
lectures February 25 and 26. For more information, contact David
Proctor at 617-627-3213 or david.proctor@xxxxxxxxxx Cabot
Intercultural Center, Room 206, 7:30–9 p.m.

February 25

Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures: Economic Growth and Contraction in the
Roman World “Before the Pin Factory: Divisions of Labour and Mass
Production,” presented by Andrew Wilson, professor of the archaeology
of the Roman Empire, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University.
Additional lecture February 26. For more information, please contact
David Proctor at 617-627-3213 or david.proctor@xxxxxxxxxx Cabot
Intercultural Center, Room 206, 7:30–9 p.m.

February 26

Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures: Economic Growth and Contraction in the
Roman World “Mining, Metal Supply and the Supply of Money,” presented
by Andrew Wilson, professor of the archaeology of the Roman Empire,
Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University. For more information,
contact David Proctor at 617-627-3213 or david.proctor@xxxxxxxxxx
Cabot Intercultural Center, Room 206, 7:30–9 p.m.
.

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