EXPLORING LONG TERM EFFECTS OF AMPHORA REUSE ON THE ROMAN IMPERIAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-11-15

In this presentation I will explore long-term change in Roman amphorae distributions caused by reuse. What kinds of empire-wide distribution patterns of amphorae would we expect to see if we assume amphorae might have been reused as containers to transport different types of goods? Are reuse processes even archaeologically visible: under what conditions do they lead to undeniably different distribution patterns as compared to processes that exclude reuse? A set of increasingly elaborate computational models will be presented to explore these questions. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding the effects of the Roman transport network and the demand of urban centres on these processes. This work is part of the larger research agenda of project MERCURY, a multidisciplinary project that will explore the most hotly debated questions about the Roman economy: was the Roman Imperial trade market equally integrated as nowadays? How important were social networks for structuring this flow of information? It will address two methodological issues currently preventing scholars from answering these questions: limited use of archaeological big data and the lack of quantitative comparisons of complex hypotheses. MERCURY will combine recent advances in computational network science and simulation methods with increasingly available archaeological big datasets.


Author(s): Brughmans, Tom (School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)


MERCURY website: http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/affiliated%20projects/mercury