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."
