The Resilience of the Roman Empire: Regional case studies on the relationship between population and food resources

Description

The Resilience of the Roman Empire discusses the relationship between population and regional development in the Roman world from the perspective of archaeology. By adapting a comparative approach, the focus of the volume lies on exploring the various ways in which regional communities actively responded to population growth or decline in order to keep going on the land available to them. The starting point of the theoretical framework for the case studies is the agricultural intensification models developed by Thomas Malthus and Ester Boserup. In order to advance the debate on the validity of these models for identifying the societal and economic pathways of the Roman world, the contributors incorporate the concepts of resilience and diversity into their approach, and shift attention from the longue-durée to how people managed to sustain themselves over shorter periods of time. The aim of the volume is not to discard the theories of Malthus and Boserup, but rather to deconstruct overly strict Malthusian or Boserupian scenarios, and as such introduce novel and more layered ways of thinking by exploring resilience and variability in human responses to population growth/decline in the Roman world. Cover Title Page Contents Chapter 1. Introduction - Food for a growing Empire: reframing an old debate Chapter 2. The expansion of agricultural land into marginal areas in northern Gaul Chapter 3. Farming for a growing population: developments in agriculture in the provinces of Germania Chapter 4. Viticulture and demography in the Laetanian region (Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis), 1st c. BC – 3rd c. AD Chapter 5. Growing grapes in populous landscapes: demography, food, land and vine agroforestry in central Adriatic Italy Chapter 6. Population decline and wine industry:societal transformation on Late Antique Delos (Greece) Chapter 7. Cities and sustenance in Roman Asia Minor