Driving Forces for Specialization: Market, Location Factors, Productivity Improvements

Ruffing, Kai

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198748489.003.0006

Cited by 46 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This issue stems from a tension between the sheer mass of evidence that might provide references to occupations, such as texts, inscriptions, papyri , and even graffiti and dipinti , versus the disconnected nature of historical and archaeological research that has been done on individual sites, regions, or classes of material. As a result, scholars are able to identify around 700 occupations for the Roman Empire as a whole, but are only able to count the numbers of occupations in specific settlements in a handful of cases, such as Rome and a few other sites [ 24 , 30 – 32 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies of the division of labour tend to recognize two different forms of division: horizontal and vertical. The first normally refers to the diversity of activities related to production and exchange in an economy; whereas the second typically refers to the organization into different tasks within specific activities (or crafts and trades) [ 24 ]. Although this distinction is useful for some purposes, here we emphasize that horizontal and vertical divisions are actually related.…”

Section: The Division Of Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire

Hanson

Ortman

Lobo

2017

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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One of the hallmarks of human agglomeration is an increase in the division of labour, but the exact nature of this relationship has been debated among anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and historians and archaeologists. Over the last decade, researchers investigating contemporary urban systems have suggested a novel explanation for the links between the numbers of inhabitants in settlements and many of their most important characteristics, which is grounded in a view of settlements as social networks embedded in built environments. One of the remarkable aspects of this approach is that it is not based on the specific conditions of the modern world (such as capitalism or industrialization), which raises the issue of whether the relationships observed in contemporary urban systems can also be detected in pre-modern urban or even non-urban systems. Here, we present a general model for the relationship between the population and functional diversity of settlements, where the latter is viewed as an indicator of the division of labour. We then explore the applicability of this model to pre-modern contexts, focusing on cities in the Roman Empire, using estimates of their numbers of inhabitants, numbers of documented professional associations, and numbers of recorded inscriptions to develop an index of functional diversity. Our results are consistent with theoretical expectations, adding further support to the view that urban systems in both contemporary and pre-modern contexts reflect a common set of generative processes.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Division Of Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire

Hanson

Ortman

Lobo

2017

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…Interestingly, the proportion of agricultural workers (Food-Production sector) in large cities is higher than in rural areas or small cities. Food-producers enjoyed higher status in cities whose provisioning was a challenge requiring mass production [ 61 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, Harris’ categories [ 32 ] focus on individual industry types, such as Metal-Working, Food-Production or Clothing, which makes them more suitable to capture relative specialization and diversity of cities ( sensu [ 9 ]). They reflect the reality of ancient occupations, especially the ambiguous producer/trader distinction, but do not provide skill-level classification [ 58 , 61 ]. In order to adapt Harris’ division to the Roman world, we have added five categories to describe sectors not detected in Classical Athens, such as Managerial, Water-management, Glass-working, Death-care (funerary services), and Unclassified (N = 19).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Division of labor, specialization and diversity in the ancient Roman cities: A quantitative approach to Latin epigraphy

2022

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Recent empirical studies on the division of labor in modern cities indicate a complex web of relationships between sectoral specialization of cities and their productivity on one hand and sectoral diversification and resilience on the other. Emerging scholarly consensus suggests that ancient urbanism has more in common with modern urban development than previously thought. We explore whether modern trends in urban division of labor apply to the cities of the Western Roman Empire from the first century BCE to the fourth century CE. We analyze occupational data extracted from a large body of Latin epigraphic evidence by computer-assisted text-mining, subsequently mapped onto a dataset of ancient Roman cities. We detect a higher frequency of occupation terms on inscriptions from cities led by Rome than from rural areas and identify an accumulation of tertiary sector occupations in large cities. The temporal dimension of epigraphic data allows us to study aspects of the division of labor diachronically and to detect trends in the data in a four centuries-long period of Roman imperial history. Our analyses reveal an overall decrease in the frequency of occupational terms between the first half and second half of the third century CE; the maximum frequency of occupational terms shifts over time from large cities to medium and small towns, and finally, rural areas. Our results regarding the specialization and diversity of cities and their respective impact on productivity and resilience remain inconclusive, possibly as a result of the socio-economic bias of Latin inscriptions and insufficient representativeness of the data. Yet, we believe that our formalized approach to the research problem opens up new avenues for research, both in respect to the economic history of the Roman Empire and to the current trends in the science of cities.

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“…categories [32] focus on individual industry types, such as Metal-Working, Food-Production or Clothing, which makes them more suitable to capture relative specialization and diversity of cities (sensu [9]). They reflect the reality of ancient occupations, especially the ambiguous producer/trader distinction, but do not provide skill-level classification [58,61]. In order to adapt…”

Section: Occupations and Occupational Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Division of labor, specialization and diversity in the ancient Roman cities: A quantitative approach to Latin epigraphy

Heřmánková¹,

Kaše²

2022

Preprint

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Recent empirical studies on the division of labor in modern cities indicate a complex web of relationships between sectoral specialization of cities and their productivity on one hand and sectoral diversification and resilience on the other. Emerging scholarly consensus suggests that ancient urbanism has more in common with modern urban development than previously thought. We explore whether modern trends in urban division of labor apply to the cities of the Western Roman Empire from the first century BCE to the fourth century CE. We introduce analyses based on occupational data extracted from a large body of Latin epigraphic evidence by computer-assisted text-mining, subsequently mapped onto a dataset of ancient Roman cities. We detect a higher frequency of occupation terms on inscriptions from cities than from rural areas and identify an accumulation of tertiary sector occupations in large cities. The temporal dimension of epigraphic data allows us to study aspects of the division of labor diachronically and to detect trends in the data in a four centuries-long period of Roman imperial history. Our analyses reveal an overall decrease in the frequency of occupational terms between the first half and second half of the third century CE; the maximum frequency of occupational terms shifts over time from large cities to medium and small towns, and finally, rural areas. Our results regarding the specialization and diversity of cities and their respective impact on productivity and resilience remain inconclusive, possibly as a result of the socio-economic bias of Latin inscriptions and insufficient representativeness of the data. Yet, we believe that our formalized approach to the research problem opens up new avenues for research, both in respect to the economic history of the Roman Empire and to the current trends in the science of cities.

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Driving Forces for Specialization: Market, Location Factors, Productivity Improvements

Cited by 46 publications

References 0 publications

Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire

Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire

Division of labor, specialization and diversity in the ancient Roman cities: A quantitative approach to Latin epigraphy

Division of labor, specialization and diversity in the ancient Roman cities: A quantitative approach to Latin epigraphy

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