Roman isotopes and economic meaning: millets, manure, mobility, marine signals, and Malthus

Abstract

Over the past decades, the disciplinary boundaries between Roman history and archaeology have begun to fade, as archaeological proxy data started playing an important role in studying socioeconomic processes and phenomena. This is especially true for several key debates such as those on Roman economic performance, diet and nutrition, and migration and mobility. More recently, archaeological sciences, such as stable isotope studies, have increasingly started contributing to these debates too. This paper is aimed at reviewing the valuable contributions stable isotope studies can make to these debates from the economic historian's perspective and focuses on the interpretative side of such studies: what sort of economic meaning is attributed to certain results? It will be ascertained that there sometimes seems to be a divergence between the interpretations made by isotope experts and what many economic historians would conclude. The main cause for this lies in differences in the underlying assumptions as to the working and performance of ancient economies. We will provide examples where the same isotope results can be interpreted completely differently by switching between sets of underlying assumptions. We will argue that greater interaction between economic historians and stable isotope experts is desirable so as to avoid the emergence of parallel debates and to facilitate the construction of stronger, well-integrated narratives.

Cultivating Villa Economies: Archaeobotanical and Isotopic Evidence for Iron Age to Roman Agricultural Practices on the Chalk Downlands of Southern Britain

“…Market-orientated cereal production, as indicated through the batteries of graindrying ovens at both Dunkirt Barn and Grateley villas, was achieved not through 'intensification', that is increased labour input per unit area, as postulated by Heinrich et al (2021), but by extensification. This would support previous arguments that an increase in Roman cereal production was obtained through large agricultural units (Erdkamp, 2015: 20).…”

“…The labour intensity of farming practices has major implications for both the organization and seasonality of agricultural labour, and the sustainability of agro-ecological systems within a given environment. Current understandings of Roman crop husbandry systems range from intensive farming—increasing the productivity of soils through labour-intensive techniques such as manuring (Heinrich et al, 2021)—to more extensive systems integrated with animal husbandry through rotation or ley farming (Kron, 2000; Marzano, 2020). The Roman agronomists, such as Cato and Columella, were aware of a range of fertilizers and crop rotations including legumes, grasses, and barley (Kron, 2000).…”

How Much Is Enough? First Steps to a Social Ecology of the Pergamon Microregion

“…Based on isotopic data, a rather plant-based diet for the "average" Pergamean can be assumed [82]. According to this, and because we are able to quantify the required workforce for their harvest (see below), we focus solely on cereals and leguminosae (see Table 2; see (e.g., [83,84]) for problems regarding isotope data). They made up the majority of the diet and are important sources for calories and proteins.…”