The Levanzo I Wreck, Sicily: a 4th-century AD merchantman in the service of the annona?
The Levanzo I shipwreck provides insight into a fundamental component of the Roman annona system in the 4th century: individual merchant-ship cargos.
Human labor and harbor capacity at Rome
This paper aims to reconstruct and suggest many of the aspects of Roman dock workers including their numbers, hiring practices, and unloading practices. The role of harbor capacity will also be reviewed to understand Rome’s ability to safely import several hundred thousand tons and prevent famine.
The Origin of Chess and the Silk Road
The Origin of Chess and the Silk Road Horst Remus The Silk Road Foundation Newsletter: Vol.1:1 (2003) Abstract The classical research about the origin…
Painting the wine-dark sea: traveling Aegean fresco artists in the Middle and late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean
By examining the fresco fragments themselves I establish that the motifs represented and the style of manufacture are in fact Aegean. Textual evidence from the Near East and Egyptian tomb paintings suggest that the Aegean was well-known for its artistic accomplishments and that Aegean goods and the artisans that produced them were treated as elite commodities.
The collapse and regeneration of complex society in Greece, 1500-500 BC
Greece between 1500 and 500 BC is one of the best known examples of the phenomenon of the regeneration of complex society after a collapse. I review 10 core dimensions of this process (urbanism, tax and rent, monuments, elite power, information- recording systems, trade, crafts, military power, scale, and standards of living), and suggest that punctuated equilibrium models accommodate the data better than gradualist interpretations.
Going with the Grain: Athenian State Formation and the Question of Subsistence in the 5th and 4th Centuries BCE
The questions I intend to ask in this paper focus on this very issue. My case study is 5th century BCE Athens. During this period, the so-called “Athenian Empire”, Athens experienced military growth, geographic expansion of its hegemony, and further population increase.