Search Results for roman

...-521-83878-8. The title of Erdkamp's new book fails to do it justice. This study looks at much more than the grain market. Indeed, the first three chapters are a wide-ranging discussion of-and excellent introduction to-Roman agricul ture. They also examine the cultivation of olives and grapes...

...Michael J. Decker Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World . By Brent D. Shaw . Toronto : University of Toronto Press , 2013 . 480 pp., $90.00 , hardback, ISBN 978-1-4426-4479-3 . © the Agricultural History Society, 2015 2015 2015 Book Reviews newly...

...Brent D. Shaw The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production . Edited by Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2013 . 352 pp., $150.00 , hardback, ISBN 978-0-19-966572-3 . © the Agricultural History Society, 2015 2015...

... thatRoman warfare had relied on year-round military service since the late fourth century. To ex plain how such service could coexist with subsistence agriculture both be fore and after Hannibal, chapter three examines various models of the Roman family farm.Rosenstein begins by taking a hypothetical family...

... MacAskill s comprehensive coverage of the famine through to the insightful sources. It is an 325 Agricultural History Spring important contribution to our understanding of the Highlands and Islands in modern times. Peter Hillis University of Strathclyde (ret.) The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization...

... conventional treatments. Scholars typically describe the late-Roman economy as in decline, afflicted by excessive taxation, debased coinage, rampant inflation, and a shortage of labor. Faced with these difficulties, they argue, Roman landowners reverted to more self-sufficient practices and, consequently...

... with genetically engineered organisms far less clear-cut than Fish assumes. Bert Theunissen Utrecht University Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World. By Brent D. Shaw. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. 480 pp., $90.00, hardback, ISBN 978-1-4426-4479-3. Most agricultural...

... in Vergil s Georgics. By Philip Thibodeau. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 336 pp., $60.00, hardback, ISBN 978-0-520-268326. Although few people today are likely to have read it, Vergil s Georgics is one of the few Roman poetical pieces with which modern readers may be at least passingly...

...Drew Swanson Agricultural History Winter may not have been all that uncommon in the Roman world. Other portions of the book deal with the symbolism and representation of the harvest within Graeco-Roman cultural expression, which are enriched and enlarged with examples from ancient Egypt...

... for future study. Because the publication of the Gordion excavations has taken some decades, and some of the data necessary to make it comprehensive, such as from the Roman Warm Period, is not available yet, there is an understandable gap in this study. Marston s work is a diachronic review covering many...

... continued to decline in value, the gold coinage remained strong. Those with the power to insist on payment in gold?the bureaucracy and the military?were, therefore, insulated from the effects of what Banaji calls "stratified inflation" (37). The gold solidus became the "mass currency" (38) of the Roman...

... created and modified by those relations. The section on swineherds in particular gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the economic and social status of those closest to pigs. She also shows how pork consumption was a Roman tradition, which had both ideological and practical implications...

..., 2010. 320 pp., $27.00, hardback, ISBN 978-1-4391-0189-6. Evan Fraser and Andrew Rimas explore agricultural history at several levels in Empires of Food. The main presentations focus on the Roman Empire, China, and the European period of 900 to 1347 CE, with some discussion on the beginning...

... typically describe the late-Roman economy as in decline, afflicted by excessive taxation, debased coinage, rampant inflation, and a shortage of labor. Faced with these difficulties, they argue, Roman landowners reverted to more self-sufficient practices and, consequently, levels of monetization fell...

... command of the material, which ranges from Sanskrit poetry to Roman archeobotany, allows him to track plants across the linguistic and temporal borders that usually demarcate subdisciplines of ancient history. This panoptic view is balanced by a judicious focus on seven examples—cotton, rice, citrus...

... marriage under the empire" (83). Furthermore, how could yeomen be "self-sufficient" if they "bought much ofwhat theyneeded to survive" (99)? These are minor complaints, however. This well-produced and closely argued work presents a compelling new vision of Roman small holders and should be required reading...

... others view it only as a literary trope. The strength of Playing the Farmer is its multi-layered approach that refocuses our attention on the Roman countryside as a contested and evolving space. The book should command wide readership and lively discussion on Vergil s role in shaping the ways Romans saw...

... the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil s Georgics. By Philip Thibodeau. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 336 pp., $60.00, hardback, ISBN 978-0-520-268326. Although few people today are likely to have read it, Vergil s Georgics is one of the few Roman poetical pieces with which...

... of archaeology to provide insight into modern sustainability. The book is an ambitious undertaking that promises much for future study. Because the publication of the Gordion excavations has taken some decades, and some of the data necessary to make it comprehensive, such as from the Roman Warm Period...

... Book Reviews 275 detects a shift from juniper to pine and oak as sources of wood fuel in the Late Phrygian-Roman period, a period also marked by heavy overgrazing in steppe grasslands. Significant transformations also occurred in the raising of secondary crops such as bitter vetch, which is a drought...