FEBRUARY 26, 2005

Graduate Student Conference: People and the Environment in the Ancient Mediterranean

Keynote address:
H.W. Pleket, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History and Epigraphy at the University of Leiden
"The Roman Empire and the Economy: Between Fragmentation and Integration"

Graduate Student Speakers:

David Yoon

"Imperial-Scale Processes and Local Ecology"

The Roman empire, as an empire, has been problematized in political terms, in terms of social structures, and in terms of cultural identities. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the ecology of empire, the interaction between the empire, seen as a political-economic process, and the landscapes on which it was manifested. The political economy of empire has effects on productive and economic behavior beyond those to be expected of a smaller-scale political formation. The incorporation of hundreds of local and regional political units into the Roman empire and then the subsequent disintegration of that empire will have had a variety of unintended ecological consequences, and the ecology of production will have profoundly shaped the local processes of empire. Models pertaining to tribute extraction and peripheralization will be considered in relation to archaeological evidence, primarily from southern France and southern Italy.

Joseph E. Lemak ( State University of New York at Buffalo)

"More Meat for Rome: Pastoralism and Landscape Exploitation in the Roman Empire"

Pastoralism in the ancient world is a subject that has recently received much attention. This is fitting for it forms, along with agriculture, the core of the ancient economy. This is especially true for ancient North Africa, the highlands of North Britain, and the Rhine Delta region, where pastoralism in its various manifestations and its relationship to the both the urban and rural landscape constituted a vital feature of the Roman market, not least in the Roman and Late Antique periods. In the frontier, Rome did not create its own, individual system of large-scale animal husbandry, but relied on and assimilated indigenous tribes that lived a predominantly pastoral existence.

However, all studies of pastoralism under Roman hegemony have been local and somewhat short-sighted. Because of the provincial nature of the scholarship, each Roman province tends to have its own strengths and weaknesses when dealing with this subject. An overall examination of pastoralism and how the Roman state interacted with the indigenous pastoral tribes that has integrated archaeological, ethnographic, and literary sources has, until now, not been carried out.

This paper will compare three very different provinces ( North Africa, North Britain, and the Rhine Delta) and highlight the similarities between each area. As a result, a general picture emerges of how the Roman state influenced the pre-existing indigenous economy. Although other important parallels exist, this paper will emphasize how the Roman central administration fundamentally altered the nature of pastoral land exploitation from a balanced, mixed economy of agriculture and pastoralism to a more specialized form of pastoralism that involved animal husbandry on a larger scale and long-distance transhumance.

Craig Caldwell ( Princeton University)

"Contested Resources and Roads in the Fourth Century CE Provinces of Southeastern Europe"

The Roman provinces between the Danube and the Adriatic Sea lurk in the shadows of most histories of the later Empire, and when we do discuss the region, it is usually only to examine the invasions or settlements of the “barbarians.” However, this area was an important battleground in wars between Romans in the fourth century CE, and its societies and landscapes were deeply implicated in those conflicts.

Aspiring emperors in the fourth century sought two things in southeastern Europe: military manpower and readily mintable gold. Access to both resources was contingent upon control of a third aspect of these provinces, their considerable network of paved roads. The competition among claimants to the imperial purple contributed to the development as well as the destruction of the region’s assets, changing the inhabitants’ relationships with the provincial landscapes. Integrating the archaeological evidence of towns, mines, mints, and roads into the narrative of the civil wars, we can construct a dynamic strategic geography of resources during the fourth century.

In summary, my presentation will pose and attempt to answer the following questions: Can we link the changes in the late antique landscape of southeastern Europe to the civil wars? How did the region’s resources affect the campaigns of the imperial competitors? Did inter-Roman warfare intensify or weaken imperial control over the population and environment of these provinces in the fourth century?

Anna Clare ( University of Otago, New Zealand)

"People and the Sea in Homeric Epic"

The relationship between the ancient Greeks and their natural environment so far remains comparatively unexplored, and yet there is clear evidence that close physical and spiritual ties strongly influenced the development of Greek culture and society. Some of our earliest evidence for the nature of this relationship appears in the epics of Homer, where a generally unfettered delight is expressed in both nature itself, and the shared intimacy that necessarily binds man to his physical environs. The descriptions are variously informed by human and divine interpretation, and reflect an understanding of the world that is, while certainly idealized, still grounded in immediate experience. Consistent with this general ethos but in some ways remaining separate, however, is the unusual tension that informs the relationship between people and the sea. Standing very much apart from the regulations of humanity, the sea in Homer represents one of the most inhuman divisions of the natural environment. It is vast, powerful, and uncontrollable, and at times displays a malevolence towards man, in its divinity as well as its physicality, that is unmatched by any other natural feature. And yet man's full engagement with the sea is taken for granted in both epics, which repeatedly demonstrate the importance of sea travel in Homeric society. By looking at the human and heroic response to the dangers of the sea, the poet and therefore his audience are able to explore some aspects of what the element has come to represent in the ancient Greek psyche.

Jason Governale ( Columbia University)

"If they only had farms! Environmental constraints and predatory behavior in ancient corsair communities"

In the Ancient Mediterranean world peoples with access to few natural resources or limited arable farmland turned to the small-scale plundering of the agricultural and commercial efforts of their neighbors in order to supplement their own economic production Indeed, Aristotle included piracy and theft among the more respectable endeavors of hunting, fishing, and farming as means of providing a living. Later writers posited that predatory behavior was directly linked in a causal relationship with the natural environment, and ultimately, that this behavior was only practiced by the semi-barbarous hill or coastal denizens who lived beyond the confines of traditional values of polis-based societies.

In this paper, I will examine the cause and effect relationship between limited access to natural resources and farmland, and the rise of predatory behavior in the Ancient Mediterranean corsair community. What specific natural variables did the Greeks and Romans believe created this problem? What geomorphological features or factors contributed to this problem? What role did ‘urbanization’ play? What solutions, aside from the application of brute force, were believed to be viable? How were these solutions applied? Did this behavior continue even after the ‘civilizing’ influences of agricultural activities and city residence are evidenced within economic life of the corsair community? Did this behavior continue in spite of the removal of the initial environmental constraints which were its genesis?