Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson
The Oxford Roman Economy Project addresses the fundamentals of the Roman imperial economy and analyses all major economic activities (including agriculture, trade, commerce, and extraction), utilising quantifiable bodies of archaeological and documentary evidence and placing them in the broader structural context of regional variation, distribution, size and nature of markets, supply and demand. The project, funded originally by the AHRC (2005-2010) and now by the Augustus Foundation through the generosity of Baron Lorne Thyssen, studies the economy of the Roman world between the Republican period and Late Antiquity, with a particular focus on the period between 100 BC and AD 350, including the era of greatest imperial expansion and economic growth (to c. AD 200), followed by a century conventionally perceived as one of contraction or decline, and then something of a revival under the Tetrarchy and Constantine. The project includes the development and maintenance of an online database of documentary and archaeological material from all over the Roman world, the organisation of conferences, seminars and occasional lectures, and the publication of research. In association with Prof. Chris Howgego of the Ashmolean Museum, the project is also developing a database of Roman coin hoards.
For further details, see the project website http://www.romaneconomy.ox.ac.uk/
