The Archaeology of Poverty: how poor were Roman peasants? Did they get poorer?
by Kimberly Bowes
Abstract: Prof. Kimberly D. Bowes discusses how models about the collapse of the Roman Empire have often been predicated on the idea of poverty: that the end of Roman domination meant the decline of a certain quality of life, or conversely that the end of Roman oppression spelled new liberties and wealth for the peasantry. These arguments take place against the backdrop of near total ignorance about the physical lives of Roman poor people, particularly its largest constituency, the rural peasantry. Prof Bowes presents findings from the Roman Peasant Project, an archaeological, environmental and historical investigation of Roman peasants in central Italy. It suggests that Italian Roman peasants had far more resources at their disposal than previously supposed, and that far from composing a separate part of the Roman economy, they were both integral to and dependent upon its dramatic cycles of boom and bust. The empire’s end thus did bring massive changes, but of a different kind than “impoverishment” or “liberty” would suggest.
Lecture presented to Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past, February 15th, 2018.
View online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gutewzq22fc&t=2054s