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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ANCIENT ECONOMIES
Complexity
Economics
Building a New Approach to
Ancient Economic History
Edited by
Koenraad Verboven
Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies
Series Editors
Paul Erdkamp
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Brussels, Belgium
Ken Hirth
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA, USA
Claire Holleran
University of Exeter
Exeter, Devon, UK
Michael Jursa
University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria
J. G. Manning
Yale University
New Haven, CT, USA
Osmund Bopearachchi
Institute of East Asian Studies
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA, USA
This series provides a unique dedicated forum for ancient economic histo-
rians to publish studies that make use of current theories, models, con-
cepts, and approaches drawn from the social sciences and the discipline of
economics, as well as studies that use an explicitly comparative methodol-
ogy. Such theoretical and comparative approaches to the ancient economy
promotes the incorporation of the ancient world into studies of economic
history more broadly, ending the tradition of viewing antiquity as some-
thing separate or ‘other’.
The series not only focuses on the ancient Mediterranean world, but
also includes studies of ancient China, India, and the Americas pre-1500.
This encourages scholars working in different regions and cultures to
explore connections and comparisons between economic systems and pro-
cesses, opening up dialogue and encouraging new approaches to ancient
economies.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15723
Koenraad Verboven
Editor
Complexity
Economics
Building a New Approach to Ancient
Economic History
Editor
Koenraad Verboven
Department of History
Ghent University
Ghent, Belgium
Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies

ISBN 978-3-030-47897-1 ISBN 978-3-030-47898-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47898-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Contents
1 Introduction: Finding a New Approach to Ancient Proxy

Data 1
Koenraad Verboven
Part I Theoretical Frameworks and Methodologies 19
2 Playing by Whose Rules? Institutional Resilience, Conflict

and Change in the Roman Economy 21
Koenraad Verboven
3 Networks as Proxies: A Relational Approach Towards

Economic Complexity in the Roman Period 53
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
4 Evaluating the Potential of Computational Modelling for

Informing Debates on Roman Economic Integration105
Tom Brughmans
5 Visualising Roman Institutional Environments for

Exchange as a Complex System125
Merav Haklai
v
vi Contents
Part II Urban Systems 161
6 Social Complexity and Complexity Economics: Studying

Socio-economic Systems at Düzen Tepe and Sagalassos
(SW Turkey)163
Dries Daems
7 A Method for Estimating Roman Population Sizes from

Urban Survey Contexts: An Application in Central
Adriatic Italy203
Dimitri Van Limbergen and Frank Vermeulen
8 Complexity and Urban Hierarchy of Ancient Urbanism:

The Cities of Roman Asia Minor251
Rinse Willet
Part III Epidemics 295
9 Disease Proxies and the Diagnosis of the Late Antonine

Economy297
Colin P. Elliott
10 Measuring and Comparing Economic Interaction Based

on the Paths and Speed of Infections: The Case Study of
the Spread of the Justinianic Plague and Black Death327
Lars Börner and Battista Severgnini
Index357
Notes on Contributors
Lars Börner is Professor of Economics at Martin-Luther-University of

Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, and a senior research fellow at Data Analytics
for Finance and Macro (DAFM), King’s Business School, King’s College
London, UK.
Tom Brughmans is an associate professor at the Centre for Urban
Network Evolutions (UrbNet) and Classical Archaeology, School of
Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Dries Daems is a post-doctoral researcher of the Sagalassos Archaeological
Research Project at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
Colin P. Elliott is an assistant professor of History at Indiana University.
Merav Haklai is a lecturer in the Department of General History at the
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller is a senior research associate at the Institute
for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research, of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences, and lecturer at the Institute for Byzantine and
Modern Greek Studies, University of Vienna, Austria.
Battista Severgnini is an associate professor in the Department of
Economics at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.
Dimitri Van Limbergen is a senior post-doctoral fellow at the Flanders
Research Foundation, Ghent University, Belgium.
vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Koenraad Verboven is Professor of Ancient History in the Department

of History at Ghent University, Belgium.
Frank Vermeulen is Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Department
of Archaeology at Ghent University, Belgium.
Rinse Willet is a post-doctoral researcher and intensive survey coordina-
tor at the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project, University of Leuven,
Belgium.
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Nodes in the network model of riverine transport in period I

(first to fifth century CE) in the Po plain sized according to
their betweenness centrality (data: L. Werther, map: J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 79
Fig. 3.2 Nodes in the network model of riverine transport in period II
(sixth to ninth century CE) in the Po plain sized according to
their betweenness centrality (data: L. Werther, map: J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 80
Fig. 3.3 Nodes in the network model of riverine transport in period I
(first to fifth century CE) in the Po plain sized according to
their closeness centrality (data: L. Werther, map: J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 81
Fig. 3.4 Nodes in the network model of riverine transport in period II
(sixth to ninth century CE) in the Po plain sized according to
their closeness centrality (data: L. Werther, map: J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 82
Fig. 3.5 The matrices for the network model of riverine transport in
period I (first to fifth century CE, left) and period II (sixth to
ninth century CE, right) (data. L. Werther, graphs: J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 82
Fig. 3.6 User interface of the “ORBIS Stanford Geospatial Network
Model of the Roman World” (screen shot from: http://orbis.
stanford.edu/)83
Fig. 3.7 ORBIS Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman
World—visualisation of the nodes (= places) sized according
to their degree-centrality (analysis and map J. Preiser-Kapeller,
2015)83
ix
x List of Figures

World—visualisation of the nodes (= places) sized according to
their betweenness-centrality (analysis and map J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 84
World—visualisation of the nodes (= places) coloured
according to their closeness-centrality (colour scale from red/
low centrality to green/high centrality; analysis and map
J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2015) (color online) 85
World—identification of clusters (red) and sub-clusters (green)
with the help of the Newman-algorithm (analysis and map
J. Preiser Kapeller, 2015) (color online) 86
World—visualisation of routes with a “cost” of maximum one
day’s journey between two places (analysis and map J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 87
Fig. 3.12 Two-mode network of places (red nodes) and commodities
(green nodes) exported from or imported to them as narrated
in the “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea” (data: E. H. Seland,
http://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/11470; visualisation:
J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2015) (color online) 88
Fig. 3.13 One-mode network of commodities due to their common
export from or import to places as narrated in the “Periplus of
the Erythraean Sea”; nodes sized according to their degree-
centrality (data, visualisation and analysis as above) 89
Fig. 3.14 One-mode network of places due to their common export
from or import of commodities as narrated in the “Periplus of
the Erythraean Sea”; nodes sized according to their degree-
centrality (data, visualisation and analysis as above) 90
the Erythraean Sea” visualised on a geographical map (the
links indicate ties of similarity due to the exchange of the same
goods, not direct ties of interaction); nodes sized according to
their betweenness-centrality (data, visualisation and analysis as
above)91
the Erythraean Sea” visualised on a geographical map;
identification of seven clusters of nodes (of different size) with
the help of the Newman-algorithm (data, visualisation and
analysis as above) 92
List of Figures xi
Fig. 3.17 Frequency distribution of degree values of nodes in the

network model of potters from Roman potter shops (of terra
sigillata) of Rheinzabern (Tabernae, ca. 150–270 CE) due to
the co-occurrence of commonly used hallmarks (data: MEES
(2002); graph and analysis: J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2015) 93
Fig. 3.18 The network model of potters from Roman potter shops (of
terra sigillata) of Rheinzabern (Tabernae, ca. 150–270 CE)
due to the co-occurrence of commonly used hallmarks; nodes
are arranged in the eight groups of potters identified by Mees
(data: MEES (2002); network modelling and graph: J. Preiser-
Kapeller, 2015) 94
Fig. 4.1 Relationship between distance from Rome and distance
discount of six documented grain prices (author’s own
reconstruction of figure 2.2 in Temin, The Roman Market
Economy, 43) 110
Fig. 4.2 Abstract example of network distance. Nodes represent traders,
lines represent social network edges, and large circles represent
sites/settlements. When trader A successfully buys an item
from trader B, the “distance from trader” to the production
site is five whilst the “distance from site” to the production site
is two 117
Fig. 4.3 Example results from one experiment with the following
variable settings (variables in brackets): integration
(proportion-inter-site-links) = 0.002; reliability information
(local-knowledge) = 1; inter-market transport cost (transport-
cost) = 0.01. Results for “distance from trader” shown on the
left, results for “distance from site” shown on the right. These
results illustrate some of the general trends across all
simulation results: high variability of prices overall, generally
lower price in production site, generally a correlation of price
with distance although mean prices are hiding interesting
variability119
Fig. 5.1 The Planar Maximally Filtered Graph for stocks traded in the
US equity markets (1995–1998), Tumminello et al., “A Tool
for Filtering Information in Complex Systems,” 10,423,
Fig. 2. (Copyright (2005) National Academy of Sciences,
U.S.A.)134
Fig. 5.2a A systemic structure of obesity, foresight. (Vandenbroeck,
Goossens, and Clemens, Tackling Obesities, 76, Fig. 12) (for an
interactive map, with separate view of the nine groups see
http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html)135
xii List of Figures
Fig. 5.2b A systemic structure of obesity, linkages between psychology

and food environment (Vandenbroeck, Goossens, and
Clemens. Tackling obesities: “Map 15—Full generic map:
linkages between the psychology and food environment
areas—Linkages between these two areas are predictably dense,
with 14 arrows going from psychology to the food
environment and nine arrows in the other direction: (*) Key
tail variables in the psychology area are education, media
availability, socio-cultural valuation of food, perceived lack of
time, stress and food literacy. They link into demand-side
factors such as demand for health and the social pressure to
consume. But supply-side variables are also triggered: the food
industry’s business model is grafted onto what people want.
(*) Tail variables in the food environment area are dispersed,
with one arrow only leaving each of the variables. They include
food exposure, food abundance, social pressure to consume,
and industry’s desire to maximise volume. They drive three
variables in the psychology area: exposure to food advertising,
perceived lack of time, and psychological ambivalence” 136
Fig. 5.3 Systems Biology of Human Aging. (Furber, Systems Biology of
Human Aging, available at http://www.LegendaryPharma.
com/chartbg.html; appearing also in Lima, Visual Complexity,
online electronic database: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/
vc/project_details.cfm?id=521&index=40&domain=Biology)138
Fig. 5.4 Taxation flow in the Roman empire inspired by Hopkins’
“Taxes and Trade” model. A revised version of Davies, “Linear
and Nonlinear Flow Models,” 140, Fig. 6.6. The (here added)
cursive lines represent how money “trickles-down” from the
frontiers back to the middle-zone via economic transactions 140
Fig. 5.5 Flow chart of resource movement; inspired by Davies, “Linear
and Nonlinear Flow Models,” 150, Fig. 6.14: Flow chart of
resource movement, model 6: Modified to incorporate
bandwidths, motors, gates, and reservoirs 142
Fig. 5.6 Roman legal institutions for using money in private exchange 146
Fig. 5.7 Causal loop diagram for legal institutions from three legal
systems operating in the Roman empire 153
Fig. 7.1 Map of the study area with the indication of all town sites
mentioned in the text. (Map by D. Van Limbergen) 207
Fig. 7.2 First phase of the town of Potentia, with indication of the
initial forum square (F) and the temple for Jupiter (T). (Map
by PVS team) 215
List of Figures xiii
Fig. 7.3 Map of Potentia, based on the integration of survey and

excavation data. (Map by PVS team) 216
Fig. 7.4 Detailed plan of the monumental central area of Potentia,
based mainly on the survey results by the PVS. (Map by PVS
team)219
Fig. 7.5 Map of the town site of Trea, based on the survey results by
the PVS. (Map by PVS team) 223
Fig. 7.6 Detailed plan of the monumental central area of Trea, based
on the survey results by the PVS. (Map by PVS team) 224
Fig. 7.7 Reconstruction of the eastern residential quarter of Tifernum
Mataurense, based on aerial photography. (Catani and
Monacchi, Tifernum Mataurense, 245, fig. 63) 230
Fig. 7.8 Map of Sentinum based on the integration of excavation and
geophysical survey data. (After Medri, “Materiali”, 213, fig.
3.1.12)231
Fig. 7.9 Map of the town site of Ostra, with the indication of a
residential quarter individuated through aerial photography
(B). (After Boschi and Silani, “Aerofotografia e geofisica”, 79,
fig. 7) 232
Fig. 7.10 Plan of the domus in the area “La Fenice” at Senigallia. (After
Salvini, Area archeologica, 22) 233
Fig. 7.11 Reconstruction of the Republican domus under the Imperial
temple complex of Urbs Salvia. (After Montali, “Considerazioni”,
132, fig. 16) 234
Fig. 7.12 The Imperial Domus dei Coiedii at Suasa, with indications of
the earlier Casa ad atrio and the Casa del primo stile. (After
Campagnoli, “Fasi edilizie”, 320, fig. 1) 235
Fig. 7.13 Plan of the Imperial domus at Tifernum Mataurense.
(Tornatore, “Domus con mosaici”, 883, fig. 2) 237
Fig. 8.1 Map displaying the towns and cities with official self-
government (n = 446 and 13 possible; note that only 428 are
located and plotted on the map) 278
Fig. 8.2 Heat map of the self-governing cities and communities in the
late second to early third centuries CE; the radius used for this
heat map was 15 km 279
Fig. 8.3 The official self-governing cities with a 15 km radius buffer
drawn around them 279
Fig. 8.4 Number of cities as listed by Broughton, Roman Asia Minor
in Hellenistic/late republican Anatolia 280
Fig. 8.5 Number of cities as listed by Broughton, Roman Asia Minor
in Flavian-Severan times and the third century CE in Anatolia 280
xiv List of Figures
Fig. 8.6 Map of all theatres located in Asia Minor (n = 143 + 11

possible theatres) 281
Fig. 8.7 Map of the datable theatres up to c. 30 BCE (n = 59 + 1 place
with multiple theatres) 281
Fig. 8.8 Map of the datable theatres up to c. 300 CE (n = 95 + 6 places
with multiple theatres + 9 places with expanded seating areas) 282
Fig. 8.9 Map of all baths in Asia Minor (n = 84 + 2 possible) 282
Fig. 8.10 Map of all the datable baths until c. 100 CE (n = 23 plus 7
places with multiple bath-houses) 283
Fig. 8.11 Map of all the datable baths until c. 300 CE (n = 44 plus 24
places with multiple bath-houses) 283
Fig. 8.12 Map displaying the sizes of all measurable cities and
settlements in Roman Asia Minor (n = 224)284
Fig. 8.13 Kolossai from the air; note the semi-circular recess of the
theatre on the east of the central hill. The city probably
extended north towards the river, where the necropolis was
located284
Fig. 8.14 Rank-size plot for the settlements of Asia Minor (n = 168)
using area in hectares 285
Fig. 8.15 Rank-size plot on logarithmic scales for the settlements of Asia
Minor (n = 168) using area in hectare. The dashed grey line
represents the curve the set of sizes would have if it matched
Zipf’s law. The black dotted line represents the best fit 285
Fig. 8.16 Rank-size plot on logarithmic scales for the settlements of Asia
Minor (n = 168) together with modelled sizes of the
unmeasured official cities (n = 300), both using area in
hectare. The dashed grey line represents the curve the set of
sizes would have if it matched Zipf’s law. The black dotted line
represents the best fitting trend line following a power-law 286
Fig. 8.17 Rank-size plot on logarithmic scales for the self-governing
settlements of the Roman province of Asia (n = 55) using area
in hectare. The grey line represents the curve the set of sizes
would have if it matched Zipf’s law. The black dotted line
represents the best fitting trend line following a power law 286
settlements of the Roman province of Lycia et Pamphylia,
Pisidia (n = 46), using area in hectare. The grey dashed line
represents the curve the set of sizes would have if it matched
Zipf’s law. The black dotted line represents the best fitting
trend line following a power law. This province incorporated
large parts of the region of Pisidia in the second century CE 287
List of Figures xv

settlements of the Roman province of Cilicia (n = 18) using
area in hectare. The grey dashed line represents the curve the
set of sizes would have if it matched Zipf’s law. The black
dotted line represents the best fitting trend line following a
power law 287
settlements of Maiandros River valley (n = 11) using area in
hectare. The grey dashed line represents the curve the set of
sizes would have if it matched Zipf’s law. The black dotted line
represents the best fitting trend line following a power law 288
Fig. 9.1 Private wheat prices (exclusive of uncertain dates/prices/
commodities) from Roman Egypt, 100–270 CE. (Sources:
Rathbone, “Prices and Price Formation in Roman Egypt,”
217–233; Rathbone and Von Reden, “Mediterranean Grain
Prices,” Table A8.12. I have only used prices in which both
the year and the price was confirmed with absolute certainty.
An odd state price of 6 denarii per artaba in 246 CE was
ultimately left out because it is unclear whether the nominal
parity between denarii and tetradrachmai held at this time—
hence, the price is uncertain) 304
Fig. 9.2 Nominal wheat prices (drachmai/artaba) to 275 CE (Harper,
“People, Plagues, and Prices” 816) 305
Fig. 9.3 State prices of wheat in Roman Egypt, 100–270 CE. (Sources:
Rathbone, “Prices and Price Formation,” 217–233; Rathbone
and Von Reden, “Mediterranean Grain Prices,” Table A8.12 I
have chosen to use a third-order polynomial as, with such a
limited amount of data, I wanted to use as few constants as
possible)307
Fig. 9.4 Two measures of Roman legionary pay (160–211 CE).
(Sources: Fineness figures through 192/3 CE come from
Butcher and Ponting, “The Beginning of the End”; Elliott,
“The Acceptance and Value of Roman Silver Coinage”.
Figures from 193/4 through 211 are from Gitler and Ponting,
The Silver Coinage of Septimius Severus and His Family, 55–57.
Weights are those of Duncan-Jones, Money and Government,
227; Walker, The Metrology of the Roman Silver Coinage, 3–18) 317
Fig. 10.1 The spread of the Black Death 333
Fig. 10.2 The spread of the Justinianic Plague (Red = 541; Green = 542;
Blue = 543; Orange = 544–547) 339
List of Graphs
Graph 7.1 Diagram of shares public and private architecture at Potentia 221
Graph 7.2 Diagram of shares public and private architecture at Trea 226
xvii
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Newman-cluster numbers and regions included in these clusters 66

Table 3.2 Comparison of network measures for the network model of
riverine transport in period I (first to fifth century CE) and
period II (sixth to ninth century CE) 81
Table 3.3 The network model of potters from Roman potter shops (of
terra sigillata) of Rheinzabern (Tabernae, ca. 150–270 CE)
due to the co-occurrence of commonly used hallmarks;
structural quantitative measure for the network models of the
eight groups of potters identified by Mees 93
Table 6.1 Coding of intensity measures of development 172
Table 6.2 Summary of the number of types per functional group, in the
two different periods 183
Table 6.3 Parameters of socio-economic complexity 187
Table 6.4 Causal factors and mechanisms of complexity development at
Düzen Tepe and Sagalassos with indication of relative intensity
of each process 193
Table 7.1 Estimated number of residents per house size 239
Table 7.2 House sizes in central Adriatic Italy ranked according to
consecutive 200 m2 bands, with the exception of the
>1000 m2 category 240
Table 7.3 House sizes in central Adriatic Italy ranked according to
adjusted 200 m2 bands 241
Table 8.1 Number of located official cities and communities (n = 446
and 13 possible) using the provincial division of 117 CE and
the geographic regional division 261
xix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Finding a New Approach

to Ancient Proxy Data
Koenraad Verboven
1 What This Book Is About

This book is about a big problem in economic history research: how to
study economic development in societies that lack archival records or
other written sources suitable for the familiar cliometric analyses used by
economic historians. Ancient economic historians have been acutely aware
of this challenge for many decades. Since the 1980s it led them to look for
theoretical models to bridge the gap between their shaky empirical data
and macro-level realities. In the early 2000s New Institutional Economics
combined with neo-Malthusian models was hailed as the new paradigm
that allowed tying together the data into a meaningful explanatory narra-
tive of growth and development. Despite growing criticism1 and the rising
popularity of climate historians,2 NIE remains the dominant framework
used by ancient economic historians today.
1
For example, Verboven, “The Knights Who Say NIE”.
2
See for instance Harper, The Fate of Rome.
K. Verboven (*)
Department of History, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
e-mail: koen.verboven@ugent.be
© The Author(s) 2021 1

K. Verboven (ed.), Complexity Economics, Palgrave Studies in
Ancient Economies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47898-8_1
2 K. VERBOVEN
Over the same past decades, however, economic archaeology also

boomed. The close collaboration between archaeologists and physical
anthropologists, climate scientists, and natural scientists in general led to
huge advances in abilities to identify, collect, and interpret material remains
as proxies for economic interactions and performance. Ancient economic
historians enthusiastically embraced the sets of proxy data produced by
archaeologists but interpreting them proved excessively hard. The datasets
derive from the material record but the patterns they display are heavily
determined by archaeological classifications and methodologies unfamiliar
to historians. Archaeologists in turn struggle to factor in human gover-
nance, structured by institutions that are rooted in shared cultural beliefs
and transmitted verbally and symbolically in ways that are invisible in the
material record.
The aim of this book is to stimulate the necessary collaboration between
economic archaeologists and historians to overcome these difficulties by
offering a theoretical and methodological framework to evaluate and inte-
grate archaeological proxy data and data modelling in economic history
research. For reasons I explain below, this is not possible by relying only
on the now familiar frameworks of mainstream economics—whether neo-
classical, Keynesian, neo-Malthusian, or neo-institutional—even though
they continue to provide useful insights in other respects. Instead we
explore and advocate the paradigm of complexity economics, developed in
the 1980s and 1990s as a complement and an alternative to mainstream
equilibrium economics. I will provide a more elaborate account of com-
plexity economics below. Suffice now to say that it studies societies and
economies as “complex adaptive systems” consisting of components and
agents (human and non-human) that act upon and respond to real and (in
the case of humans) anticipated events. These actions produce emergent
patterns that in turn feedback into the agents’ behaviour. This paradigm,
we argue, provides an appealing theoretical framework to interpret archae-
ological proxy data because it does not interpret these a priori as a reflec-
tion of the outcomes of linear processes of supply, demand, and distribution,
determined by production factors, institutions and so on. Instead the data
are treated as reflecting the outcomes of non-linear network dynamics.
The advantage for historians and archaeologists is that methodologically
the framework calls for network analyses and agent-based modelling and
thereby opens up for analyses source data that provide only anecdotal evi-
dence or intuitive impressions when interpreted in the light of mainstream
equilibrium economics.
1 INTRODUCTION: FINDING A NEW APPROACH TO ANCIENT PROXY DATA 3
The rest of this introduction discusses more in detail the problems

involved in the interpretation of proxy data and the importance of models
and theories to address them. After briefly situating the role of models in
ancient history and archaeology, I discuss the current limitations of proxy
data, survey previously advocated theoretical models, and discuss the
advantages of “complexity economics”.
This book is situated in the tradition of reflective works on the use of
theories and models in ancient economic history.3 Classicists, historians as
well as archaeologists, are often wary of theories and models. To reject
them in the case of economic history, however, implies accepting the
assumption that all the information we need to build a reliable image of
ancient economies and to explain economic developments is locked in the
scanty empirical data that are available to us, and that common sense suf-
fices to unlock this information and to bridge any gaps that might be left.
This is highly improbable given the state of our sources and the imperfec-
tions of human intellect. One may not always like them but models are a
necessary evil and theories are what tie them together. That being said,
however, we need to resist the temptation to cherry-pick the models we
like and pretend to make sense of the data we have. The social scientists
who usually make these models rarely have historical questions in mind
and are generally unfamiliar with the messiness of historical or archaeo-
logical sources and the technical difficulties involved in interpreting them.
It is important, therefore, that we reflect on the models and theories we
use. They all have limitations and pitfalls that we need to avoid.
That, however, is equally true for archaeological proxy data, on which
historians have much less reflected. Interdisciplinary approaches in archae-
ology the past decades have massively produced new proxy data on ancient
economies. Soil and climate data reveal productivity levels. Ice-core sam-
ples show air pollution caused by mining. Skeletal remains reveal differ-
ences in diets and health status. Isotopes in dental enamel show mobility
of human populations and livestock. Newly identified parts and remains
document the wide spread of advanced technical devices and hydraulic
technology. Sedimentary budgets of rivers reveal changing agricultural
methods. The list continues to grow. New digital tools make it possible to
3
See for instance Verboven and Erdkamp, Structure and Performance in the Roman
Economy; Manning and Morris, The Ancient Economy; Scheidel and Von Reden, The Ancient
Economy; Remesal Rodríguez, Revilla Calvo, and Bermúdez Lorenzo, Cuantificar las
economías antiguas; for an earlier example see Finley, Ancient History.
4 K. VERBOVEN
store these data in (big) digital data collections suitable for rapid informa-
tion retrieval or for feeding into visualisation or modelling software.
Integrating the results in economic history research has profoundly
changed the way we look at and think about ancient economies.
But the process of collecting, classifying, processing, and visualising
data is not in itself revealing the dynamics underneath that caused the pat-
terns we find in the data. It is not telling us how economic processes and
outcomes are connected to broader societal structures and dynamics—
social, political, or cultural. Millions of sherds recorded in a database, pro-
cessed through graphs, plotted on maps, will not tell what was in the
minds of their makers, the obstacles they faced, and how they overcame
them. What does it mean if a dataset shows a diachronic shift from wheat
to barley? Does the increased mining activity documented in the ice-core
samples signal high economic performance, or does it merely show that
the Roman state devoted massive resources to exploit silver and gold
deposits in much the same predatory way as the Spanish crown did in
South America more than a millennium later?4 Are the disease burdened
bones from Pompeii showing us how unhealthy urban populations were,
or are they indicating efficient coping strategies for diseases that would
otherwise have killed their victims? What is the outcome of all this in terms
of living standards and well-being? And whose living standards and well-
being are we talking of? It is hard to establish how patterns in disparate
and discontinuous datasets are related to each other. What is the connec-
tion, for instance, between patterns in amphorae finds and output of wine
in production areas, given that barrels and wineskins have left little or no
traces in the archaeological record? It is even harder to establish how they
relate to patterns in non-material historical reality. Can we link urbanisa-
tion patterns to institutional changes? How many micro-level studies do
we need to make statements about trends at meso- and macro-levels?
Uncertainty increases every time we posit connections between datasets
or we generalise from sample sets. Nevertheless, these questions need to
be addressed. Economic history is not just about documenting change. It
is about understanding and explaining it. Why was the Roman Empire so
good at producing and distributing not just the basic necessities of life,
but so much more that constitutes “a good life” or “civilisation”: high-
quality tools, materials, and know-how to build comfortable houses, high-
calorie, protein-rich food, good shoes, basic health-care, art, and
4
Scheidel, “In Search of Roman Economic Growth”, 50.
entertainment? Was it markets? Administered trade? Efficient institutions?

Who benefitted from Rome’s economic success? Only elites and city dwell-
ers or rural populations as well? And why did it stop? If Roman levels of
technology and logistics were so high, why did they fall back instead of
break through? Roman economic performance seems to have reached six-
teenth- or maybe early seventeenth-century European levels, but these
were still primitively low when compared to modern economies. The
Great Divergence at that time was only visible yet with hindsight.
Quantification and digital data processing become meaningful only
when the data provide reliable proxies to measure or express levels of pro-
duction, distribution, changes in supply and demand, and all the rest we
believe determines peoples’ welfare and well-being. There is no reliable
method to convert ancient proxy data into the economic indicators used
in economics and economic history.5 Attempts to guestimate economic
indicators so far have used theoretical models and comparative evidence to
create “matrices of possibilities” (in the words of Keith Hopkins6) that
would accommodate the sparse textual evidence we have. Given the kind
and quality of data available in the material record, it is unlikely that it will
ever be possible wholly to dispense with this “controlled conjecture”
approach. Nevertheless, the impressive amount of new empirical data doc-
umenting economic phenomena and the analytical firepower provided by
new software tools cannot be ignored. The potential they offer for data
modelling is huge. One of the greatest challenges today, therefore, is to
find ways to bridge the gap between the theoretical/comparative approach,
and the new processing capabilities we now have for a greatly increased
body of empirical data. We need a methodology that connects processed
empirical data to the assumptions derived from theoretical models and
comparisons, allowing us to corroborate or reject these assumptions.
But where shall find our assumptions? The Finleyan model of the
socially embedded status-driven economy, inspired by Max Weber and
Karl Polanyi, was intellectually stimulating and elegant in its logic but
failed to explain the growth in material output and energy consumption,
the increasing diversification of cash crops, industry and services, the
growing levels of skilled labour, and capacities to co-ordinate these in
larger units, as witnessed by the quality and quantity of output. In the
5
Verboven, “Ancient Cliometrics”.
6
Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, 19–20; Hopkins, “Taxes and Trade”, 43; see the discus-
sion in Verboven, “Ancient Cliometrics”, 347–50.
6 K. VERBOVEN
1980s Keith Hopkins advocated a Keynesian “taxes and trade” model. In

this model the different locations where taxes were levied and where they
were spent (primarily Rome and the frontier provinces) fuelled trade
because “tax-payers had to sell goods in those distant parts in order to
earn the money with which to pay next year’s taxes”. This need gave rise
to “a complex network of trade. … Local trade fed into medium-range
and long-range trade and vice versa.”7 Hopkins was the first to use quanti-
fied archaeological (shipwrecks) and numismatic data (hoards and die-
estimates) to substantiate his models. At that time only a fraction was
available of what we have today and numerous pitfalls were not yet cor-
rected. Patterson’s dating method for shipwrecks was not ideal and the
distribution he established was heavily distorted by the change from
amphorae to barrels as preferred containers for wine.8
Scholars since the 1990s have taken up Hopkins’ preference for main-
stream economics. Neo-institutional and neo-Malthusian models seem
well suited to explain both the quantitative growth that the Roman econ-
omy experienced (thanks to its favourable institutional framework and
relative peace), and its limitations and subsequent contraction (due to
Malthusian checks). Both, however, stay close to the basic neoclassical
tenet that economic systems tend towards a state of general equilibrium in
which supply and demand are overall matched. This equilibrium depends
on exogenous factors, such as particular climates favouring specific crops,
particular property regimes supporting private or public investment, par-
ticular demographic regimes or cultural preferences shaping demand, and
so on. Real life economies, of course, never achieve equilibrium; supply
and demand change continuously under the influence of external forces—
drastic ones such as wars or harvest failures, but also common ones as
changing consumer tastes or erroneous decisions by producers.
Nevertheless, the assumption that the drive towards equilibrium deter-
mines how an economic system plays out in real life (if left alone) has been
at the heart of mainstream economics since Léon Walras published his
Elements of Pure Economics (1874). From that perspective, the perfect
“Walrasian” market serves as a yardstick to analyse real economies: what
forces prevent equilibrium from emerging; what forces disturb equilibria
7
Hopkins, “Models, Ships and Staples”, 85; see also Hopkins, “Taxes and Trade”;
Hopkins, “Rome, Taxes, Rents and Trade”; Hopkins, “Rents, Taxes, Trade and the City
of Rome”.
8
Wilson, “Approaches to Quantifying Roman Trade”.
that may have emerged?9 The paradigm has achieved a lot and proved use-
ful to explain short-term economic developments in stable situations,
when exogenous shocks are absent or mild enough to be absorbed. The
evident downside of the approach, however, is that it starts from the ques-
tion “why doesn’t reality conform to the model?” There is a clear tension
between the equilibrium-drive inherent in the logic of walrassian markets,
and the imperfections, contingencies, and uncertainties of life; the acci-
dents, misunderstandings, ignorance, lack of information, miscalculations,
and change of minds and hearts of real people.10 As Douglass North put
it: “The rationality assumption of neoclassical economics assumes that the
players know what is in their self-interest and act accordingly. Ten millen-
nia of human economic history says that is a wildly erroneous assumption.”11
Not surprisingly, using Walrasian logic to explain economic history—to
retrodict rather than to predict—has rarely been successful. Comparative
advantage, to give only one example, may be a useful concept to explain
why it made sense that Egypt exported grain and Italy wine. It is not very
useful to explain why this eventuality materialised only from the first cen-
tury BCE onwards and remained heavily state-regulated throughout the
rest of Roman history.
Part of the difficulty is that from the viewpoint of general equilibrium
theory history is always a succession of exogenous shocks. This makes it
hard for any economy to “discover” its equilibrium in the real world.12
Equilibrium economics deals with this by identifying the shocks and
changing externalities, and establishing how these prevent or change the
equilibrium predicted by economic theory. For instance, text-book
wisdom predicts that pandemics increase the price of labour (now scarce)
and decrease the price of land (now abundant). We assume that long-term
strong and stable polities (such as the Roman Empire) support and are
supported by resilient economic systems, capable of absorbing minor local
9
Cf. Arthur, Complexity and the Economy, 3: “[E]conomics early in its history took a sim-
pler approach, one more amenable to mathematical analysis. It asked not how agents’ behav-
iors would react to the aggregate patterns these created, but what behaviors (actions,
strategies, expectations) would be upheld by—would be consistent with—the aggregate pat-
terns these caused. It asked in other words what patterns would call for no changes in micro-
behavior, and would therefore be in stasis, or equilibrium” (emphasis by the author).
10
On the advantages of equilibrium economics and its limits see Arthur, 3–4.
11
North, “Some Fundamental Puzzles in Economic History/Development”, 237.
12
The terminology is revealing. It suggests that equilibrium is really “out there”. It is
merely hard to find because life keeps getting in the way.
8 K. VERBOVEN
shocks (such as crop failures) and returning to a viable equilibrium after

major shocks (such as the Antonine Plague or the third-century political
crisis). But why would text-book economics be a reliable guide? Claiming
that real economic systems tend towards theoretical states of equilibrium
is an assumption derived from nineteenth-century mathematical theory, it
is not based on empirical observation. Mathematical elegance is not
enough to support the assumption that reality conforms to theory. As in
physics, theoretical predictions that logically follow from mathematical
models need confirmation from reliable observations before they can be
accepted as proof that the model is correct. The logic of Walrasian eco-
nomics may be undeniable, but its predictions have time and again been
proven wrong because “it is stuck with an unworkable paradigm—apply-
ing to an unstable world concepts derived from the assumption of
stability”.13 While equilibrium models are by definition static, social reality
is dynamic. Empirical data from real-life economic systems show that, like
all other social systems, they are dynamic and, therefore, inherently unsta-
ble. Change is not an externality, but a prevalent characteristic of eco-
nomic and social systems. Equilibrium is not the natural (end) state of an
economic system. It is a short-lived exception; a passing phase.
As New Institutional Economics began its shift away from the neoclas-
sical model (inspired by one of its founding fathers, Douglass North) and
Behavioural Economics pinpointed flaws in neoclassical assumptions,
another economic model was developed in the 1980s and 1990s.
Complexity Economics embraces the view that disequilibrium is an inher-
ent feature of economic systems and aims to study the dynamics of real
economic systems.14 Physicists and mathematicians were involved from
the start in developing its theory and methodology, trying to address the
gap they perceived between the neoclassical model premised on mathe-
matical logic and a reality that begged for a different kind of maths.
Complexity Economics assumes that economic systems exist in reality
as dynamic networks and can be studied as such. According to Complexity
Economics, economic systems are inherently dynamic and unstable but
not chaotic. They are “complex adaptive systems”, non-linear in their
development, unpredictable in their behaviour, yet self-organised in the
sense that they contain nested (complex adaptive) subsystems that co-
evolve within the larger system. They consist of independent agents that
13
Freeman and Carchedi, Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics, viii.
14
Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth.
interact with each other and adjust their actions and strategies to the per-
ceived outcome of previous actions. Economic systems are themselves
subsystems of larger social and ecological complex adaptive systems.
Complex societies can be defined as complex adaptive social systems char-
acterised by the interaction of many diverse interacting components (indi-
viduals, groups, organisations, etc.) and by elaborate diversified rule sets,
some of which support societal subsystems, such as the economic system.15
A variety of techniques can be used to study the emergent patterns of
complex adaptive systems. One of these, familiar to historians, is Network
Analysis to visualise both the structure and behaviour of systems. Another,
more familiar to archaeologists, is using the framework of thermodynam-
ics to identify the controlling variables and thresholds of a society’s Socio-
ecological system (SES). Yet another familiar to archaeologists, is
agent-based modelling, whereby the results derived from computer simu-
lations are compared to observed real-world patterns to verify or falsify
assumptions regarding the cause of these patterns.
Contrary to neoclassical economics, complexity economics analyses
data as the outcome of network dynamics and the logic of change, rather
than as deviations or confirmations of theoretical supply and demand
curves. The questions then relate to the structure of these networks, the
regularities in their behaviour and their degree of inter-connectedness.
The advantage for ancient economic historians (and more generally eco-
nomic historians working on preindustrial economies with poorly quanti-
fiable data) is that it opens up for analyses source-data that are relevant to
study economic development but are poorly suited for neoclassical analy-
ses. Thus, for economic historians, complexity economics complements
the more established (or familiar) neoclassical approaches.
2 A Brief Survey of the Chapters

While some of the contributions in this volume are more empirical than
others the emphasis is not on the concrete historical cases they discuss or
the conclusions they reach but on theories and methodological questions.
How can we improve the use of theories and models in ancient economic
history rather than reflect on the intrinsic merits of this or that theory?
Chronologically we cover broadly all of classical and late antiquity,
although clearly some chapters have a more limited scope than others.
15
For a more elaborate discussion see the chapters by Verboven.
10 K. VERBOVEN
The first part focuses on theoretical frameworks and methodologies.

The second and third offer case studies, respectively, on urbanisation and
epidemics. The first chapter, by Verboven, explores ways to connect the
new-institutional framework (popular among ancient historians) to that of
system theory (popular among archaeologists).16 It addresses the major
problem of non-designed institutions—social norms and conventions—in
New Institutional Economics. While scholars agree they are extremely
important, they are very hard to model. A common approach, therefore,
is to take them as unchanging externalities. I argue that this is not a valid
approach when dealing with economic development in multi-cultural
empires because incongruence between social norms and legal norms
greatly increases the costs of enforcement and maintaining social order.
Social systems theory offers a way to conceptualise institutional change at
this level.
Social system theory and complexity economics provide a theoretical
framework to think about ancient realities. They offer models—simplified
versions of reality that lay bare the essence of things and the relations
between them. For theories to be useful, however, we need to confront
them with reality. In historical research that means reliable empirical infor-
mation about past realities. We need ways to transform raw historical
source data into concepts that the models understand. But how can we
control this process? And how can we avoid the well-known pitfalls of
theoretical approaches: you only find what you are looking for, and you
always find what you are looking for? Without a clear methodology the
framework of complexity economics is powerless. Johannes Preiser-
Kapeller and Tom Brughmans in Chaps. 3 and 4 respectively discuss two
such methodologies: network analysis and agent-based modelling.
Network analysis is the core methodology “par excellence” to study
real-life complex adaptive systems, including social and economic systems.
It aims to capture patterns that emerge from the interaction between the
“nodes” (individuals, households, families, groups, sites, etc.). Such emer-
gence is the key characteristic of a complex system, the properties of which
cannot be reduced to the characteristics of the component parts. Preiser-
Kapeller argues that “[n]etwork models can serve as proxies to estimate
the range, density and complexity of past economic life”. An additional
advantage is that the level of abstraction achieved through network
16
The chapter is useful also to links this book to a previous book in the same research
programme: Verboven and Erdkamp, Structure and Performance in the Roman Economy.
analysis is conducive to cross-cultural and -temporal comparisons, allow-

ing us to capture trajectories of economic development. He illustrates his
point with a study of the riverine transport network from Roman antiquity
to the Early Middle Ages showing the reduction of organisational, eco-
nomic, and infrastructural complexity from the Roman to the post-Roman
period. Network analysis can be useful also to test hypotheses regarding
the Roman Empire’s macro-economic “nature”. Preiser-Kapeller next
uses the data from the ORBIS Stanford Geospatial Network Model to
show how the empire was structured in twenty-five regional and supra-
regional clusters of higher internal connectivity, mostly thanks to their
maritime or riverine connections. The cohesion of the empire depended
on the links between these clusters. A network analysis of the Indian
Ocean trade based on the Periplus, in turn, reveals that while the Egyptian
harbours were important, the integration of the system as a whole
depended on other intermediary nodes and circuits in the Arabian
Peninsula, India, the Persian Gulf and Bay of Bengal. Network analysis
allows us to see through the evident Roman bias of the author. The last
case study presented by Preiser-Kapeller uses the Rheinzabern pottery
stamps collected by Allard Mees. It shows different forms of internal
organisation or cooperation, and the diffusion of technical skills.
Network analysis is data driven. It is built from the ground up using
available raw data. Gaps can be filled in to some extent; patterns may
become visible even when pieces are missing. But there are limits to what
is possible. Sometimes, network analysis is not an option. Computational
(agent-based) modelling attempts to work around this problem. It is the
second major research methodology of complexity economics.
Computational modelling creates simulations of reality. Virtual agents are
created with predefined preferences, and made to interact in environments
affecting the agents’ predefined choice sets, for instance by the distribu-
tion of material and/or immaterial resources, and events impacting the
outcome of choices. The simulation is then run and the outcomes are
observed. By changing variables modellers can study the effects different
variables have on outcomes. The closer the match between computer-
generated outcomes and real data, the higher the statistical likelihood that
the set of chosen variables and their values also conforms to reality. Agent-
based modelling has become popular in archaeology the past decades.
Tom Brughmans in Chap. 4 here argues how this methodology is useful
also to analyse problems in Roman economic history. He illustrates this
with a simulation of the correlation of tableware prices and distance from
12 K. VERBOVEN
their place of production. The objective is to study economic integration

based on the common assumption of economists that well integrated
competitive markets produce a strong correlation between the price of
goods in a location and the distance to the production region of that
good. The simulation is meant to overcome the well-known problem that
reliable data to evaluate the degree and mechanisms of integration are
simply not available for the Roman economy. It does so by translating the
components of competing hypotheses—in this case of Peter Temin and
Peter Fibiger Bang17—into variables driving the simulation and subse-
quently comparing the outcomes with archaeological distribution maps.
Brughmans first designed his model, MERCURY, to represent and test
the availability and reliability of commercial information on Roman table-
ware and then expanded it to include also the distance away from its pro-
duction place. The virtual agents in the model are traders who are
interconnected in a social network through which commercial informa-
tion and products move. The model generates simulated distributions of
tableware, which can then be compared to the data of excavated and pub-
lished sherds in the ICRATES database. When variables were set to repre-
sent conditions of low integration, the simulated distributions produced
by the model were incompatible with the observed real distribution data.
This suggests a high likelihood that markets for tableware were well-inte-
grated. Temin’s hypothesis, however, of a single integrated Mediterranean-
wide market economy, is not confirmed. Prices do rise with “distance”,
but exponentially—not merely as a result of increasing transport costs.
The last contribution in the first part of the volume deals with visualisa-
tions. These play an important role in network analysis and complexity
economics. Graphs, matrices, and flowcharts not only illustrate or support
ex ante intellectual conclusions. They serve as cognitive tools to better
understand relationships between concepts or data that have no visual
dimension. They are created to express pre-defined relations between con-
cepts—often generated by computers from databases—and provide data
for further analyses. Merav Haklai in Chap. 5 discusses this role of visuali-
sations and offers a complexity-oriented model to analyse the institutional
environment for the use of money in the Roman world. Based on this
visualisation-driven analysis she argues that changes in legal institutions
governing the use of various forms of money were not (only) the result of
conscious redefinitions by Roman jurists. Rather, the potential for change
17
Temin, The Roman Market Economy; Bang, The Roman Bazaar.
was created as an emergent property of the interrelations between existing

arrangements within the Roman legal system and with non-Roman legal
systems. Jurists then used this potential to formulate new remedies to
problems that transcended the possibilities of existing remedies. Thus, the
potential for institutional changes was generated by the dynamic interplay
of material and intellectual interactions between money-users and jurists.
The second part of the book comprises three contributions on urban
systems. The first, by Dries Daems in Chap. 6 applies complexity analysis
on pottery finds as proxy data to study the increase in social, economic,
and political complexity at late Achaemenid and early Hellenistic Sagalassos
and Düzen Tepe, two village settlements located 1.8 km from each other.
Both communities were very similar in terms of socio-economic complex-
ity until around 200 BCE. Yet, Düzen Tepe was abandoned in the second
century BCE at the time when Sagalassos began its development into a
major regional centre. Both sites were centres of pottery production. The
author looks at resource procurement, material production, and distribu-
tion, showing how the recorded pottery finds reflect a much wider trans-
formation from the second century BCE onwards towards increased
complexity driven by changing structures of supply and demand, capital
investment, institutionalisation, division of labour, technological develop-
ment, and property rights. Each of these causal factors can be traced in the
pottery data. They show that Düzen Tepe was and remained an inward-
oriented village until its disappearance in the second century
BCE. Sagalassos, on the other hand, developed further into an urban
regional centre. This was made possible through loopback effects that
greatly increased the initially modest and historically contingent opportu-
nities for non-subsistence activities created by changing political condi-
tions in Sagalassos.
Dimitri Van Limbergen and Frank Vermeulen in Chap. 7 aim to
establish new and more reliable parameters to estimate population figures
of ancient cities that are not or only partially excavated. On the basis of a
case study of Potentia and Trea, using remote sensing techniques, they
propose new realistic figures for the total space taken by roads, urban
infrastructure, and public architecture and look for realistic estimates of
inhabitants per hectare of residential areas depending on the type of hous-
ing. The authors established for both towns that the residential area occu-
pied respectively about 60 and 50 per cent of the town, with large domus
being the dominant type of residential buildings. Based on comparative
evidence from other sites the authors subdivide domus into bands
14 K. VERBOVEN
depending on size and suggest occupation ratios. This provides new esti-
mates for population densities in the range of 75–125 persons per hectare,
considerably below the commonly used density figures of 120–150 per-
sons per hectare, based on Pompeii and Herculaneum combined with
comparative figures from medieval and early modern times. The authors
suggest these low-density figures reflect the nature of small towns as ser-
vice centres rather than population centres.
Rinse Willet in Chap. 8 argues that “[c]ities and their formation are
good examples of how the actions of a number of individual agents pro-
duce structures that display complexity and behave as complex systems”.
Empirical studies of modern cities and urban networks reveal scalar prop-
erties (or self-similarity)—similar patterns and functions emerge at differ-
ent scales; for instance, neighbourhoods have shrines or chapels, larger
units churches or temples, cities cathedrals or temples servicing a wider
area, and so on. The emergence of these properties is less studied and
understood for premodern urban systems. Willet argues that cities in
Roman Asia Minor were part of wider urban networks. We can study these
as complex adaptive systems by using archaeological proxy data, such as
(but not limited to) surface sizes and public buildings. The uneven geo-
graphic distribution of cities cannot be explained by topography and envi-
ronment alone. The increase in the number of cities in the Roman period
and their geographic spread reflect institutional changes betraying
increased division of labour, social hierarchy, and inequality—signs of
increasing complexity in the overall urban system. Public buildings pro-
vide more information. Willet focuses on theatres and bath-houses. Both
required considerable investments; the latter, in addition, substantial infra-
structure and organisation to ensure water and fuel supply—both signify-
ing greater societal and economic complexity. The data show a dramatic
increase of numbers and sizes during the Roman period. Rank-size analy-
sis, using surface areas, shows a convex pattern, which may reflect a less
than perfect systemic integration. The province of Asia, however, shows
markedly less convexity, indicating a greater, although still imperfect, inte-
gration. We cannot yet make out whether this integration was (also) the
result of economic integration or (merely) of political factors, but it seems
to be path-dependent and related to the urbanisation process during
Roman times. Roman administration and economic commercialisation
increased the interdependence of cities. Hierarchy in the urban system was
an emergent property of this development.
The last part of this volume consists of two contributions, respectively

on the Antonine and the Justinianic Plague. Colin Elliott in Chap. 9
notes that the debate on the (potential) effects of the Antonine Plague is
inspired by equilibrium economics, with demographic contraction leading
to a loss of labour supply (in turn creating a upward pressure on wages),
but an excess supply of land and money. The roughly doubling of price
levels between the 160s and 190s was thus easily explained as a result of
the Antonine Plague. Elliot, however, notes that it is impossible to con-
struct statistically significant trend lines from the limited dataset of private
wheat prices we have. Thus, the hypothesis that there was a sudden infla-
tion around 160/190 caused by the Plague cannot be confirmed statisti-
cally. In stark contrast to this the data for (non-market) state prices show
a statistically significant trend line of stable prices until at least
216 CE. Rather than having a stabilising effect on markets, Elliot argues
that such a state policy would have disturbed the market for private wheat
sales, thus not stimulating equilibrium prices, but preventing them. If the
rise of private price levels was induced by population decline due to the
Antonine Plague, moreover, neo-Malthusian logic would predict a return
to “normal” equilibrium conditions afterwards. The (presumed) fact that
price levels did not return to first- and second-century levels would then
imply that second-century prices reflect a disequilibrium due presumably
to the effects of Egypt’s role as Rome’s main supplier of wheat.
Conspicuously, real wages (contrary to nominal wages) remained stable
before and after the Antonine Plague. Military wages show a similar pat-
tern for the second century and the Severan era. Elliott concludes that
“[e]ither the plague was not as severe or the Roman economy was not as
integrated as we have been led to believe; or perhaps these are both true”.
One of the problems with comparative economic history so far is not
only the scarcity of quantitative data from antiquity and the early Middle
Ages—economic archaeology is rapidly changing that—but particularly
the dissimilarity of available data. For late medieval and early modern
Europe various archives provide useful proxy data to reconstruct various
economic indicators. These data are lacking for the ancient world and the
quantitative data we do have are impossible to translate into the economic
indicators used in the cliometric history of Middle Ages and early modern
period.18 Lars Boerner and Battista Severgnini in Chap. 10 test the
potential of using the spread of respectively the Justinianic Plague and the
18
Verboven, “Ancient Cliometrics”.
16 K. VERBOVEN
Black Death to measure and compare economic interaction. The authors

showed in a previous article that the spread of the Black Death along trad-
ing routes reflects institutional determinants of trade, such as political bor-
ders or religion, as well as the intensity of trade and long-term growth
dynamics. In this chapter they test the same methodology for the
Justinianic Plague and investigate whether this allows the creation of a
comparative perspective. Their results show a correlation with the Stanford
ORBIS dataset, indicating (not surprisingly) the role of geography and
transportation technology. The pattern of the spread of both epidemics is
similar, but the speed is much slower in the case of the Justinianic Plague.
The authors interpret this as an indication of relatively weaker economic
interactions and lower levels of economic activity in Justinian’s Empire
than in the Mediterranean and Europe during the Commercial
Revolution—possibly because the former presented a phase of decline or
incomplete recovery, the latter one of growth.
Summarising the message of this book we can say that equilibrium eco-
nomics is probably not the most useful theoretical framework to discuss
economic developments in the Roman world, or to integrate archaeologi-
cal and historical source data in a comprehensive analysis. There are not
enough indications that the Roman economy was sufficiently integrated
through markets to warrant an equilibrium-based approach. Complexity
economics, using network analyses and agent-based modelling, allows us
to analyse the Roman economy as a system integrated through multidi-
mensional interactions—including but not limited to market relations.
Rather than positing for analytical purposes the assumption that the sys-
tem’s characteristics conformed to an intrinsic drive towards equilibrium,
this alternative approach interprets these characteristics as emergent prop-
erties of underlying real interactions that left traces both in the material
record and in textual sources.
Acknowledgements Last but no least it is my pleasure here to thank our support-

ers, collaborators, and funding bodies without whom this book would never have
been possible. The work is part of the 2017–2021 research programme of the
international network “Structural Determinants of Economic Performance in the
Roman World”, generously funded by the Flanders Research Foundation (FWO).
Six of the contributions19 originate from discussions at an international workshop
19
By Verboven, Preiser-Kapeller, Brughmans, Van Limbergen and Vermeulen, Willet
and Elliot.
held in Sagalassos, Turkey, in 2015 funded by this network and by the Sagalassos
Archaeological Research Project. Special thanks are due to Jeroen Poblome, direc-
tor of the Sagalassos Project for making this possible.
Bibliography
Arthur, W. Brian. Complexity and the Economy, 2015.
Bang, Peter Fibiger. The Roman Bazaar: A Comparative Study of Trade and
Markets in a Tributary Empire. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008.
Beinhocker, Eric D. The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical
Remaking of Economics. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
Finley, M. I. Ancient History: Evidence and Models. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.:
Viking, 1986.
Freeman, Alan, and Guglielmo Carchedi. Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics.
Cheltenham, UK; Brookfield, US: Edward Elgar, 1996.
Harper, Kyle. The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.
Hopkins, Keith. Conquerors and Slaves. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1978.
Hopkins, Keith. ‘Models, Ships and Staples’. In Trade and Famine in Classical
Antiquity, edited by Peter Garnsey and Charles Richard Whittacker, 84–109.
Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary Volume No. 8.
Cambridge, 1983.
Hopkins, Keith. ‘Rents, Taxes, Trade and the City of Rome’. In Mercati perma-
nenti e mercati periodici nel mondo romano. Atti degli Incontri capresi di storia
dell’economia antica: (Capri 13–15 ottobre 1997), edited by Elio Lo Cascio,
253–67. Bari: Edipuglia, 2000.
Hopkins, Keith. ‘Rome, Taxes, Rents and Trade’. Kodai 6 (1995/1996): 41–75.
Hopkins, Keith. ‘Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C.–A.D. 400)’.
Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980): 101–25.
Manning, Joseph Gilbert, and Ian Morris, eds. The Ancient Economy: Evidence and
Models. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005.
North, Douglass C. ‘Some Fundamental Puzzles in Economic History/
Development’. In The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II, edited by
W. Brian Arthur, Steven N Durlauf, and David A Lane, 223–37. Reading:
Addison-Wesley, Advanced Book Program, 1997.
Remesal Rodríguez, José, Victor Revilla Calvo, and Juan Manuel Bermúdez
Lorenzo, eds. Cuantificar las economías antiguas: problemas y métodos =
Quantifying Ancient Economies: Problems and Methodologies. Collecció
Instrumenta 60. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona. Edicions, 2018.
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Scheidel, Walter. ‘In Search of Roman Economic Growth’. Journal of Roman

Archaeology 22, no. 1 (2009): 46–70.
Scheidel, Walter, and Sitta Von Reden, eds. The Ancient Economy. New York:
Routledge, 2002.
Temin, Peter. The Roman Market Economy. The Princeton Economic History of
the Western World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Verboven, Koenraad. ‘The Knights Who Say NIE. Can Neo-Institutional
Economics Live up to Its Expectation in Ancient History Research?’ In
Structure and Performance in the Roman Economy. Models, Methods and Case
Studies, edited by Koenraad Verboven and Paul Erdkamp, 33–57. Brussels:
Latomus, 2015.
Verboven, Koenraad. ‘Ancient Cliometrics and Archaeological Proxy-Data.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’. In Cuantificar las economías anti-
guas. Problemas y métodos. Quantifying Ancient Economies. Problems and
Methodologies, edited by José Remesal Rodríguez, Víctor Revilla Calvo, and
Manuel Bermúdez Lorenzo, 345–71. Collecció Instrumenta 60. Barcelona:
Universitat de Barcelona. Edicions, 2018.
Verboven, Koenraad, and Paul Erdkamp, eds. Structure and Performance in the
Roman Economy. Models, Methods and Case Studies. Collection Latomus 350.
Brussels: Latomus, 2015.
Wilson, Andrew. ‘Approaches to Quantifying Roman Trade’. In Quantifying the
Roman Economy: Methods and Problems, 213–49. Oxford Roman Economy
Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
PART I
Theoretical Frameworks
and Methodologies
CHAPTER 2
Playing by Whose Rules? Institutional

Resilience, Conflict and Change
in the Roman Economy
Koenraad Verboven
1 Framing the Problem

In terms of the amount and variety of production and energy capture the
Roman economic system—encompassing roughly a quarter of the world’s
population—was one of the most successful in pre-industrial history. It
was matched (probably) by Song China (960–1279) but structurally sur-
passed only when the combination of science and technology raised the
reach of human achievements forever. Through its connections with the
outside world—Arabia, Eastern Africa, India, and indirectly China—Rome
shaped the first economic world system. Not everyone in the system ben-
efited. Inequality was rampant—with a small “one-percenter” elite, maybe
10 per cent middling groups and a great mass of people hovering slightly
K. Verboven (*)
Department of History, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
e-mail: Koen.Verboven@ugent.be
© The Author(s) 2021 21

K. Verboven (ed.), Complexity Economics, Palgrave Studies in
Ancient Economies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47898-8_2
22 K. VERBOVEN
above subsistence, like the undergrowth in a forest or occasionally like a

dangerous undertow.1
Scholars usually interpret this success as the outcome of three factors:
favourable institutional arrangements (including the Pax Romana) that
lowered transaction costs; favourable climatic conditions; and technologi-
cal innovations such as building concrete or water-powered mills and
wheels. Clearly, there were links and cross-overs between these three, but
for practical reasons I will address only the first factor: institutions. Rather
than look at the effect of institutions on transaction costs, however, as
many have done the past twenty-five years or so, I will focus on the rela-
tion between institutions and social networks. My aim is to present a
framework derived from theories in social sciences to analyse deep institu-
tional change in the Roman empire—not changes in the visible formal
institutions, but in the invisible rules that produce the patterns of social
life. The first and longest part of this chapter will tie together models in a
useful framework. The second part applies these insights to the
Roman empire.
2 Institutions and Institutional Change

Institutions (laws, conventions, customs, etc.) are the man-made “rules of
the game” that structure social interaction.2 They regulate the bestowal of
social roles, determine which choices and actions are permitted and which
results are acceptable. Property rights and tax regimes prescribe how con-
trol over resources is distributed, law codes and customs to what use they
may legitimately be put. Different institutional arrangements explain why
agents with similar personalities, driven by similar psychological needs and
ambitions, facing similar challenges, make different choices and deploy
different strategies with different outcomes. Different incentive structures
laid out by institutions in different societies incite aggressive young males
to become warriors, pirates, or football hooligans; alfa-types to become
1
Scheidel and Friesen, “The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the
Roman Empire”, 1, on inequality as a structural feature of historical states and empire see
Scheidel, The Great Leveler; compare also Piketty, Le capital au XXIe siècle; Milanovic,
Lindert, and Williamson, “Pre-Industrial Inequality*”; Milanović, Global Inequality. On the
size and development of the Roman economy see also Harper, The Fate of Rome; but see also
the critical remarks by Haldon et al., “Plagues, Climate Change, and the End of an Empire”.
2
See Verboven 2015 for a more detailed discussion of New Institutional Economics and
its use in ancient economic history.
2 PLAYING BY WHOSE RULES? INSTITUTIONAL RESILIENCE, CONFLICT… 23
chiefs, generals, captains of industry, or gang leaders; cunning minds to

grow into Ulysses, political brokers, used car dealers, or stock traders.
Thus, a society’s institutional make-up determines its overall performance,
whether in terms of political control, military capacity, tribute extraction
or economic production and distribution.
But institutions come in many guises. The most common distinction is
that between formal (or designed) institutions and informal (or implicit or
organic) ones. The former are laws, decrees, statutes or procedures
designed by agents or organisations endowed with the authority to formu-
late and impose them. They are based on perceived interests (material and
immaterial) which they are intended to protect. Informal institutions are
social norms, conventions, and customs that pose constraints on agents’
behaviour without having been consciously thought out.3
Both formal and informal institutions require monitoring and enforce-
ment. Self-monitoring (based on moral principles or a desire to fit in) plays
a role, but rule defection becomes attractive when compliance is perceived
as not being in one’s personal or group interest. All societies, therefore,
need ways to detect and punish cheaters and free-riders. Formal institu-
tions are enforced following (institutionalised) procedures by special
(institutionally) designated agents, using resources that are usually (but
not always) given to them to perform that specific task. Informal institu-
tions are enforced through emotional sanctions (shame, guilt, remorse,
etc.) and, more importantly, social sanctions, ranging from gossip to social
ostracism and lynching. Monitoring and enforcement of informal institu-
tions is relatively effective and low-cost in close-knit face-to-face commu-
nities, where interdependence is high and reliable information is easily and
swiftly obtained. It is difficult to achieve, however, in larger complex soci-
eties where information is often unreliable and agents form cliques to
defend particularistic interests contrary to the interests of others.
Monitoring and enforcement costs of designed institutions on the other
hand are inhibitive unless they can rely on support from implicit social
institutions, based on strong cultural beliefs about norms and values—
including values regarding the legitimacy of the enforcement apparatus.
Without a minimum of congruence between implicit social norms and
3
Alesina and Giuliano, “Culture and Institutions”. Propose “(formal) institutions” and
“culture” as “more appropriate and less confusing” labels (902).
24 K. VERBOVEN
designed institutions, therefore, the monitoring and enforcement costs of

formal institutions imposes a drain on resources.4
In economic history, institutional arrangements have been used mostly
to explain economic performance—as an explanans rather than an
explanandum. Merely positing favourable institutions to explain perfor-
mance, however, does not solve the problem. It shifts the question: where
do these institutions come from? How do they change? The Roman
empire is a school example of institutional change on a massive scale. The
long-term stability of the empire and its economic success indicate that it
succeeded in overcoming incongruities between formal and informal insti-
tutions. But how did it do this? By defining institutional change as an
explanandum we move the debate to one of the central problems in new
institutional sociology and economics: how to explain and model institu-
tional change.
One influential strand in social sciences posits that durable institutional
change is the result of evolutionary selection at group levels. Driven by
competition over scarce resources, groups (households, families, clans,
tribes, cities, states, firms, etc.) with more efficient institutions drive out
groups that are constrained by less efficient ones.5 The crux, however, is
how to define efficiency. Early New Institutional Economics took a
market-centred view on the problem. Market competition weeds out inef-
ficient organisations. Therefore, nations with more efficient market insti-
tutions were believed to outperform nations with less efficient ones. The
former achieve stronger economic growth, becoming richer and more
powerful. Ultimately nations with inefficient markets are either absorbed,
subdued, or forced to adapt.6 Thus (supposedly) early modern England
and the United Provinces outperformed the Spanish empire and France
because they had more efficient institutions, which allowed their ruling
elites to mobilise more financial and military resources and better co-
ordinate military action. By the late eighteenth century England had
become the leading European colonial and industrial power thanks to its
liberal institutions and efficient capital market. This early teleological
market-centred view, however, has long been criticised and although it
4
Nee, “Norms and Networks in Economic and Organizational Performance”; Elster,
“Social Norms and Economic Theory”; Verboven, “Cité et réciprocité. Le rôle des croyances
culturelles dans l’économie romaine”.
5
Bowles, Microeconomics. Bowles and Gintis, A Cooperative Species, 121.
6
For a more fundamental(ist) view on markets as the natural outcome of evolution see
Hayek, The Fatal Conceit.
continues to be cited in debates on the modernisation of Europe, it fails to

convince as an explanatory model for real historical developments.
Institutions that are inefficient from a market-economic viewpoint can
remain stable for centuries because they are efficient to maintain a status
quo in resource distribution that disproportionately favours elites who
control the formation and enforcement of institutions. Polities that
develop institutions that favour market competition may lose out when
forced to compete, economically or militarily, with polities that do not, for
instance because the latter establish effective monopolies or because the
institutional make-up of the non-market polity is more effective in mobil-
ising and co-ordinating military power, or even more mundanely because
the other polity is bigger and/or geographically and ecologically more
favourably situated.7
In a more general sense, however, efficiency and competition are still
widely accepted as the keys to unravel institutional change. Efficiency to
deal with crises (robustness, resilience) determines the survival of any
institutional system. Military, political, or economic competition realigns
resource distribution in favour of more efficient organisations—whether
inside a complex society or between societies. Without competition,
organisations that benefit from the way in which resources are (re)distrib-
uted, have no incentive to change the rules by which the social, economic,
or political game is played. Market competition is part of this story. For
instance, bearing Occam’s razor in mind, the rise of villa estates in second-
century BCE Italy is best explained by assuming that this was the most
efficient mode of production to maximise the estate owners’ income.
Since they largely belonged to the same social elites from which political
and military elites were drawn, formal institutional changes that facilitated
villa management are best explained as driven by market demands
experienced by the estate owners. Similarly, legal innovations, such as the
actiones adiecticiae qualitatis, which allowed the use of slave managers to
run a business, are best explained as attempts to solve agency problems for
social elites who wished to invest resources in market oriented businesses.
7
See Ogilvie, “Whatever Is, Is Right?”, and there for more references; see for instance the
debate on the guilds between Greif, Institutions; Dessi and Ogilvie, “The Political Economy
of Merchant Guilds”; Ogilvie, “Whatever Is, Is Right?”; Ogilvie, “Guilds, Efficiency, and
Social Capital”; Ogilvie, “Rehabilitating the Guilds”; Ogilvie, Institutions and European
Trade; Epstein, “Craft Guilds in the Pre-Modern Economy”; Gelderblom, Cities of
Commerce; Ogilvie, The European Guilds. For the now more popular state-centred approach,
see Johnson and Koyama, “States and Economic Growth”.
26 K. VERBOVEN
Clearly, however, Rome did not conquer the Seleucid empire or Gaul
because its economy was more efficient, but because its army was. The
demand for cheap labour in second-century BCE Italy may have drawn
enslaved war captives, but these were not captured because the slave-mode
of production in Italy was more efficient than traditional agriculture in the
conquered territories. Caesar did not win power because the market
favoured him, but because he was a better and luckier military commander.
Rome was a huge metropolitan market, but Augustus well understood
that market incentives alone would not suffice to secure the capital’s needs.
The imperial food supply system—the anonna—was designed as a mix of
direct control, compulsory services and subsidised trade.
But if markets are merely part of the story and if institutional change is
neither only driven by or necessarily directed towards better market insti-
tutions, why did institutional arrangements in the Roman empire give so
much scope to free enterprise and market exchanges compared to other
empires such as Han China? How important was market competition in
institutional change in the Roman empire?
Designed institutions (laws, statutes, procedures, etc.) are relatively
easy to change in principle. In practice, however, conflicts of interests and
entanglement with other institutions can obstruct even the most essential
changes—especially in societies where resources are distributed unequally
in favour of elites who monopolise or control the right to create or change
formal institutions and determine their enforcement. Conflicts or compe-
tition over the distribution of resources—induced by exogenous factors
(such as wars, epidemics, or resource depletion) or endogenous tensions
(such as elite competition or social conflicts)—are the main reason why
formal institutions are adapted. In the long(er) run changing cultural
beliefs as well may lead to changes in designed institutions. Same-sex mar-
riages are an example in our time. The right for mothers to inherit from
their children ab intestate is a Roman example. Most are only minor
changes (for instance Nero’s senatorial decree of 61 CE laying down new
rules for sealing legal documents),8 but some introduce major changes.
The Lex Aebutia, for instance—which generalised the formulary proce-
dure in litigation making the edicts of praetor urbanus and the aedilis
8
Suet., Ner. 17; Paulus, Sent. 5,25,6; cf. Meyer, Legitimacy and Law in the Roman
World, 165–68.
curulis the main sources of law—provides an example of a major change in

Roman legislation in the second century BCE.9
But economic performance is not just determined by a society’s formal
institutional framework. Cultural beliefs and values profoundly impact
economically relevant choices and behaviour.10 They constitute informal
rules that are much harder to change. While figures with moral authority,
such as priests or charismatic leaders, have some influence, the fact that
social institutions are ingrained in agents’ minds and habits and are subject
to informal social sanctions makes them elusive to formal authorities.
Many studies by economists and economic historians work around this
problem by assuming that informal institutions change so slowly that in
modelling or explaining institutional change they can simply be consid-
ered as important but static externalities.11 This is a defensible option for
short- and mid-term studies in homogenous and stable societies, but it is
not when we are dealing with societies experiencing phases of instability or
rapid formal institutional change: exogenous shocks (as for instance vio-
lence or (civil) wars) and formal institutional changes have been shown to
affect values and cultural beliefs.12 Modelling cultural beliefs as static
externalities is certainly not an option in the case of long-lasting multilin-
gual and multicultural empires, such as the Roman, formed through vio-
lent conquests, going through phases of regional conflicts and internal
struggles. Not only are we then confronted with inevitable incongruities
between formal institutions imposed by the victor and social institutions
in force among the vanquished, but the legitimacy itself of enforcement
institutions imposed by formal authorities becomes an issue. If a popula-
tion refuses to interiorise a new rule imperial authorities need to invest
more resources in rule enforcement, which adversely affects the system’s
overall performance.
9
Gai., Inst. IV, 30; Gell., NA XVI, 10; Jolowicz and Nicholas, A Historical Introduction
to the Study of Roman Law, 218–25; Schiller, Roman Law, Mechanisms of Development, 405.
10
See Alesina and Giuliano, “Culture and Institutions” for an overview.
11
Williamson, “The New Institutional Economic: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead”, 596;
Eggertsen, “A Note on the Economics of Institutions”, 13. On the long persistence of cul-
tural traits see for instance Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti, Making Democracy Work. For
attempts to model the impact of institutional change on cultural beliefs and values see Alesina
and Giuliano, “Culture and Institutions”.
12
See Alesina and Giuliano, “Culture and Institutions”, who stress the interaction between
culture and formal institutions, rather than any one-sided causality.
28 K. VERBOVEN
This poses a challenge if we want to understand long-term economic

development in historical empires. It is not enough to identify the formal
institutions that obstructed or stimulated production and distribution. We
need to identify the social institutions and cultural beliefs underneath.
Most of all, since multicultural/linguistic empires by definition contain
different cultural traditions, religious beliefs, and local identities, we need
to understand how such empires succeed in setting in motion changes in
social rule systems guided by different cultural beliefs—ultimately chang-
ing these beliefs themselves. In other words: we need to understand
“deep” institutional change.
Attempts to model deep institutional change have mostly been based
on game-theory.13 Game-theoretical models assume that social institutions
are the unintended results of interactions between self-interested rational
agents trying to maximise their own. Social institutions then emerge
endogenously as Nash equilibria—that is as states of the game where no
player can improve her returns by unilaterally changing strategy. The play-
ers interiorise the patterns they perceive that result from the strategies
chosen and thereby create perceptions of reality and behavioural rules that
govern the decisions they make in pursuit of maximal pay-offs. Because
different individual players interiorise the same patterns individual beliefs
and rules become shared beliefs and rules. The game is a Prisoner’s
dilemma, but free-riding is discouraged because the game is (infinitely)
repetitive. Cheaters may win one round, but are punished the next, mak-
ing rule compliance is a more effective strategy than cheating, which feeds
back into the game reinforcing the patterns perceived by the players.
Change comes only because external events affect the distribution of
resources with which the game is played. This forces (some) players to
change their strategy, which in turn creates new patterns.14
13
Greif’s work is the best-known example among historians; Greif, Institutions; Greif,
“The Maghribi Traders”; more specifically (but less known/cited by historians) Greif,
“Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society”; Greif, “Commitment, Coercion, and
Markets: The Nature and Dynamics of Institutions Supporting Exchange”.
14
Note that the overall result may not be Pareto-optimal; individual and overall pay-offs
might be higher if players could find a way to collectively change their strategies. Because
social institutions emerge as Nash equilibria, however, no player has an apparent interest to
change her strategy. As a result, the whole group (community) of players can become locked-
in in a non-Pareto-optimal game. For a discussion see Greif, Institutions; Wegerich,
“Institutional Change: A Theoretical Approach”; the notion underlies already Hayek’s
thinking about cultural evolution, but Hayek did not recognise possible non-Pareto-optimal
outcomes cf. Hayek, “Notes on the Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct”.
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Battery
Battle
battlefield
battlefields
battles
battleship
battleships
Bauendahl
Bautista
Bavaria
Bavarian
Bax
BAY
Bayard
bayonet
bayoneted
bayonets
bays
Bazaar
bazaars
Bazouks
bc
Be
Beach
beached
beaching
beacons
Beaconsfield
beam
beams
bean
Bear
beard
bearded
beardless
beards
Beardsley
bearer
bearers
Bearing
bearings
bears
Beast
beastliness
beasts
beaten
Beatification
beating
beats
Beaulieu
Beaurepaire
beauties
beautiful
beautifully
beauty
Beaver
became
Because
Bechuana
BECHUANALAND
Beckham
becloud
become
Becomes
becometh
becoming
Bed
bedding
bedeviled
Bedouin
bedrock
bedrooms
Beds
BEECHER
BEEF
been
beer
Beerenbrouck
Beernaert
BEERS
bees
beet
Beethoven
beets
befallen
befalling
befell
befit
befitting
before
beforehand
befriend
beg
began
beget
beggar
beggars
begged
begin
beginning
beginnings
begins
begotten
begrudge
begs
beguiled
begun
behalf
behaved
behaving
behavior
behaviour
beheaded
beheading
beheld
behest
Behind
behindhand
Behnesa
behold
behooves
BEHRING
Being
beings
Beira
Beirut
Beit
Bel
Bela
belabor
beleaguered
Belfast
BELGIAN
Belgians
Belgica
Belgium
Belgrade
belief
beliefs
believable
believe
believed
believer
believes
believing
belittle
Bell
Bellaire
Bellamy
Bellevue
belligerence
belligerency
belligerent
Belligerents
Bellinghausen
bells
bellum
Belly
BELMONT
belong
belonged
belonging
belongings
belongs
beloved
below
belt
Bench
benches
bend
Bendigo
bending
beneath
Benedictines
benediction
benefactions
benefactor
benefactors
beneficent
beneficial
benefit
benefiting
benefits
benevolence
benevolent
Bengal
Benguela
Benguet
Bengula
benignity
benignly
BENIN
BENJAMIN
Bennet
Bennett
Benson
Bent
Bentley
Bentwich
Benué
bequeath
bequeathed
bequests
Berar
Berber
Berda
Berdrow
Beresford
BERGENDAL
BERING
Berkeley
BERLIN
Bermuda
Bermudez
Bernadottes
Bernadou
Bernard
Bernhard
Bernier
Berovitch
Berry
Berthelot
berths
beryls
Besançon
beseech
beseeching
beset
Beside
Besides
besieged
besiegers
bespattered
Bessemer

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Complexity Economics Building A New Approach To Ancient Economic History 1St Ed Edition Koenraad Verboven Full Chapter

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Complexity Economics: Building a New

Approach to Ancient Economic History

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies

1 Introduction: Finding a New Approach to Ancient Proxy

Part I Theoretical Frameworks and Methodologies 19

2 Playing by Whose Rules? Institutional Resilience, Conflict

3 Networks as Proxies: A Relational Approach Towards

4 Evaluating the Potential of Computational Modelling for

5 Visualising Roman Institutional Environments for

Part II Urban Systems 161

6 Social Complexity and Complexity Economics: Studying

7 A Method for Estimating Roman Population Sizes from

8 Complexity and Urban Hierarchy of Ancient Urbanism:

9 Disease Proxies and the Diagnosis of the Late Antonine

10 Measuring and Comparing Economic Interaction Based

Lars Börner is Professor of Economics at Martin-Luther-University of

Koenraad Verboven is Professor of Ancient History in the Department

Fig. 3.1 Nodes in the network model of riverine transport in period I

Fig. 3.8 ORBIS Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman

Fig. 3.17 Frequency distribution of degree values of nodes in the

Fig. 5.2b A systemic structure of obesity, linkages between psychology

Fig. 7.3 Map of Potentia, based on the integration of survey and

Fig. 8.6 Map of all theatres located in Asia Minor (n = 143 + 11

Fig. 8.19 Rank-size plot on logarithmic scales for the self-governing

Table 3.1 Newman-cluster numbers and regions included in these clusters 66

Introduction: Finding a New Approach

1 What This Book Is About

© The Author(s) 2021 1

Over the same past decades, however, economic archaeology also

The rest of this introduction discusses more in detail the problems

entertainment? Was it markets? Administered trade? Efficient institutions?

1980s Keith Hopkins advocated a Keynesian “taxes and trade” model. In

shocks (such as crop failures) and returning to a viable equilibrium after

2 A Brief Survey of the Chapters

The first part focuses on theoretical frameworks and methodologies.

analysis is conducive to cross-cultural and -temporal comparisons, allow-

their place of production. The objective is to study economic integration

was created as an emergent property of the interrelations between existing

The last part of this volume consists of two contributions, respectively

Black Death to measure and compare economic interaction. The authors

Acknowledgements Last but no least it is my pleasure here to thank our support-

Scheidel, Walter. ‘In Search of Roman Economic Growth’. Journal of Roman

Playing by Whose Rules? Institutional

1 Framing the Problem

© The Author(s) 2021 21

above subsistence, like the undergrowth in a forest or occasionally like a

2 Institutions and Institutional Change

chiefs, generals, captains of industry, or gang leaders; cunning minds to

designed institutions, therefore, the monitoring and enforcement costs of

continues to be cited in debates on the modernisation of Europe, it fails to

curulis the main sources of law—provides an example of a major change in

This poses a challenge if we want to understand long-term economic

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1 Introduction: Finding a New Approach to Ancient Proxy

Part I Theoretical Frameworks and Methodologies 19

2 Playing by Whose Rules? Institutional Resilience, Conflict

3 Networks as Proxies: A Relational Approach Towards

4 Evaluating the Potential of Computational Modelling for

5 Visualising Roman Institutional Environments for

Part II Urban Systems 161

6 Social Complexity and Complexity Economics: Studying

7 A Method for Estimating Roman Population Sizes from

8 Complexity and Urban Hierarchy of Ancient Urbanism:

9 Disease Proxies and the Diagnosis of the Late Antonine

10 Measuring and Comparing Economic Interaction Based

Table 3.1 Newman-cluster numbers and regions included in these clusters 66