OXFORD STUDIES ON THE ROMAN ECONOMY General Editors Alan Bowman Andrew Wilson OXFORD STUDIES ON THE ROMAN ECONOMY This innovative monograph series reflects a vigorous revival of inter- est in the ancient economy, focusing on the Mediterranean world under Roman rule (c. 100 bc to ad 350). Carefully quantified archaeological and documentary data will be integrated to help ancient historians, economic historians, and archaeologists think about economic behaviour collectively rather than from separate perspectives. The volumes will include a substantial comparative element and thus be of interest to historians of other periods and places. Settlement, Urbanization, and Population Edited by ALAN BOWMAN and ANDREW WILSON 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Oxford University Press 2011 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–960235–3 13579108642 Preface This volume is the second to be published in the series Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy, and, likewise, the second originating in the research programme entitled The Economy of the Roman Empire: Integration, Growth and Decline, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2005–10 and directed by the Series Editors. Its predecessor, Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Prob- lems (ed. A. K. Bowman and A. I. Wilson, 2009) included in its Preface an account of the general aims and character of the research programme that is applicable to the present volume and therefore need not be repeated here. This volume focuses on settlement, popu- lation, and urbanization. Earlier versions of most of the chapters were delivered as papers at a conference held in Oxford in September 2007. Simon Keay, Graeme Earl, Peter Attema and Tymon de Haas were not able to attend that conference but we are very grateful to them and John Hanson for supplying written texts for inclusion in this volume. For this volume, we have not thought it appropriate to include texts of responses made to the papers at the conference, but we encouraged authors to take those comments into account in preparing their final version; we hope that the introduction also reflects the reaction to the papers as presented at the conference. We are grateful to the AHRC for its financial support of the research programme, to the staff of the Stelios Ioannou Centre for Research in Classical and Byzantine Studies, where the conference was held, and to all those who contributed to the discussion at the conference. The task of converting the proceedings into a monograph has also benefited from the interest and support of Baron Lorne Thyssen, which have enabled us to carry forward the research programme for a substantial period beyond that funded by the AHRC. Both the organization of the con- ference and the completion of the volume owe a very great deal to the post-doctoral research assistants who worked on the project, Drs Myrto Malouta, Annalisa Marzano, Dario Nappo, and Hannah Friedman, as also to the project administrative assistant Gareth Hughes. Dr Miko Flohr, Assistant Director of The Oxford Roman Economy Project, has helped to steer the volume into its final stages of publication and we are very grateful to him for that. Alan Bowman Andrew Wilson January 2011 This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Contributors ix List of Figures xiii List of Tables xviii 1. Introduction 1 Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson I. SURVEY METHOD AND DATA 2. Estimating Ancient Greek Populations: The Evidence of Field Survey 17 ({) Simon Price 3. Missing Persons? Models of Mediterranean Regional Survey and Ancient Populations 36 Robert Witcher 4. Calculating Plough-Zone Demographics: Some Insights from Arid-Zone Surveys 76 David Mattingly 5. Rural Settlement and Population Extrapolation: A Case Study from the Ager of Antium, Central Italy (350 bc–ad 400) 97 Peter Attema and Tymon de Haas II. URBANIZATION 6. Cities and Economic Development in the Roman Empire 143 Neville Morley 7. City Sizes and Urbanization in the Roman Empire 161 Andrew Wilson 8. Rank-Size Analysis and the Roman Cities of the Iberian Peninsula and Britain: Some Considerations 196 Annalisa Marzano viii Contents 9. The Urban System of Roman Asia Minor and Wider Urban Connectivity 229 J. W. Hanson 10. Towns and Territories in Roman Baetica 276 Simon Keay and Graeme Earl 11. Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt: Population and Settlement 317 Alan Bowman Index 359 List of Contributors Peter Attema, Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Groningen. His areas of research include diachronic landscape archaeology (Pontine region in Central Italy, Sibaritide in South Italy, North-west Crimea in Ukraine) and research on proto- historic settlements (Satricum and Crustumerium in Central Italy, Timpone della Motta at Francavilla in Calabria). Principal research themes are early urbanization and Greek and Roman colonization. The monograph Regional Pathways to Complexity (Amsterdam, 2010; with P. M. van Leusen and G.-J Burgers) reflects Attema’s interests in the landscape archaeology of Italy from the Bronze Age to the Roman period. His most recent monograph on a major project in the Pontine region (with T. C. A. De Haas and G. W. Tol) is Between «Satricum» and «Antium», Settlement Dynamics in a Coastal Landscape in «Latium Vetus» (Leuven, 2010). Alan Bowman, Camden Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Principal of Brasenose College. University of Oxford. His areas of research are the social and economic history of the Roman empire, Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, papyrology and the Vindolanda writ- ing-tablets. Publications include Agriculture in Egypt from Pharaonic to Modern Times (ed. with E. Rogan, London, 1999), Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and its People (London, rev. edn 2003). Graeme Earl, Senior Lecturer in the Archaeological Computing Re- search Group at the University of Southampton. His research is focused on the interface of engineering and cultural heritage, with a particular focus on archaeological applications of computer science. Recent work has included imaging of ancient documents and archaeo- logical materials, computer graphic simulation of archaeological sites and objects, augmented reality, formal analysis of architectural and landscape spaces, and the management, linking, and dissemination of archaeological archives. He has contributed to more than forty academic papers, including ‘Archaeological Applications of Polyno- mial Texture Mapping: Analysis, Conservation and Representation’ (Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 2010) and ‘Archaeological x List of Contributors computing on the Portus Project’ (Portus and its Hinterland, British School at Rome Monographs, 2011). Tymon de Haas, Ph.D. researcher, University of Groningen. His main research interests are archaeological field survey, Roman colo- nization, and the Roman economy. Publications include ‘Beyond dots on the map: intensive survey data and the interpretation of small sites and off-site distributions’ (in P. Attema and G. Schörner (eds.), forthcoming, Comparative issues in the archaeology of the Roman rural landscape: site classification between survey, excavation and historical categories), ‘Investing in the colonia and ager of Antium’ (with G. Tol and P. Attema, in Facta 4), and The Roman colonization of the Pontine region and its impact on settlement and land use (dissertation, forthcoming). John W. Hanson, D.Phil. candidate in Archaeology, University of Oxford. His main area of research is the social and economic con- sequences of urbanism in the Roman empire, concentrating on urban demography, monumentality, civic status, the regional variation of urbanism, and the roles of urban centres in the socio-economic landscape, including levels of integration and connectivity. Other interests include Roman art and architecture, and ancient geography. Simon Keay, Professor of Roman Archaeology, University of South- ampton and Research