Archaeology

Willem Jongman: Gibbon Was Right: The Decrease and Fall of the Roman Economy https://delong.typepad.com/jongman-gibbon-was-right.pdf: ‘To certify as genuine financial growth, both population and per capita earnings … must relocate the exact same direction, and for a prolonged duration of time. Did this ever take place prior to the Industrial Revolution? It is my contention that Rome in the late Republic and early Empire was among those unusual examples … [like] the Dutch Republic and England in the centuries simply prior to the Industrial Revolution … Roman material culture of the early Empire was extraordinary, and would stay unmatched for many centuries (up until, possibly, a century back) … Roman magnificence was more than brick and marble, and included a new prosperity for many if not all … Only archaeology … can provide the large datasets … for a time series analysis of long term economic change in antiquity … The independent repeating of the very same pattern in a great deal of different historical datasets argues strongly against excessive scepticism … Hopkins … Roman shipwrecks … Calatay … metal extraction … Wood … from western and southern Germany … We can see a better standard of living … in the face of an increasing population … This new wealth was likewise, I now think, shared more widely than earlier pessimistic critics of Roman society such as myself wanted to acknowledge … New vegetables and fruits … Pigs, cows, sheep, or horses, and even chickens, were much bigger than ever previously, and for a long time after …