scholarly journals Animal Husbandry across the Western Roman Empire: Changes and Continuities

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas ◽  
Umberto Albarella
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Animal Production ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Dietary Practices ◽  
Journal Issue ◽  
Husbandry Practices ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Over Time

This special issue of theEuropean Journal of Archaeologydiscusses aspects of animal husbandry in a number of provinces of the Western Roman Empire. In this introduction, we describe the general characteristics of animal husbandry in pre-Roman and Roman times to assess any changes that may have occurred after the Roman conquest. The results suggest that the territoriality typifying the first millenniumbchad a significant impact on production, resulting in a decrease in cattle size and frequencies across Europe. Nevertheless, not all the regions reacted in the same way, and regional communities that focused their animal production on pigs implemented more sustainable husbandry practices over time. By bringing together studies carried out across Europe, this journal issue highlights the existence of cases of both change and continuity across the Empire, and the (uneven) impact of the market economy on animal husbandry and dietary practices in climatically different regions.

Psychological Stability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Sugden
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
General Belief ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 8 asks what properties a market economy must have if it is to be psychologically stable—that is, if it is to reproduce a general belief that its governing principles are fair. I argue that, because of the division of knowledge and because the opportunities open to each person depend on how other people choose to use their opportunities, full equality of opportunity is not compatible with a market economy. Psychological stability has to rest on continuing expectations of mutual benefit, defined relative to a baseline that evolves over time and that cannot be justified in terms of abstract principles of fairness. However, if the market is to be recommended to each individual separately, each individual must be able to expect to share in the benefits that markets create. Maintaining such expectations typically requires redistributive mechanisms.

scholarly journals Introduction to the special issue: multiple jobholding in Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-147
Author(s):  
Wieteke Conen ◽  
Karin Schulze Buschoff
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Quality Of Work ◽  
Labour Market Flexibility ◽  
Employment Situation ◽  
Over Time

In a number of European countries there is a clear trend towards increased multiple jobholding. As things stand, however, little is known about the structure and the potential consequences of this increase, notably in terms of quality of work and social protection. This special issue focuses on contemporary forms of multiple jobholding in Europe. Have the structure, nature and dynamics of multiple jobholding changed over time? What are the roles of labour market flexibility, technological change and work fragmentation in the development of multiple jobholding? And do multiple jobholders benefit from similar and adequate employment terms, conditions and protections compared with single jobholders, or are they worse off as a consequence of their (fragmented) employment situation? What implications do these findings have for unions, policy-makers and the regulation of work? The collection of articles in this special issue adds to the literature on emerging forms of employment in the digital age and challenges for social protection, also in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This introduction initiates a discussion of central debates on multiple jobholding and presents a synopsis of the articles in this issue.

Explaining the Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire: The Evidence of Epitaphs

1990 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Over Time

It is now notorious that the production of inscriptions in the Roman Empire was not constant over time, but rose over the first and second centuries A.D. and fell in the third. Ramsay MacMullen pointed this out more than five years ago, with conclusions more cautionary than explanatory: ‘history is not being written in the right way’, he said, for historians have deduced Rome's decline from evidence that–since it appears only epigraphically–has merely disappeared for its own reasons, or have sought general explanations of decline in theories political, economic, or even demographic in nature, none of which can, in turn, explain the disappearance of epigraphy itself. Why this epigraphic habit rose and fell MacMullen left open to question, although he did postulate control by a ‘sense of audience’. The purpose of this paper is to propose that this ‘sense of audience’ was not generalized or generic, but depended on a belief in the value of romanization, of which (as noted but not explained by MacMullen's article) the epigraphic habit is also a rough indicator. Epitaphs constitute the bulk of all provincial inscriptions and in form and number are (generally speaking) the consequence of a provincial imitation of characteristically Roman practices, an imitation that depended on the belief that Roman legal status and style were important, and that may indeed have ultimately depended, at least in North Africa, on the acquisition or prior possession of that status. Such status-based motivations for erecting an epitaph help to explain not only the chronological distribution of epitaphs but also the differences in the type and distribution of epitaphs in the western and eastern halves of the empire. They will be used here moreover to suggest an explanation for the epigraphic habit as a whole.

scholarly journals Persisting inequality: A case of probabilistic drive towards divergence

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Maialeh
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Economic Disparities ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Over Time

The aim of the study is to prove that agents organised by market forces tend to create and even more so deepen economic disparities over time. Empirical studies do not reliably describe the trend and causes of interpersonal global inequality in recent decades. Hence, the attention is turned to general economic theory with inspiration from Schumpeterian and neoclassical theories. The results indicate that pure market economy logic will tend to lead to multi-level divergence.

scholarly journals Variation in the Continuity of Land-Use Patterns through the First Millennium AD in Lowland Britain

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon ◽  
Ralph Fyfe
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Land Use Patterns ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
Use Patterns ◽  
Land Use Types ◽  
First Millennium

AbstractThis paper explores the contribution that palaeoenvironmental evidence, and in particular palynology, is making to our understanding of landscape evolution in Britain during the 1st millenniumAD. This was a period of profound social and economic change including a series of invasions, some associated with a mass folk migration. Archaeologists and historians continue to debate the significance of these events, and palaeoenvironmental evidence is now starting to provide an additional perspective. Key to this has been obtaining pollen sequences, although there remains a need for more evidence from lowland areas, alongside higher resolution sampling and improved dating. It is suggested that although the 1st millenniumADsaw some significant long-term shifts in climate, these are unlikely to have had a significant causal effect on landscape change in lowland areas (both in areas with and without significant Anglo-Saxon immigration). The analysis of pollen data from across Britain shows very marked regional variations in the major land-use types (arable, woodland, improved pasture, and unimproved pasture) throughout the Roman and Early Medieval periods. While Britain ceasing to be part of the Roman empire appears to have led to a decline in the intensity of agriculture, it was the ‘long 8th c.’ (the later 7th to early 9th c.) that saw a more profound change, with a period of investment, innovation, and intensification, including an expansion in arable cultivation.

Slavery in Europe during Antiquity and the First Millennium

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-69
Author(s):  
Stefan Brink
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
First Millennium

In this chapter I give an overview of research on slavery (for some parts) of Western Europe in the first Millennium: The Roman Empire, Francia, Anglo-Saxon England, Ireland and Visigothic Spain. The difficulties of properly defining the legal status—whether free or unfree—for terms such as coloni, villani, bordari, cottari, famulus, servus etc. are discussed, and it is shown that in some areas and during some periods the legal status can differ. This is to serve as a background for our discussion of a Scandinavian slavery.

The History of Agriculture in Ethiopia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. McCann
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Over Time

Ethiopia’s highlands and their lowland peripheries offer a distinctive and, in many ways, ideal setting for human habitation and the evolution of agricultural ecologies. The ranges in climate variability by season and over time framed a sophisticated set of crops, agricultural practices, and local political ecologies. Chief among these was the development and use of the single-tine ox-plow (i.e., the ard or scratch plow) that integrated endemic annual crops with secondary crop introductions and, in some areas, cultivated or intercropped with perennial crops such as ensete and coffee. Animal husbandry to sustain animal traction and pastoral livelihoods in regional ecologies was essential, over time, to regional economies and their political ecologies. Agricultural patterns existed at the heart of cultural diversities and periods of political conflict and accommodations. In some areas of the south (Sidamo), southeast (Harar highlands), and southwest (Jimma), coffee cultivation complemented annual grain cropping. Yet the plow in its current form as a dominant tool appears in rock painting dating as far back as 500 ad. That technology was both efficient and persistent. While Ethiopia’s plow agriculture dominated the region’s political ecology over more than two millennia, in the late 20th century Ethiopia’s agrarian economy began an inexorable set of changes. New crops (such as maize), urbanization, and global migration of peoples and commodities (oil seeds, fibers, and grains) brought new seeds, inputs, and pressures to adapt to change, particularly for smallholder farmers and new enterprises. Heavy investments in dams and irrigated agriculture also foretell new agricultural landscapes of riverain areas that will need to coexist with the classic highland smallholder farms. The story of maize in Ethiopia’s agricultural history is emblematic of the struggle between pressures for change and the inertia of tradition felt by farmers. Their agrarian adaptation to new methods, new materials, and a new climate will play itself out in existing geographies and natural contours.

Transmission of Buddhist Media and Texts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Veidlinger
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Common People ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Oral Transmission ◽  
Medieval China ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Common ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Over Time

Different media have been used to spread the teachings of Buddhism, and they have exerted a significant influence upon the development of Buddhist ideas and institutions over time. An oral tradition was first used in ancient India to record and spread the Buddhist Dharma, and later the Pali canon was written down in the 1st century bce. Writing was also conspicuously used to transmit Mahāyāna texts starting in the first centuries of the first millennium. Printing was developed in medieval China probably in connection with the Buddhist desire to create merit through copying the texts. Efforts to print Buddhist texts in Western languages and scripts began in earnest in the late 19th century, and Western printing methods were later adopted by Asian Buddhists to publish the texts in modern times. It is important to appreciate the intricate relationship between the medium that is used to transmit a text and the form of the text itself, as well as the commensurate effects of the texts and their ideas on the medium and its uses in society. The oral medium has many constraints that forced the early texts to assume certain forms that were amenable to oral transmission, and institutions arose to assist in the preservation of these texts as well. Even once writing came to be used, the common people generally did not read but rather heard the text recited by learned monks. Private reading is for the most part a modern invention and it, too, had a distinct influence on the development of Buddhism, leading to modern reformist movements that demanded less superstition, more meditation, and a closer adherence to the teachings found in the canonical texts. The Internet is also shaping the popular reception of Buddhism, as Buddhist teachings and texts proliferate on thousands of websites in a dizzying array of languages.

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