Research Catalog

Title

Traders in the ancient Mediterranean / edited by Timothy Howe.

Publication

Chicago, Illinois : Ares Publishers, 2015.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Howe, Timothy
• Association of Ancient Historians.

Description

236 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

Traders in the Ancient Mediterranean presents a framework on which to hang ancient Mediterranean buying, selling, and transporting of goods. In five focused chapters, each written by a field expert, Traders in the Ancient Mediterranean offers a diachronic analysis of the ancient Mediterranean trader from the Late Bronze Age (1500-1100 BCE) through the Roman Imperial period (27 BCE-400 CE). The book focuses on local traditions, embedded historical context and socio-political goals of traders as individual actors, to provide an analysis of the impact of trade on ancient Mediterranean life beyond the traditional boundaries of the economy. As a result, two main types of behavior are analyzed, inter-regional and regional. The political and social developments of the Late Bronze Age and the Hellenistic and Roman periods, characterized by the rise of large multi-regional empires such as Assyria, Babylon, New Kingdom Egypt, Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt, facilitated increased volume and demand for long-distance, extra-mural trade. Alternatively, the regionalism of Early Iron Age communities such as the Greek, Etruscan and Phoenician city-states tended to encourage focused exchange onto smaller, local networks to such as degree that larger structures, and longer distance trade were slow to form and thrive. A conclusion that all regions share, however is that ancient Mediterranean traders maintained a general disregard for the “laws” of supply and demand. Their behavior was dominated by intense official interference (and even competition) by revenue-hungry political entities. Consequently, for the ancient trader and the consumers he (or occasionally she) serviced, the prices of movable goods were always volatile, high risk was always a factor, and the integration of markets into an ordered economy superficial and tentative. --

Series Statement

Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians ; 11

Uniform Title

Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians 11.

Subject

• Commerce > History > To 500
• Mediterranean Region > Commerce

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 174-215) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction / Timothy Howe -- Tangled up in blue : material and other relations of exchage in the late Bronze Age world / Christopher Monroe -- Traders in the Archaic and Classical Greek koine / David W. Tandy -- A hand anything but hidden : institutions anf makers in first millenium BCE Mesopotamia / Michael Kozuh -- Hellenistic traders / J.G. Manning -- Risky business : traders in the Roman world / David Hollander.

ISBN

• 9780890056288
• 9780890056285 (canceled/invalid)

OCLC

• 973232561
• SCSB-12348581

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library