Related teams & projects

Work, Labour and Professions

Brief description of the project

Human resources are vital for economic development – as much and more than natural resources that need labor input for cultivation, extraction, processing and distribution. Adam Smith saw the division of labor as the primary key to efficiency gains because division stimulates specialization. Schumpeter in turn stressed the role of innovation and technology without which division of labor and specialization would soon reach its ceiling. If specialization and technology boost performance, there is good reason to think that the Roman economy was highly developed by pre-industrial standards, since literary, documentary (inscriptions, papyri) and archaeological data indicate relatively high levels of specialization and technological skill.

Yet division of labor and technology is inextricably bound up with how production is organized. This in turn is influenced by social, political, legal, and ideological conditions. Labor – or the lack of it – is an important factor of social identity formation and appraisal in many cultures, including Greco-Roman. Professions have the potential to divide people, but also to bind them in ties of solidarity that transcend material necessity. In short, labor is a key factor in how society and culture interrelate with economics.

This volume aims to bring together and confront the recent insights, ideas and interpretations on the role of human resources in the Roman economy; their availability, quality, reliability, efficiency and so forth. We wish to do so, moreover, in an explicit dialogue with social and economic historians specialized in other periods and/or cultures. The objective is to produce a coherent and innovative study of labor in the Roman world.

Conference (May 30th - June 1st, 2014)

click here for pd

Ghent University, Culture and Convention Center "Het Pand".
Rector Blancquaert zaal

Thursday, 30th May

I. Labor relations

11:00 coffee break

13:00 Lunch

15:30 coffee break

Friday 31 May

II Organization, specialization, skills and learning

 11:00 Coffee break

13:00 Lunch

III. Professional organizations (collegia)

15:30 coffee break

19:30 Conference diner

Saturday 1 June

IV. Identities and ideologies

11:30 Coffee break

Book

Introduction by the editors

K. Verboven, Christian Laes, Peter Van Nuffelen

Part 1. Labor relations

The division and organization of labor is all about how humans interrelate. Unlike the mechanical interplay of machine parts, labor results from the actions of human agents who have their own wills and agendas. Setting labor in motion implies moving the minds of humans.

In this part we will study how human resources could be mobilized in the Roman world – whether through wage labor, slavery, freedmen labor, independent labor, forced labor, military labor or any other form. We are particularly interested in the various constraints and possibilities that shaped labor relations; in how these in turn changed (or failed to change) to suit economic purposes; and in how Roman solutions compared to those of other empires, states and cultures.

One of the key problems here is the role (if any) of labor markets in the Roman world. Peter Temin advocated reinterpreting slavery as a distinct form of labor contract that could be analyzed in market terms. But analyzing slavery in contractual terms disregards not only the broader social and political nature of master slave relations but also the property rights claim that masters had over their slaves. Slaves were valuable assets as much and more than simple workmen. Extracting labor by means of physical and symbolic violence does not fit comfortably with contractual relations. Nevertheless, labor could be hired both in the urban centers and in rural contexts. So labor markets were not unknown. Moreover, both forced and free labor was intertwined with family and household relations and the reciprocal expectations for cooperation and solidarity. Understanding the processes to mobilize and coordinate human efforts towards economic goals in the Roman world requires a deeper insight in how markets, families and power relations together shaped labor relations.

  1. Walter Scheidel, Slavery and forced labor in ancient China and the ancient Mediterranean (click here for abstract)
  2. Arjan Zuiderhoek, Slavery, unfree Labour and wage Labour in the Roman East/Roman Asia Minor  (click here for abstract)
  3. Cameron Hawkins, Building a Business in Ancient Rome:  Coercion, Contracts, and the Boundaries of Roman Manufacturing Firm  (click here for abstract)
  4. Claire Holleran, Finding work: the hiring of free labour in the city of Rome  (click here for abstract)
  5. Seth Bernard, Mobilizing the Roman Builder: Scale, Structure, and Economic Performance in the Imperial Construction Industry  (click here for abstract)
  6. Laurens Tacoma & Miriam Groen-Vallinga, The value of labour: Diocletian’s Price Edict  (click here for abstract)

Part 2. Organization, specialization, skills and learning

Human labor is rarely (if ever) just about brute force. Skills, tools and techniques amplify brain and muscle power, and the range to which they can be put. Without technologies of the mind – literacy, numeracy and their tools – complex labor organizations are impossible.

In this part we want to study how technological and organizational skills increased efficiency, raised productivity and how (and why) technological knowledge spread around over and between human populations. The stress here should be on how skills (including organizational skills) were acquired, deployed and trained and what the effects were for economic development.

  1. Elisabeth Murphy, Roman Workers and their Workplaces: Some Archaeological Thoughts on the Organization of Workshop Labor  (click here for abstract)
  2. Nicolas Tran, Ars and Doctrina: the Socioeconomic Identity of Roman Skilled Workers  (click here for abstract)
  3. Christian Laes, Educators in Christian inscriptions  (click here for abstract)
  4. George Grantham, A search equillibrium model for specialization and trade  (click here for abstract)

Part 3. Professional organizations (collegia)

Many of the numerous private associations (collegia) in the Roman world brought together members who shared the same profession. Protecting common interests was surely part of what collegia did, but the solidarity among collegiati went far beyond economic interests. Collegia were always (also) social communities with their own religious cults, private celebrations and parties, and funerary and commemorative practices. In Late Antiquity the state regulated collegia that provided vital services to the state. Membership became quasi-hereditary and compulsory, but in return the corporation also required privileges and influence it lacked before.

In this section we wish to focus on the question of whether and how collegia affected the quality, availability and organization of labor. Did collegia improve or decrease the productivity of labor? Did they stimulate or block the exchange of new ideas and techniques? Did they stimulate trust and solidarity between members of different collegia practicing the same trade or rather increase distrust and competition?

  1. Sheilagh Ogilvia, Merchant collegia in Greek and Roman antiquity  (click here for abstract)
  2. Koenraad Verboven, Professional associations and organizing the urban population  (click here for abstract)
  3. Jinyu Liu, Work, Occupations, and Group Membership: a Conceptual Analysis  (click here for abstract)
  4. Sarah Bond, Ignominy and Monetarii: Mint Workers in the Later Roman Empire (click here for abstract)

Part 4. Identities and ideologies

The negative valuation of labor in literary texts and the very different Christian views on the virtue of labor occupied a central place in research for decades. Wage labor in particular would have been so strongly associated with servility that it was shun by freeborn for centuries and would have blocked the development of a free labor market. With the exception of farm labor, even independent labor – for instance by artisans or merchants – was so generally and profoundly scorned in elite ideology that  anticipatory socialization made successful businessmen massively transform into landowners as soon as possible. Only in the Christian days of Late Antiquity would labor have become a symbol of virtuousness and a source of respect and pride.

Scholars today no longer hold such straightforward views. Opinions by moralists and poets are no reliable reflection of aristocratic moral codes. Elite ideologies always attempt to create symbolic distances to match differences in power and wealth. Glimpses of a different moral code among urban craftsmen and merchants can be seen in funerary monuments, reliefs and bylaws of professional collegia.

But the role of ideology in the perception and practice of labor is still an important issue. Social identities are construed through social relations and actions. Hence labor – whether voluntary or forced, paid or independent, intellectual or physical – always affects the social identity of the worker, while vice versa the worker’s social identity determines to a large extent what kind of work and under which conditions (s)he will accept.

In this section we particularly wish to explore how social identities, cultural beliefs and preferences affected the organization and performance of work, and how in turn work affected the constant regeneration of identities, beliefs and preferences. Was there a strong link between profession and social identity? Did such a link stimulate efficiency, for instance by increasing the value accorded to the quality (or quantity) of one’s product? Did respectability (if there was any) increase investments in trade and industry? Did Christianity really make a difference?

  1. Miko Flohr,Work, ideology and identity in urban space  (click here for abstract)
  2. Kyle Harper, Money, Wages, and Fairness in the Later Roman Empire  (click here for abstract)
  3. Catharina Lis & Hugo Soly, Attitudes to Work and Workers in the Ancient World and the Middle Ages: Change or Continuity?  (click here for abstract)
    4.  

Abstracts

Part 1. Labor relations

 

Walter Scheidel,
Slavery and forced labor in ancient China and the ancient Mediterranean

The use of coerced labor in the form of chattel slavery in the private sector has long been regarded as one of the defining characteristics of some of the best-known economies of the ancient Mediterranean. It may even have been critical in producing the surplus that sustained the ruling class. In early China, by contrast, forced labor (often by convicts) appears to have been concentrated in the public sector. This paper is a first attempt to study these systems comparatively in order to investigate whether these differences were genuine and significant, and whether they can be related to observed outcomes in terms of economic and socio-political development.

Arjan Zuiderhoek,
Making sense of labour in Roman Asia Minor: an attempt

In this chapter I focus on the institutional context of labour in the provinces of Asia Minor. I shall argue that for a proper understanding of the supply and allocation of labour we should mostly disregard the familiar oppositions of urban/rural, free/unfree, citizen/non-citizen etc. and focus on the institutional/organisational structures mediating the supply of labour in the economy (e.g. polis, sanctuary, household, association). Arguably such a model might allow us to make better sense of the famously ‘messy’ labour situation (for which read: not fitting clearly within either a traditionally Marxist or a neo-classical framework) that historians tend to encounter in the Roman provinces. It might also help us to move beyond Finley’s ‘spectrum of statuses’ analysis, which, though useful in some contexts, is also vague and takes no account of performance. Asia Minor is often regarded as a prime example of provincial messiness or complexity where its labour situation is concerned, and thus constitutes an ideal testing ground. I focus mainly on the first, second and early third centuries CE, but with some attention for developments in the later Hellenistic period and during the later third century CE.

Cameron Hawkins,
Building a Business in Ancient Rome:  Coercion, Contracts, and the Boundaries of Roman Manufacturing Firms

The distinction between slave labor and wage labor looms large in scholarly discussions of the ways in which manufacturers in the cities of the Roman Empire mobilized the labor of others.  From this perspective, the key choices made by the owner of a business boiled down to decisions about how heavily he would invest in the acquisition, training and management of servile workers, and under what circumstances he would turn to the labor market in order to secure additional help.  Yet while analyses structured along these lines have generated important insights, both into the character of labor relations in antiquity and into the nature of the urban economy itself, they have not always explicitly recognized the fact that when manufacturers made decisions concerning tradeoffs between slave labor and wage labor, they often did so only while navigating a larger set of decisions concerning both the scope and boundaries of their businesses.  Within that larger matrix of decisions, manufacturers also assessed the advantages and disadvantages of securing access to human resources not just by harnessing the labor of former slaves, but also by using contractual agreements that were more akin to subcontracting agreements than to wage labor agreements (even if Roman law did not make entirely crisp distinctions between these two kinds of contractual relations).

In this paper, I seek to enhance our understanding of Roman labor relations by treating the labor management strategies of urban manufacturers at the workshop level as one component of their overall efforts to structure successful businesses.  Drawing on both comparative evidence and on insights derived from the theory of the firm, I suggest that the organizational and labor recruitment strategies employed by any given manufacturer were contingent upon the combined constraints and opportunities generated by three aspects of the urban economy, all of which could vary depending on the character of that manufacturer’s enterprise.  The first aspect was the nature of the product market toward which a manufacturer directed most of his output:  seasonality and uncertainties in demand affected the stability of most urban product markets in antiquity, but they exerted themselves differently on markets directed toward elite consumption than they did on markets directed toward the bulk of the urban populace, and manufacturers working in some markets consequently faced stronger constraints on their ability to substitute labor over time than did those working in others.  The second revolved around the investments manufacturers chose to make in physical and human capital:  manufacturers who were able to extract more value from a given asset by employing it alongside other specific assets faced an impetus to unite them in one organization (a consideration of particular relevance in the Roman context, where assets were often likely to have been skilled slaves).  The third was the structure of the markets for skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled services.  Here, what mattered most was the degree to which those markets interacted with informal institutions to minimize or exacerbate transaction costs in ways that made authority either more or less desirable than contracting as a means for organizing labor power.

Claire Holleran
Finding work: the hiring of free labor in the city of Rome

Ancient Rome was the largest pre-industrial city in the Western world, occupying a privileged position as the imperial capital and home to the emperor and the elite.  Yet Rome was also a working city, in which the majority of inhabitants supported themselves through their own skills and labor.  If we accept population estimates of around one million for the city in the late Republic and the Principate, including a slave population of perhaps a third and an unquantifiable number of freed slaves, we must imagine a freeborn working population of well over 500,000 in Rome. (1). From the time of Augustus, around a fifth of the population were eligible for grain distributions, but even when coupled with occasional financial donations from the emperor or patronage from the elites, this alone was not enough to live on; the notion of the Roman population as an idle one, fed and entertained at the expense of the state, must finally be laid to rest.(2)

Some freeborn workers in Rome undoubtedly had their own businesses, in manufacturing, retail, or the service industry, but many worked for others as mercennarii, or hired workers, often employed on a short-term basis.  Indeed, one of the potential impacts of slavery on the labor market in Rome may have been a proliferation of temporary, short-term, or casual work for the freeborn, since many permanent roles in domestic service, production, and commerce were filled by workers of slave status.(3)  Yet the work undertaken by free workers, the mechanisms by which they were hired, and the terms and conditions of their employment, remain unclear.  Furthermore, working for wages and the short-term flexibility which this offered was not restricted to free workers; slaves were also available to hire in Rome, with a slave’s labor either hired out by the owner or by the slave himself (e.g. Col. 1.pr. 12; Sen. Ben. 7.5.3; Dig. 19.2.42-43, 45.1, 48.1, 60.7; P.Wisc. 16.5).  Slave and free workers were in fact part of the same labor market, often working alongside each other in the same or similar roles.

This paper will explore the evidence for the type of work available to freeborn workers in Rome, focusing in particular on the relationship between slave and free labor in the city. If slave and free workers were competing for work within the same labor market, what was the decision-making process of an employer? Were there any benefits to the hiring of free or slave labor for particular roles, or was the legal status of workers immaterial?  Furthermore, this paper will consider the means by which employers and workers found each other and the potential contractual agreements that could be made (locatio conductio).  Did workers simply wait in a central place to be hired, as in the parable of the vineyard workers in the New Testament (Matt. 20.1-16), (4) or were there more sophisticated systems in place? Did collegia, for example, play a role in disseminating information between members about potential workers or employment opportunities?  Were there ‘agents’ in Rome, matching employees with workers? How might systems of clientilism have impacted upon the distribution of work (e.g. Tac. Hist. 1.4)?  Were workers hired as individuals, or as parts of ‘gangs’?  Could workers find opportunities through neighbourhood networks in Rome? What part, if any, did migratory networks play in securing work for new arrivals in the city? (5) Were roles advertized, either orally or in writing? (6) This paper will suggest some answers to these questions through an exploration of the ancient literary and legal evidence, together with the use of some comparative models drawn from later historical periods, shedding new light on the hiring of free labor in the city of Rome.

(1) For population figures, see e.g. Holleran 2011: 156.  For slaves as a third of the population, see Scheidel 2005: 67.
(2) See, for example, Carcopino’s (1941: 194) comment that the recipients of the annona were ‘idlers, chronically out of work and well satisfied to be so’.
(3) For example, Brunt 1966: 13-17; 1980. For the freeborn as temporary hired laborers in a rural context, see Rathbone 1981.
(4) See also Pl. Pseud. 790-825 for the hiring of cooks from a ‘forum coquinum’; cf. Plin. Nat. 18.28.108.
(5) See, for example, Tacoma’s recent research on migratory networks: http://www.rug.nl/ggw/onderzoek/onderzoeksinstituten/crasis/Tacoma_Networks_Migration.pdf.
(6) E.g. Apul. Met. 2.21 for the oral advertisement in the marketplace of a short-term role, in this fictional case guarding a corpse.

Literature

Seth G.Bernard
Mobilizing the Roman Builder

Construction plays a significant role within the history of labor: measured both in terms of the concentration of workers and by the value of its output, building forms one of the greatest and most involved of all pre-modern industries. This is particularly true of the Roman Imperial Mediterranean, which was characterized by a high degree of monumentalized urban centers, and by an unusual volume of demand for building workers in those centers, above all at Rome itself. To give one example, a recent estimate suggests that Rome’s emperors may have employed as many as a third of the city’s eligible laborers to build the Baths of Caracalla (DeLaine 1997). Recalling that this building, like most imperial projects, was not undertaken in isolation, this is an extraordinarily potent figure.

From the viewpoint of labor, then, the performance of the Roman building industry is a success story that requires explanation: this is the aim of the proposed chapter. Unsurprisingly, historians of other Western economies regularly remark on the Roman state’s outsized ability to deploy vast labor resources in the creation of its public monuments. Goldthwaite (1980: 120) sums up the difference between Roman construction and that undertaken by later European states as follows:

In ancient Rome, nothing was easier than tapping the resource of labor, but the expansion of the market economy that is so central to the development of the West changed all that…By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries neither slaves nor serfs—or even prisoners—were prominent in construction work; the European builder could hardly avoid the marketplace for labor.

But was Rome’s unparalleled production of architecture a result of a seemingly marketless workforce characterized instead by strong state interference and the dominance of slavery and other coercive organizational methods? In other words, how valid is this thesis of unlimited labor at the disposal of the Roman Imperial state?

There are reasons to quibble with this view. First, the seasonal, cyclical demand for construction workers required an elastic labor supply, not necessarily compatible with a heavy reliance on slavery (upkeep, not ex novo construction, was better suited to the use of dedicated familiae). A similar observation led Brunt (1966, 1980) to suggest that casual employment in those unskilled aspects of building provided a primary occupation for Rome’s urban peasantry. Second, recent scholarship (Temin 2004; Jongman 2007) grants a greater role to a labor market in the Roman world. Some of the better evidence for this argument comes from wage evidence for stone quarrymen in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, that is, from the context of the material supply for the state’s construction industry.

While Rome’s success in producing monumental architecture is undeniable, the reasons behind that success now appear more complex than have been acknowledged. To gain a more complete view, this chapter begins by considering three factors relevant to the efficiency of labor, outlined below: organization, specialization, and technology. A concluding section will return to the topic of the composition of the building workforce in hopes of drawing a more nuanced picture of the labor relations and organizations that supported the productivity of the Roman builder. Evidence used is textual and physical, as I incorporate wherever possible discussion of Roman monuments themselves.

I. Organization

This section focuses on the legal institutions through which the Roman state met construction labor requirements. I trace the development and nature of locatio conductio building contracts, the role of slavery, and the persistence of coercive (but free) building labor into the Empire. It is argued that state-let building contracts were first and frequently expressed in terms of a project’s total cost, whereas direct-labor or piece-meal work was normally relegated to sub-contracting arrangements; this tendency finds explanation in a discussion of the magistrates responsible for state-let contracts. Two implications arise: 1) an early rationalization of Roman labor in the context of gross-cost estimation; 2) a diminished view of the state’s strong hand in determining various labor regimes. Instead, we should emphasize the part played by contractors (conductores).

II. Specialization

In Smithian terms, specialization is key to growing the output of labor. While an ancient recognition of the division of labor existed (e.g. Xen. Cyr. 8.2.5, much discussed by Finley), it less clear how specialized the building industry was within itself, and whether the aim of specialization was to improve the quantity (and hence efficiency) or the quality of its product. To approach these issues, I investigate the component roles involved in construction. Two approaches are taken: 1) the first looks to literary and epigraphic evidence, where most previous discussion has limited itself to defining the term architectus, whereas I am more interested in the variety and specificity of the terminology for Romans involved in building. 2) The second approach considers the material evidence. I use comparative energetics (the term from Abrams 1989; applied to Roman architecture without reference to earlier work by DeLaine 1997) to model the ratio of skilled to unskilled labor in some Roman imperial monuments, and to compare such ratios to some non-Roman cases. I argue that certain skilled tasks more prominent in Roman building (e.g. carving marble ornament) require the training and repetitive execution indicative of specialization. I then consider signs of standardization at various stages of the material supply (especially of bricks and marble) and question what relationship this evidence has to specialization and workforce efficiency.

III. Technology

Classical economic thought sees technological innovation resulting from market pressures to increase efficiency; the Roman situation, however, challenges this view. Contrary to some minimalist positions, I argue that there was important technological innovation in the Roman building industry over the long-term; such innovations relate directly to the efficiency of construction labor. (I focus on the rise of serial masonry and developments in heavy-lifting machinery as two examples). But what motivated innovation seems less straightforward: e.g. many ingenious inventions found in Roman baths were apparently attributed to slaves (Sen. Ep. 90.25)—hardly the typical agents of a labor market. Similar servile connections can be made both to serial masonry and to lifting technology, and I discuss the presence and meaning of technological innovationwithin a slave society (some parallels are raised from recent research into the role of Black African slaves in developing the rice industry of the American South).

Bibliography cited:

Rens Tacoma & Miriam Groen-Vallinga
The value of labor: Diocletian’s Price Edict

Diocletian’s Price Edict of 301 A.D. is one of the best known inscribed texts to survive from Late Antiquity.(1) The text is made up of over 150 fragments in Greek and Latin, and forms a rich source indeed. The ambitious Edict was to be valid in all parts of the empire and operated on a grand scale: in response to current high prices, the Edict imposes maximum prices for each type of good. It was price regulation of an unprecedented scope.(2) Over 1,000 prices are listed, distinguishing between several grades of quality. The enumeration goes into such detail that it includes goods that are hardly known from other sources. It comes as no surprise that the Edict has been used extensively. The text holds a central place in discussions of the Roman economy and has an importance that transcends Late Antiquity by far. Particular names of goods, price levels in respect to rampant inflation, the relation of the Edict to Diocletian’s monetary and tax reforms, and the question of its effectiveness have all been debated at length.(3)

The fact that the Edict is also very instructive for the study of Roman labor is certainly not a secret: it contains more data on wages than can be found in all the Roman literary sources together.(4) But it is noticeable that this aspect of the text has received less attention than it deserves. Of course wages are cited and analysed in the scholarly literature (and some of the figures are quite likely to be used in the other papers at this conference). But the larger question of how labor is conceptualized in the Edict has not been fully addressed. This is what we aim to do in this paper.

Anyone who wants to use the edict for historical analysis is confronted by the question of the purpose of the edict, its method of compilation and how it relates to the outside world.(5) The preamble of the Edict describes the Roman economy in moralising rather than strictly economic terms: high prices were the result of greed rather than market forces. It is also obvious that the Edict was prescriptive rather than descriptive: by setting maximum prices it tried to impose a ceiling. It is also quite clear that the attempt was a failure and that it had to be abandoned soon afterwards.(6) These facts raise in an acute form the question of how real the world was that is described in the Edict.

The question has no easy answer. We believe that the best approach is to take the document as a whole and discuss on the basis of an internal analysis how labor is conceptualized. We operate from the expectation that the situation found in the Edict was internally more or less consistent (notwithstanding the unsystematic organisation of the lists), and that the figures found in the Edict have some bearing to the outside world. If in the Edict a figure painter (7,9) earns a maximum wage that is six times as high as a water carrier’s (7,31), we expect that this difference corresponds to reality.(7) If in the Edict a fuller (chapter 22) is paid per item and a baker (7,12) receives a daily salary, we expect that these represent the normal ways by which these respective workers were remunerated.

By way of introduction we analyse in section 1 which part of the labor market is covered by the Edict. In the text just over 60 different occupations are attested.(8) This is an impressive number that in itself surely justifies the present analysis. But a comparison with other lists of attested occupations is revealing.(9) Despite its pretention to cover the whole economy the Edict lists only a select, and in some cases rather atypical, subset of all known occupations. We assume that the list concerned primarily hired labor as opposed to other forms of labor.

In the second section we discuss the remarkable absence of strongly demarcated labor boundaries in the Edict. Though some rural work occurs, there is no strong separation between rural and urban labor. Both skilled and unskilled professions are mentioned. Although one specifically female job title is mentioned (a gerdia or seamstress; 20,12-13), there is otherwise a complete absence of gender differentiation. Likewise, slave and free do not occupy different economic spheres. Different occupations could of course be valued differently, but the labor market seems not to have consisted of clearly demarcated segments.

In section 3 we discuss forms of remuneration for labor. The simple fact that labor is included in the Price Edict at all is remarkable in itself and suggests that labor was only to a limited extent regarded as a separate category at all. With respect to its pricing, it is striking that there are many forms of payment in the Edict. Five major types occur: daily wages (e.g. the stone mason; 7,2), payment per action (e.g. barbers per caput; 7,22), payment per product (tailor per specified piece of clothing; 7, 42-53), payment by individuals per month (schoolteachers were paid per pupil per month; 7,64-71), payment by quantity of raw material used (embroiderers per ounce of cloth; 20,2-5). The distinction seems to be based primarily on practical considerations; there is no obvious hierarchy in the methods of payment.(10) What all the methods share is the fluidity of arrangements: all were based on short-term transactions. No work no pay. One of the other noteworthy elements is the fact that the daily wages included pastus, food. Not only does its inclusion remind us of the fact that payment could also be made in kind, it also points to a setting in which laborers worked outside their own homes.

In the last section of our paper we analyse economic differentiation. The salaries of day laborers cover a relatively wide range. No doubt the explanation for the marked differences should be partly sought in terms of skills, and partly in terms of status. It has been argued that at the lower end of the range day laborers hardly earned a living that could sustain a family. We argue that this points not necessarily to poverty, but rather to a situation in which many members of a family were forced to contribute their labor, including children and women. The model of the adaptive family economy advocated by Wall for pre-industrial Europe offers the best interpretative tool to understand such a situation. In addition we explore the consequences of the high degree of wage differentials on purchasing power. They are indicative of a rather strong internal hierarchy among the working classes of the Roman world.

Paradoxically, in its attempts to fixate the labor market the Edict actually documented its complexity, fluidity, and openness. The Edict shows the importance of hired labor and short-term arrangements, the absence of strong barriers between slave and free labor, the flexibility in methods of remuneration, and points to strong economic differentiation within the masses. As such, it testifies to significant labor mobility.

(1) For an excellent introduction see Corcoran (1996) 205-233.
(2) New Pauly, s.v. ‘Edictum [3] Edictum Diocletiani’ (K.L. Noethlichs).
(3) E.g. Rathbone (2009); Scheidel (2010).
(4) Frézouls (1977) 253.
(5) E.g. Frézouls (1977) 255-256; Scheidel (1996).
(6) Lact., Mort.Pers. 7.6-7; cf Böhnke (1994) for a more positive view on Diocletian’s monetary reforms.
(7) References in brackets are to chapter and line of the Edict in the edition of Giacchero (1974).
(8) See appendix.
(9) The catalogues used are those listed by Joshel (1992) 176-182, and Treggiari (1980) 61-64.
(10) Cf. Frézouls (1977) 257-259.
(11) Frézouls (1977) 262-266.
(12) Wall (1986);Groen-Vallinga (forthcoming).

Bibliography

Part 2. Organization, specialization, skills and learning

 

Human labor is rarely (if ever) just about brute force. Skills, tools and techniques amplify brain and muscle power, and the range to which they can be put. Without technologies of the mind – literacy, numeracy and their tools – complex labor organizations are impossible.

In this part we want to study how technological and organizational skills increased efficiency, raised productivity and how (and why) technological knowledge spread around over and between human populations. The stress here should be on how skills (including organizational skills) were acquired, deployed and trained and what the effects were for economic development.

George Grantham,
A search equilibrium approach to the classical economy

Our understanding of the classical economy is tributary to theories of economic and social organization imported from other disciplines, of which classical economics and social anthropology have traditionally made crucial contributions, in particular the stages theory of economic development and the Malthusian model of demographic equilibrium.  Although the proposition that historical evolution manifests itself in a sequence of typological stages (of which the market economy was a late arrival) and the claim that its contours are explicable as the outcome of changes in technology and factor proportions (of which the proportion of land to labour is the most important) differ in fundamental ways, the implicit characterization of the market economy is essentially the same: one in which economic outcomes reflect the continuous equilibrium of supply and demand as described in elementary textbooks.   This ‘Walrasian’ approach likens a market economy to a public auction.  The crucial assumption is that everyone knows what the current price is, and that at the equilibrium price sellers always find buyers. 

The Search-Equilibrium approach starts from the mechanics of actual exchange, which it models as a process that randomly ‘matches’ individual sellers and buyers in real time—i.e., time that has duration and not just dates.  In contrast to conventional Walrasian equilibrium, sellers may fail to find suitable buyers within that time, and vice versa, which implies that producers run the risk of not being able to sell all their output.  Because the odds of a successful ‘match’ rises with the number of individuals in the market, the cost and risk of engaging in market activity fall with rising market participation.  Search-equilibrium theory thus conceives markets as possessing varying degrees of ‘thickness’:  the thicker the market the lower the risk (and cost) of specialization. Since specialized producers (and consumers) make up the market, the model formalizes and extends Adam Smith’s insight that the division of labour depends on the extent of the market. 

Search equilibrium macroeconomics brings out the positive feedback between specialization and the extent of the market.  One of its central insights is that these feedbacks can lead to variations in both specialization and the extent of the market independently of changes in technology, factor proportions and other putative exogenous variables.  The operation of these feedbacks depends on the presence of significant economies of scale in handicraft manufacturing, transportation, and resource extraction, and elastic agricultural supply.  An increasingly voluminous body of archaeological findings indicates that these conditions were present by the Late Iron Age.  A slight but nevertheless significant documentation testifies to the presence of commercial institutions and practices supporting that specialization.  Because positive feedbacks of this kind can cause economies endogenously to contract as well as expand, a tighter chronology of specialized production and commercial networks (as evidenced for example by the spatial distribution and size of small towns and rural vici) would throw needed light on the rise and subsequent decline of the economy of late Antiquity.  

Elizabeth Murphy
Roman Workers and their Workplaces: Some Archaeological Thoughts on the Organization of Workshop Labor

The disciplinary relationship between Roman archaeology and Roman history has a long and complicated past.  To many, the factor defining the two disciplines has come to be seen according to evidence types, i.e. an archaeology of objects vis-à-vis a history of texts(1).  Yet the current challenge of integrating different bodies of evidence into a cohesive and convincing narrative that respects the integrity and interpretive limitations of all forms of evidence is faced on both sides of the disciplinary divide.  In such a context, certain topics lend themselves more or less suitable to an interdisciplinary approach.  In this case, investigations of worker specialization, workplaces, and production organization in the Roman world appear to be especially well-suited for this task, as historians and archaeologists alike are finding themselves asking similar questions concerning the nature and organization of labor in the Roman world.  Archaeology, in particular, is ripe for such an endeavor, as production offers an extensive body of evidence in the material record of the past, and this evidence often concerns industries only rarely referenced by historical sources.  Moreover, this archaeological record presents unique avenues of inquiry through the reconstruction of how work was experienced in the Roman world and through the spatial and temporal contextualization of its organization.

In view of this research potential and in the context of this volume, my intentions in this chapter are three-fold: 1.) to highlight some of the major trends I see in the archaeological study of Roman artisanal workshops and places of production; 2.) to consider the contribution of those studies to our understanding of Roman production; and 3.) building upon this previous work, to propose some new directives for future research that may prove more nuanced when considering issues of production organization and its social and economic implications. For the purposes of this chapter, I have opted to concentrate primarily on evidence of Roman artisanal ceramic production, on which my research interests lie.

Roman Archaeology of Workplaces

The archaeology of Roman production sites can be said to follow three general trends of research.  Certainly it is not claimed that the three trends outlined here encompass all production studies of the Roman world, but rather they represent general research trajectories.  The different research interests motivating these three trends fundamentally affect the entire archaeological process – from excavation strategy/post-excavation analysis to publication style.  The three avenues described briefly below include 1.) workshops as sites of production for known artifact typologies (and associated distribution patterns); 2.) workshops as a means of tracking economic factors (e.g. technology, scale of production) for use in debates on the ancient economy; and 3.) workshops as representative of production organization types.  

Production Sites, Typologies, and Distribution/Consumption Studies

First, the study of workshops as the production centers for known artifact typologies represents one of the broadest bodies of publication on Roman production sites.  According to this research directive, excavations are used to refine typological chronologies, to establish the range of artifact types from the site, and to indicate the source from which to build distribution maps. Such mapping exercises thus utilize the production site as the central point from which all distribution lines radiate(2).  In such cases, detailed excavation strategies of the workshop, itself, are largely unnecessary and, consequently, are rarely described.  Instead, emphasis is placed on the kilns and furnaces (i.e. the undeniable proof for a production site) and its associated wasters.  In many cases, the rest of the workshop is not even investigated.  This approach has been successful in associating objects found at consumption sites to their place of production, yet its interest in consumption has consequently downplayed the potential of production studies in contributing to our understanding of the Roman economy.

Production and the Nature of the Roman Economy

A second avenue in workshop studies has attempted to utilize previously excavated sites of production in function of larger debates by archaeologists and historians concerning the nature and scale of the Roman economy.  In this capacity, workshops have been analyzed (or re-analyzed) in relation to the scale and efficiency of production, as well as the use and development of technologies.  This evidence has been used by individuals with various theoretical economic leanings from M. Rostovtzeff(3) to M. Finley(4), to more recently G. Fülle(5), K. Greene(6), K. Dark(7), and A. Wilson(7).  Workshop archaeology employed for these purposes often ‘cherry picks’ the excavation findings to address certain aspects of the economy debate.  Elements, such as dimensions of workplaces, range of product distribution, type and scale of technology use are typically emphasized.  According to this approach, elements of workshops (mostly infrastructural elements) are importantly used as evidence for larger-scale questions of economy.  However, they fail to contextualize the specific workshop features (i.e. kilns, furnaces, tanks, vats) within the larger workshop setting, in relation to the rest of the production cycle, or with regard to other forms of material evidence.  As will be highlighted later in this paper, analyzing production infrastructure piece-meal opens serious gaps in the understanding of how production is internally organized and how that organization interfaces with broader structures of the economy. 

Production Organization and Its Models

Third, attempts to grapple with the diversity of archaeological workshop expressions (as well as their social and economic implications) resulted, from the late 1970s to the 1990s, in the development of a variety of production organization models(9).  These models, which were really, in fact, classification schemae, utilized sets of variables to characterize ideal types of production settings and were based largely on ethnographic analogy.  These models have provided an important outline of variables affecting the expression of production organization.  The predominant model used in Roman archaeology is undoubtedly D. Peacock’s modes of production(10).  In practical terms, such workshop analyses often attempt to correlate a handful of workshop features to the appropriate mode of production, as classified by Peacock(11).  Such a process tends to infer broader social and economic implications for the site from those described in the organizational model.  Development and use of such models demonstrates an active interest in social and economic organization that finds important cross-over with the themes of this volume, but this approach is not without its problems.  In the original publication of Peacock’s modes of production(12), the author himself warns that such a model necessitates further development and elaboration by subsequent research.  Without such evolution, the ideal types would (and, in fact, have) consequently become rarified.  In some cases, they have even come to be used as a sort of proxy for more intensive analytical treatment.   

Other Directions

The three trends outlined above have contributed to our understanding of production sites in the past 30 years and have encouraged interest in such investigations.  Yet the utility of their results for discussions on workers and their organization is not always immediately apparent.  The discussion presented in this chapter attempts to build upon this work.  In doing so, it will be argued that some social and economic aspects of production organization remain underdeveloped, and those aspects provide important information concerning how workers were organized in relation to their daily activities and the built environment and concerning how different types of social interactions could be integrated (and archaeologically identified) in regular cycles of production. 

Internal Workgroup Organization and the Built Environment: Some Insights from Household Archaeology

Physical Units v. Social Units

Many archaeological studies have centered on the ‘workshop’ as the basic analytical unit of production sites.  As workshops typically form discrete, architecturally delineable spaces, they present an easily archaeologically-identifiable unit of production organization.  By emphasizing the architectural workshop over the labor workgroup, however, some forms of organization have come to be lumped together based on certain expectations.  For instance, this is the case concerning Peacock’s manufactory mode of production, which stresses the overall size and scale of the workshop and its infrastructure over the internal organization of production activity(13).  In such cases, the ‘workgroup’ may directly correspond with the ‘workshop’; however, as will be discussed subsequently, this relationship should not necessarily be assumed.  Furthermore, this distinction should not be seen to undermine the utility of the workshop as a unit of analysis for understanding spatial organization of economic activities.  Rather, its utility is best fit to address questions at a specific scale of analysis, and that scale is not always appropriate to study relationships among workers and their internal organization within the workplace.

Some insight on the issue of workshops v. workgroups may be gleaned from discussions taking place in the field of household archaeology.  Scholars specializing in the archaeological study of domestic activities have made a similar differentiation between houses (‘the physical structures of dwellings’(14), i.e. physical units) v. households (‘an activity group whose members share in production, consumption, transmission, distribution, reproduction, and co-residence’(15), i.e. social units).   This distinction is crucial as archaeologists do not directly observe households (or workgroups for that matter).  Rather, they rely on an additional level of inference in associating physical remains with activity patterns and social groups(16).  This also has implications on our assumptions concerning the organization of work in antiquity, as well as its relationship to spatial patterning and built structures. 

Following this approach, the ‘workgroup’ (rather than the workshop) forms the basic economic and social production unit.  From an economic point of view, interest lies in their size, internal organization, product output, and task responsibilities.  From a social point of view, the workgroup forms a collective of individuals whose collaborative work activities require intense daily interpersonal interaction.  Yet in the context of the workplace the social and economic are inextricably entangled.  Such interaction can serve to either reinforce or deflate differences between workers based on specializations, skill level, legal responsibilities, ethnicity, and social status.  Although only in rare instances is it possible to attribute formal work titles and hierarchies to workers at known production settings, this is not to say that understanding the inner mechanics of production organization at a site is beyond the reach of archaeological study.  Indeed, in the setting of a workplace, both specialization in work tasks and collective work activities can be inferred from the material record. 

One reason that the workgroup has not often been considered as a primary analytical unit is that some Roman workshop studies tend to isolate segments of the production cycle in function of larger-scale questions of economy.  Another reason lies in the fact that its archaeological identification requires a highly detailed level of excavation analysis that reconstructs the chaîneopératoire (17) (sequence of operations) within the architectural context.  In this way, by identifying the distribution of production activities within a workshop, it is possible in some cases to spatially distinguish the production activities of individual workgroups and compare them to the overall workshop plan(18).

The distinction between the built environment and workgroup organization is especially important in situations where the production unit does not appear to strictly correspond to architectural distinctions of the workplace.

Dynamic Structures

In addition, workgroups, like households, are not static entities.  P. Allison has noted that the life histories of houses can be quite complex and their form can be adapted and redefined according to the needs and decisions accumulated through several generations of inhabitants.  As such, they represent palimpsests of domestic decision-making.  Recognition of these complex histories has even prompted some scholars to use the ‘household series’ (i.e. ‘the sequence of households that successively inhabit a given structure or house over a span of more than one generation’(19)) as a basic unit of analysis(20). 

With workshop structures, similar processes can be observed in the archaeological record.  With over century-long occupations documented at some workshops, the built environment acquired for manufacturing would in many cases not have been designed by later generations of workers or by artisans leasing a property.  Structural renovations and adaptations to meet the changing needs of different workgroups can thereby be witnessed archaeologically – in some cases even for different industries.  For instance, at Sagalassos, some workshops were used for over a century for ceramic production.  These display phases in which major changes were made to the internal organization of work spaces - floor surfaces were re-leveled, old kilns were dismantled or left in disrepair and new kilns constructed. 

Returning to the workgroup operating within such spaces, the size and composition of workgroups could be dependent on a variety of factors, such as the life-cycle of workers, the season of the year, and economic investment / downsizing. The dynamic nature of Roman workgroups has been noted in the case of La Graufesenque, where stamps have been used to reconstruct relationships between potters working in the same workshop(21).  Those studies have demonstrated the movement of individual craftsmen between workshops and changes in position of individuals within the workgroup. 

Workgroup Collaboration and the Cycles of Production

Collaboration between production units can also occasionally be discerned.  At Sagalassos sharing of figural stamps for the decoration of oinophoros moulds has been identified between workgroups.  This case demonstrates that certain stages in the production cycle brought together artisans of different workgroups.  Those interactions were likely only short-term or sporadic, but such interaction in this case appears to correlate with spatial organizational patterns.

Additionally, in the production cycle, certain stages may be collectively handled by one or more workgroups.  These ‘points of convergence’ among workgroups present particular opportunities for social engagement and productive collaboration that in some cases would have been incorporated into the longer-term rhythms and temporal cycles of production, occurring perhaps once a month or once per production season.

Case Studies: La Graufesenque terra sigillata kiln firings, amphora oil and wine filling, tile and brick depots, wheat grinding at the local mill.

Broader Implications: Economic Strategy and Small-Scale Production Units

The distinction between production workgroups and workshops also holds relevance to broader discussions on economic organization and investment strategies during the Roman period.   In fact, several scholars have come to see the small-scale production unit as the basic organizational unit of production activities, with industry expansion occurring laterally through the establishment of parallel, small-scale production units(22).  McCormick notes the trend as being specific to economic systems of late Antiquity, which were not able to maintain the large-scale units of earlier Roman periods(23).  He argues that competition among small-scale establishments encouraged higher production and kept rents high for landlords.  Additionally, in a contract-based system, potters may not have had the capital to rent large-scale facilities, and landlords may have preferred to keep the production units small in order to protect their interests from highly successful (and thereby potentially competitive) renters. 

Although McCormick’s analysis centers on late Antiquity, it may be argued that a similar situation was also present in earlier Roman periods and may, in fact, have been a more common type of economic organization.  According to D. Robinson, elite investment strategies in workshops at Pompeii tended to favor small-scale workshops(24).  He interprets these patterns as reflecting elite strategies that maintained a diversified and divisible body of investments. Such property investments could thereby be more easily distributed for inheritance purposes.  Other scholars have attributed the economic reliance on small-scale production units during the imperial period to a risk-aversion investment strategy by elites(25).

In these instances, the (small-scale) production unit is seen to play an important role in relating property investment to economic development.  The conceptualization of the production unit, however, remains ambiguous, and the relationship between production unit, property, and economic strategizing is largely based on a top-down perspective concentrating on the physical property owned by elites (i.e. the workshop). It fails to address the internal labor organization that was employed to actually execute the production process (i.e. the workgroup); such organizational strategies better represent internal workgroup decision-making related to the practicalities of work experience.  Thus, it seems clear that this interest in the small-scale production unit makes the analytical distinction between workshop and workgroup all the more germane, particularly when inferences are then made from those analyses on labor specialization and organization.

Remarks

This paper argues that the archaeological investigation of production sites holds much potential in developing our understanding of workers and their organization in the Roman world.  However, that potential is also contingent on developing the conceptual framework with which we approach the topic and the questions we ask of the material record.  Furthermore, it is recognized that the workplace is only one setting in which to explore the lived experiences of workers in the Roman period; the working world clearly intersected at many levels with other social and economic spheres.  However, as few textual references to workers in industries, such as ceramic industries, are extant from the period, the investigation of production sites is an area where archaeology uniquely has much to contribute. 

(1) Sauer, E.W. 2004.
(2) Biegert, S. 2010.
(3) Rostovtzeff, M. 1957.
(4) Finley, M.I. 1973.
(5) Fülle, G. 2000; 1997.
(6) Greene, K. 2007. 2003
(7) Dark, K.R. 1996.
(8) Wilson, A. 2002.
(9) These models were produced by several individuals with various archaeological backgrounds and specialized in a wide range of archaeological periods and regions, such as Van der Leeuw, S. 1977. Peacock D.P.S. 1982. Brumfiel, E. and T. Earle. 1987. Costin, C.  1991.  Rice, P. et al. 1981.
(10) Peacock, D.P.S. 1982.
(11) For examples of such studies, see Berlin, A. 2005; Cuomo di Caprio, N. 1992; Ben Moussa, M. 2007; Poblome, J. et al. 2001.
(12) Peacock, D.P.S. 1982: 3-5.
(13) Ibid. 114-128.
(14) Allison, P. 1998: 17.
(15) Alexander, R.T. 2006: 81.
(16) Allison, P. 1998.
(17) The concept of chaîne opératoire was developed in Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1993.
(18) The interpretive basis of these reconstructions also is predicated on a large sample of comparable sites with which it is possible to discern meaningful patterns in the archaeological record (Ibid.: 18) and appropriate consideration of the formative processes of the archaeological record. (Schiffer, M.B. 1987).
(19) Smith, M.E. 1992:30, as cited in Alexander, R.T. 2006: 81.
(20) For an overview of this discussion, see Alexander, R.T. 2006: esp. 80-81.
(21)Dannell, G.B. 2001: 232.
(22)Dannell, G.B. 2002: 214-15; McCormick 2001: 58-9; Poblome, J. In Press.
(23) McCormick 2001: 58-9.  It is important to note that McCormick also identifies these trends in the mining industry, the organization of which was based on workgroup and mine-shafts units, rather than a more property-based workshop structure.
(24) Robinson, D. 2005. 
(25)Poblome, J. In press.

Works Cited

Nicolas Tran,
Ars and Doctrina: the Socioeconomic Identity of Roman Skilled Workers

Roman craftsmen and tradesmen belonged to a wider class of people. They were artifices. Each of them was a specialist of his own ars. This conception was typical not only of their self-representations (known by epigraphical and iconographical monuments they ordered), but also typical of Roman representations in general. Elite conceptions were not different. Writers and jurists were part of the upper class and they included artisans and shopkeepers among the very heterogeneous category of artifices, just as rhetors and poets, for instance. Obviously, artes liberales and artes sordidae were two separate subcategories. Yet, each ars had many common points with the other artes. It was a scientia (a knowledge), the result of a doctrina (an apprenticeship), mastered more or less by individuals. Hence, ars provided opportunities of demonstrating expertise (peritia) and excellence, so that a artisan could be admirable (mirus) or simply the best (summus, optimus), in his mind and according to his coworkers or customers. Mastery of a specific skill and ability to teach it, on the one hand, working class hierarchy and hierarchical organization of businesses, on the other hand, were firmly correlated. As a matter of fact, shop or workshop managers could be defined as magistri. It supposed authority over a work community and training of apprentices (discipuli). In sum, the recognition of artisans (in a modern sense) as artifices (in a ancient sense) legitimated a discourse on pride, accepted by everybody within the Roman society. Many historians have been wrong, when they pointed out an opposition between popular conception of artisanal labour (based on pride) and an elite’s disdain for it.

Christian Laes,
Educators in Christian inscriptions

Following my earlier publications on midwives, pedagogues and schoolmasters in the epigraphical source material, I will for the first time compile the collection of educators as they appear in the Christian epigraphical evidence. Based on this collection, I will sketch the profile of these educators, as class, age, gender and family structure are concerned. Moreover, I will highlight what it meant economically to an household to have an educator in their midst. The findings of this research will be confronted with Harper (2011) on slavery in the late ancient world.    

Part 3. Professional organizations (collegia)

 

Many of the numerous private associations (collegia) in the Roman world brought together members who shared the same profession. Protecting common interests was surely part of what collegia did, but the solidarity among collegiati went far beyond economic interests. Collegia were always (also) social communities with their own religious cults, private celebrations and parties, and funerary and commemorative practices. In Late Antiquity the state regulated collegia that provided vital services to the state. Membership became quasi-hereditary and compulsory, but in return the corporation also required privileges and influence it lacked before.

In this section we wish to focus on the question of whether and how collegia affected the quality, availability and organization of labor. Did collegia improve or decrease the productivity of labor? Did they stimulate or block the exchange of new ideas and techniques? Did they stimulate trust and solidarity between members of different collegia practicing the same trade or rather increase distrust and competition?

Sheilagh Ogilvie,
Merchant collegia in Greek and Roman antiquity

Associations of merchants and traders have a long history in Europe, reaching back to Greek and Roman antiquity.  Ancient Rome in particular was influenced by Hellenistic and Egyptian corporative structures, influenced them reciprocally, and in turn left legal and institutional legacies for medieval Europe. So it is worthwhile examining these ancient Mediterranean merchant associations, both in their own right, and to understand their influence on later periods. The literature on merchant associations in antiquity is actuated by one major methodological challenge and two lively debates. To these, an economic approach adds two open questions which this paper seeks to address.

The methodological challenge relates to the nature of the evidence. Merchant associations are seldom mentioned in ancient literary sources, and thus almost everything we know about them comes from inscriptions or laws.  The only exceptions are surviving papyri from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. Our knowledge of ancient merchant associations is therefore based declamatory and legal evidence, with little information about mundane affairs. With care, however, we can use available sources to address basic debates.

The first debate concerns whether merchant associations in Greek and Roman antiquity were economic institutions or simply organizations for sociability, religion, politics, and funerary observance. This paper argues that the economic activities of merchant associations are visible even through the veil of primarily non-economic sources. But it also emphasizes how the sociable, religious, funerary, and political activities of these associations were central to their economic influence.

The second debate concerns the relationship between merchant associations and the state. The Roman Imperial state in particular developed a close relationship with its merchant ‘collegia’, causing some to argue that the merchant associations of antiquity were ‘state-dominated’. The paper argues that the relationship between merchant collegia and states varied greatly across different ancient polities.

This enables us to address two open questions of interest to economists. First, why did merchant associations arise and survive for so many centuries in Greek and Roman antiquity? Second, what was their net effect on the economies and societies in which they were embedded? This paper argues that merchant associations arose and survived because they benefited both their own members and other powerful groups in society, although the balance of these benefits changed over time.

The paper concludes with an assessment of the extent to which merchant associations can be regarded as ‘efficient’ economic institutions which benefited the entire society, as opposed to institutions which mainly favoured powerful and well-organized special interests.

Koenraad Verboven,
Professional associations and organizing the urban population

According to Plutarch the second King Numa Pompilius distributed the Roman people in collegia based on their professions. The second century historian Florus as well claims that the last but one king Servius Tullius distributed the people in decuriae et collegia according to their ‘arts and offices’. There is of course no historical basis to this tradition, but the foundation myth shows how by the second century CE the citizen corps was seen as being organized in private associations based on professional employment. In processions people marched behind the banners of their collegia – each with their specific tutelary deities. In theaters and amphitheaters collegia had reserved seats for their leaders. Legal authors confirm that ‘public utility’ required that craftsmen would be organized in collegia, who could then be called upon to assist the authorities in maintaining order and fighting fires. Although potentially they could pose a threat to social order, no urban centre could function without them.

I will argue that not just freedmen but also the freeborn members of the ‘middling classes’ (plebs media) based their social identity largely on professional occupation. This social identity was expressed and experienced in professional collegia. Through their close connections with civic institutions and their role in structuring the plebs, occupational collegia integrated ordinary citizens and residents in urban communities. Consequently the identity of the urban community was not just derived from its historical and cultural heritage, but was based equally on the mosaic of professional identities of their populations.

Jinyu Liu,
Work, Occupations, and Group Membership: a Conceptual Analysis

In an article entitled “How Do You Count Them If They’re Not There? New Perspectives on Roman Cloth Production” [Opuscula romana 25-26 (2001), 7-17], Susan Dixon raised the questions of the dubious nature of Roman job titles and its impact on the reconstruction of the Roman economy at the methodological level. A larger underlying issue which has remained understudied is how the Roman society defined, comprehended and ultimately conceptualized occupation. This is a broad topic, the understanding of which is inevitably rooted in the power structure and social hierarchy of the Roman society. This paper does not aim at a comprehensive treatment of the topic, but strives to offer a nuanced look at how the Romans perceived the relationship between work, occupations and group membership in the light of the insights of sociology of occupations, which approaches occupations as social roles. I proceed in three steps.

First, I offer a contextualized analysis of the vocabulary used to express work and occupation in the legal documents, apprenticeship contracts, inscriptions, and literary texts from the Roman Empire. The purpose of this exercise is not to provide a list of occupational titles. Rather, particular attention is given to such questions as whether work and occupation was perceived as end or means, as a permanent or transient state, which aspects (skills, social network, service, etc.) associated with work and occupation were most professed in our sources, and to what extent occupational classifications were made to fit administrative needs.

Second, I discuss under what circumstance(s) and in what context(s) women were marked by job titles as a way to understand how (specific) occupations served to locate their incumbents in a matrix of other social roles.

Third, I explore whether membership in “occupational” collegia was perceived as reinforcing or impeding the members’ participation in other networks or groups.

Sarah E.Bond
Ignominy and Monetarii: Mint Workers in the Later Roman Empire

This chapter examines the legal status, voluntary associations, and social mobility of Roman mint workers (monetarii) from the second century to the sixth century CE. Although much has been written about the location of Roman mints and the coins they produced, there has been relatively little investigation into the lower-level laborers that facilitated the Roman monetary system. A study of these laborers discloses that while they provide pivotal insight into the organizational structure of such a massive system; they are further significant in illustrating the state use of legal status to marginalize socially workers essential to the economic functioning of the later empire. The chapter commences with an overview of the mint’s labor organization. In the Roman Republic, elected magistrates called triumviri monetales (Cic. Leg. 3.6) oversaw the minters’ association and supervised minting practices. Although gangs of slave laborers called familiae monetariae (CILVI, 298= ILS 1636)staffed the imperial monetae of the early Roman empire, mint corpora with members of varying status began to grow in strength and wealth within the imperial mints. The bourgeoning sway of the minters is investigated through a closer look at the minters’ rebellion in the late third century. Under Aurelian, deceptive minters (Aur. Vic. De Caes. 35.4; HA. Aur. 38.2; Eut. 9.14) employed within the city of Rome allegedly circulated debased and underweight coinage, and, following allegations of corruption and the arrest of their patron, the workers incited a bloody revolt. The tumult brings to the fore questions of patronage and solidarity among the minters, who, in this case, closely allied themselves with their leader, Felicissimus. In response, Aurelian closed the Roman mint and placed firmer oversight over the mint workers throughout the Roman empire. From the fourth century, minters continued to be organized into voluntary associations, and control over their status appears increasingly visible in the legal evidence. A Constantinian decree from 317 CE (CTh. 10.20.1) noted that monetarii were to remain ignoble and dictated thatcertain titles could not be extended to them, perhaps in an effort to delineate and solidify minters into an immobile social group. In 380, marriage restrictions were placed on monetarii. They could wed only a particular status group of women, whereas women of higher status who chose to marry them lost their position (CTh. 10.20.10). Moreover, the daughters of monetarii could only marry men within the trade. Despite the limits on their occupational and social liberties, mint positions appear to have gained clout and become increasingly attractive in the later empire due to the office’s exemption from military service and munera sordida. By the sixth century, working at a mint had become a markedly more high-status position in both the Greek East and the Latin West, a curious development that exemplifies the complex nature of labor and status in Late Antiquity.

Part 4. Identities and ideologies

 

The negative valuation of labor in literary texts and the very different Christian views on the virtue of labor occupied a central place in research for decades. Wage labor in particular would have been so strongly associated with servility that it was shun by freeborn for centuries and would have blocked the development of a free labor market. With the exception of farm labor, even independent labor – for instance by artisans or merchants – was so generally and profoundly scorned in elite ideology that  anticipatory socialization made successful businessmen massively transform into landowners as soon as possible. Only in the Christian days of Late Antiquity would labor have become a symbol of virtuousness and a source of respect and pride.

Scholars today no longer hold such straightforward views. Opinions by moralists and poets are no reliable reflection of aristocratic moral codes. Elite ideologies always attempt to create symbolic distances to match differences in power and wealth. Glimpses of a different moral code among urban craftsmen and merchants can be seen in funerary monuments, reliefs and bylaws of professional collegia.

But the role of ideology in the perception and practice of labor is still an important issue. Social identities are construed through social relations and actions. Hence labor – whether voluntary or forced, paid or independent, intellectual or physical – always affects the social identity of the worker, while vice versa the worker’s social identity determines to a large extent what kind of work and under which conditions (s)he will accept.

In this section we particularly wish to explore how social identities, cultural beliefs and preferences affected the organization and performance of work, and how in turn work affected the constant regeneration of identities, beliefs and preferences. Was there a strong link between profession and social identity? Did such a link stimulate efficiency, for instance by increasing the value accorded to the quality (or quantity) of one’s product? Did respectability (if there was any) increase investments in trade and industry? Did Christianity really make a difference?

Miko Flohr
Work, ideology and identity in urban space

The chapter proposed in this summary starts from the idea that, to understand the relation between everyday work, ideology, and social identity, it is essential to understand the spatial contexts in which occupational ideologies and identities were negotiated: rather than absolute givens, work-related identities and ideologies were variables that were constantly defined and redefined in social interactions. As many of these social interactions took place in and around the place where work was done, a thorough understanding of the nature of these places and their embedding into the urban landscape is essential for our insight into the ideology of labor. Yet the shop floor and its environments have been remarkably absent from scholarly debates on this issue, which have mostly focused on literary and epigraphic evidence.

The chapter will focus on four themes. First, it will focus on the construction of identity on the shop floor. Then, the general position of labor in the urban landscape will be discussed. The third section will focus on the spatial aspects of status and independence. Finally, the chapter will zoom in on the strategies used by workers to shape their professional identities and communicate these to their fellow citizens. The chapter will integrate a wide array of material and textual remains, and will particularly focus on three types of urban centres: small-scale urban communities, such as those in the Appennines, medium-sized urban communities, such as Pompeii, and the metropolitan area of Rome and its port cities. Inevitably, there will be an emphasis on the high-quality evidence from Roman Italy, but where possible, parallels will be drawn with developments elsewhere in the Roman world.

1. Identity and ideology on the shop floor

The nature and the context of work obviously played a key role in constructing and maintaining professional identities and ideologies. Certain types of work may be thought of as more or less dirty or taboo, and some occupations were more susceptible of prestige than others. Whether or not work is done for end users is a related, crucial variable. Moreover, working in a small-scale, intimate family context gives a completely different starting point for the development of an occupational identity than working in large-scale, anonymous contexts. Task allocation and division of labor matter as well: the degree to which workers are able to master a craft determines the degree to which they can confidently use the occupational title. This section will highlight the different ‘working landscapes’ of small-scale communities compared to larger-scale communities and the Roman metropolis, which may have fostered differing labor ideologies.

2. Labor and the urban landscape

Yet, identities and ideologies are not only constructed amongst workers, but also in interaction with outsiders, and precisely this interaction with outsiders is a sensitive issue, given the nuisance that may be caused by some manufacturing processes. However, while there seem to have been a few exceptions, the evidence suggests that there were little or no restrictions as to the location of shops and workshops, or to their embedding in the urban environment. Urban geographies of labor were dictated by economic priorities, not by ideology, and work, generally, tended to be visible to outsiders. This made shops and workshops even more important as a place for negotiating social identities, especially when workers stood directly in touch with customers. It also could make work equipment a central part of the occupational identity dialogue, which could have effects on the design and location of such equipment. This section will highlight that the absence of ideological restrictions is a key element in our understanding of the relation between labor and identity.

3. Shops, workshops and the spatiality of (in)dependence

Many shop holders and their workers were involved in hierarchical relationships with social superiors. Even though the precise details of ties of property and dependency tend to be invisible in the archaeological record, the spatial context of shops and workshops conditions, for a considerable part, the conditions under which these ties were constructed and maintained, and the role that social dependence could and could not play in the social identity of shop holders and workers. It mattered whether a unit was part of a larger whole, and it mattered whether or not a shop could be visually associated with a large elite house, as so often was the case in Pompeii. This section will nuance the supposed dominance of elite houses and will show that, more often than not, work took place in contexts that were not part of any visual social hierarchy. Even within Pompeii, elite domus by 79 AD had lost much of their central position in urban commerce, and to a much stronger extent, this was the case in cities like Puteoli, Ostia and Rome. Work was no longer done in the direct (visual) environment of social superiors. This is an immensely important development when it comes to understanding the meaning of labor-related identities and ideologies.

4. Shaping and communicating professional identities

Finally, this chapter will zoom in on the way people shaped and communicated their occupational identities in the direct environment of their shops and workshops. As is clear from the archaeological record of Pompeii, shops and workshops could be surrounded by texts and depictions related to the processes going on inside. Recent efforts at close-reading some of this evidence have massively improved our insight into occupational identities and ideologies of labor. The evidence also emphatically shows that there were two levels of identity construction: one internally, within the staff network, and one outwardly oriented, towards the rest of the urban community.

5. Discussion

In conclusion, the chapter will maintain that, rather than a restricting factor, the ideology of work could, for those involved in it, be a very visible asset in social competition. Looking at things from the bottom up, the evidence to be discussed in this chapter will suggest that, for many people, economically rational investment strategies shaped ideologies and identities rather than the other way around.

Kyle Harper,
Debt, exchange and fairness in the Later Roman Empire

Paulinus of Nola was a provincial aristocrat of senatorial rank who became one of the first truly elite Romans to abandon his wealth to pursue a life of asceticism. His biographer, celebrating his extraordinary charity, noted that Paulinus opened his storehouses not just to those “close by,” but to those in need “everywhere.”  “How many men entangled in debt has he freed from their creditors by giving them money?  Surely, with a single business deal done of holiness, he simultaneously quieted the groans of the debtors and restored the happiness of the creditors.” 

About a decade after his dramatic conversion, Paulinus played a role in convincing one of the very wealthiest young couples in the empire, Pinian and Melania, to follow him into radical asceticism.  Melania and Pinian would, famously, liquidate one of the largest fortunes in the empire.  Their charity included the conspicuous manumission of thousands of slaves, as well as an act of liberation that has been less often celebrated, or even noticed.  Paulinus himself describes, in a poem, how Pinian had freed men in cities “across the whole world.”  “For by his holy riches he has lifted a slave-like yoke off the necks of many free men too, clamped by debt in the darkness of prisons, liberating with his gold those who were in the chains of the lender.”

These grand acts of Christian charity cast a sudden and unexpected light on a world that deserves much more careful exploration – the monetary economy of the fourth century, its connection with expansive and intricate credit markets, and the way that private obligations were brutally enforced by public institutions.  Papyri, letters, laws, and a number of other sources confirm that the state played an active role in the collection of debts. This paper, while sketching the institutional and monetary background of debt collection in the fourth century, will focus on the way that Christian economic ideology was shaped by the realities of the credit markets of the period.  The paper will claim that:

(1)  Networks of credit, both personal and impersonal, were an essential economic and social institution in the fourth century.

(2)  Relations of debt call into question the essence of economic exchange.  Were credit transactions personal, embedded, reciprocal exchanges or impersonal, contractual, market exchanges?  Both were important, simultaneously, in the Roman Empire, so that relationships of indebtedness were a testing grounds for any economic ideology.

(3) During the fourth century, in particular, debt relationships were central to the formation of Christian economic ideology.  In the period of Christian triumph, debt, even more than wage labor or slavery, worried Christian leaders, who advocated for a model of interest-free gift-giving in the midst of an economy where there remained a highly impersonal and market-based dimension to credit relationships.  The battle over “usury” was a battle over the nature of economic exchange.  The liberation of strangers from debt by flamboyant acts of charity was a stark symbol of the ideal Christian economy.

Catharina Lis & Hugo Soly,
Attitudes to Work and Workers in the Ancient World and the Middle Ages: Change or Continuity?

Several authors have argued that the economy of the Imperium Romanum in the first and second centuries CE did not differ fundamentally from that of Western Europe in the thirteenth century or even in the early modern period. They mention similar ranges of yield ratios and levels of urbanization, the application of technological innovations, the strong expansion of interregional trade, the growth of production centres, the rise of groups of nouveaux riches, and the multitude of associations of merchants and skilled artisans protecting the occupational interests of their members. It might therefore seem tempting to assume that attitudes towards work and workers were comparable in the two economies as well. This view, however, is at odds with the prevailing idea that work was looked down upon in Classical Antiquity, and that a different, more favourable perspective gained ground only with the spread of Christianity.

In our paper, we intend to note first of all that perceptions of work and workers were far more complex in the Roman Empire than the traditional account might suggest: not only should the deprecating statements by some members of the elite about manual labour be placed in a specific social context, but a great many examples of positive images and self-images of entrepreneurs and artisans are known as well. Both socio-economic and philosophical developments have given rise to favourable discourses, in which work and identity largely coincided for broad groups of the population.

This does not mean that we are asserting a simple continuity between the ancient world and the middle Ages. Christianity has provided a very specific qualification of work, which related largely to the dominant input from monasticism. Time and again, monastic orders wondered what a ‘perfect’ Christian lifestyle should entail, and how the clergy should comply with the Pauline imperative that everybody should work. The question of whether they should work with their hands instigated serious controversies, but the view that spiritual work was more worthwhile and more meaningful than manual labour was not challenged. The clergy also agreed that the finality of manual labour was not about realizing a socially useful product but consisted of achieving a spiritual goal. In the twelfth century, when the clergy progressively abandoned manual labour and manifested exclusively as oratores, this signified a devaluation of the laboratores. Henceforth, manual labour came to be regarded as the exclusive purview of lay people.

This raises the question as to what extent and in what respects the rhetoric of the Church was translated into texts intended for lay people. Were the categories and finalities devised in religious settings also made audible and visualized in lay circles? Which channels served to communicate such messages, and what was their impact?

An equally important question is whether views about work and workers retained their full religious significance in a context of socio-economic change and political emancipation like the one that manifested in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. After all, new social groups entered the arena. Did they devise their own discourses about work and workers, and do these views resemble the ones in Antiquity? Or should we conclude that a confident, more worldly orientation toward work did not materialize? In other words, was a funeral monument such as the one for the Roman baker Eurysaces still conceivable in the middle Ages?