Trade in the eastern Mediterranean, 100--700 AD: The ceramic evidence (Roman Empire).

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Since the beginning of time, exchange and trade have played an important role in the development of civilizations. They function as a mechanism that allows individuals, cities and empires the opportunity to grow beyond the natural resources available to them. The intention of my study was to determine the scale and nature of trade in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as its importance to the economy of that area. To answer this question my study focused on the nature of trade, its direction, its volume, the goods or commodities being traded, the relationship of this trade to local and global economies, and its role in the metamorphosis of Late Antiquity.
The importance of trade is a dominant consideration in modern discussions of the development and well-being of society. Many prevailing ideas about the significance of trade come, in fact, from historical models, most of them developed in the course of the nineteenth century and based on information from the ancient world. My research represents a fundamental reassessment of the scale and nature of trade in the eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity and provides an important new foundation for those interested in the way our own complex economy functions in an era that has many similarities with those of the <italic>Pax Romana</italic>.
My research is based on both the written and archaeological records, the latter providing evidence not available to earlier historians and which is amenable to statistical analysis, model-building, and testing. My work utilized literary evidence to form a general picture of the period's trading activity and then integrated first hand archaeological information from various sites to provide direct evidence for the “realities” of trade in the period. This was necessarily selective and included sites in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, and Carthage. This combination of literary and archaeological evidence illustrated: (a) the nature of exchange (gift exchange, tied trade, redistributed trade, market exchange), (b) the size or volume of trade, (c) trade's importance to the economy and society of the time, (d) and the role of trade in the transformation and/or collapse of the Ancient World.