This volume presents the results of long-term research into occupational epigraphy from the Latin-language provinces of the Roman Empire. It catalogues stone epigraphs of 690 independent professionals (excluding state workers, imperial slaves, freedmen and military personnel) providing quantitative as well as qualitative analyses of the raw data.

Proceedings from the ‘People of the Ancient World’ conference held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2016. Ten papers encompass diverse approaches to Roman provincial populations and the corresponding case-studies highlight the multi-faceted character of Roman society.

From Document to History, edited by Carlos Noreña and Nikolaos Papazarkadas, presents a series of new studies in Greek and Roman epigraphy, highlighting the contribution of documentary evidence to our understanding of ancient Greek and Roman history.

Work and labour are fundamental to an understanding of Roman society. In a world where reliable information was scarce and economic insecurity loomed large, social structures and networks of trust were of paramount importance to the way work was provided and filled in. Taking its cue from New Institutional Economics, this book deals with the wide range of factors shaping work and labour in the cities of Roman Italy under the early empire, from families and familial structures, to labour collectives, slavery, education and apprenticeship. To illuminate the complexity of the market for labour, this monograph offers a new analysis of the occupational inscriptions and reliefs from Roman Italy, placing them in the wider context by means of documentary evidence like apprenticeship contracts, legal sources, and material remains. This synthesis therefore provides a comprehensive analysis of the ancient sources on work and labour in Roman urban society, leading to a novel interpretation of the market for work, and a fuller understanding of the daily lives of nonelite Romans. For some of them, work was indeed a source of pride, whereas for others it was merely a means to an end or a necessity of life.

The story of the Roman Empire’s enormous wine industry told through the remarkable ceramic storage and shipping containers that made it possible The average resident of ancient Rome drank two-hundred-and-fifty liters of wine a year, almost a bottle a day, and the total annual volume of wine consumed in the imperial capital would have overflowed the Pantheon. But Rome was too densely developed and populated to produce its own food, let alone wine. How were the Romans able to get so much wine? The key was the dolium—the ancient world’s largest type of ceramic wine and food storage and shipping container, some of which could hold as much as two-thousand liters. In Dolia, classicist and archaeologist Caroline Cheung tells the story of these vessels—from their emergence and evolution to their major impact on trade and their eventual disappearance. Drawing on new archaeological discoveries and unpublished material, Dolia uncovers the industrial and technological developments, the wide variety of workers and skills, and the investments behind the Roman wine trade. As the trade expanded, potters developed new techniques to build large, standardized dolia for bulk fermentation, storage, and shipment. Dolia not only determined the quantity of wine produced but also influenced its quality, becoming the backbone of the trade. As dolia swept across the Mediterranean and brought wine from the far reaches of the empire to the capital’s doorstep, these vessels also drove economic growth—from rural vineyards and ceramic workshops to the wine shops of Rome. Placing these unique containers at the center of the story, Dolia is a groundbreaking account of the Roman Empire’s Mediterranean-wide wine industry.

What was daily life like for a working man or woman in the Roman Empire? What was the meaning of labor for the laborer? Roman authors (who seldom were workers) depicted workers in ancient Rome but generally used stereotypes intended to amuse the upper class. "Common" men and women did write of their own lives, often poignantly and eloquently, in their epitaphs and votive dedications. At death they claimed the identity they had worked a lifetime to create. For many, the identity centered on occupation. In Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome, Sandra R. Joshel examines Roman commemorative inscriptions from the first and second centuries A.D. to determine ways in which slaves, freed slaves, and unprivileged freeborn citizens used work to frame their identities. ln the minutiae of the epitaphs and dedications she identifies the "language" of the inscriptions, through which the voiceless classes of Ancient Rome spoke. The inscriptions indicate the significance of work--as a source of community, a way to reframe the conditions of legal status, an assertion of activity against upper-class passivity, and a standard of assessment based on economic achievement rather than birth. Drawing on sociology, anthropology, ethnography, and women's history, this thoroughly documented volume illuminates the dynamics of work and slavery at Rome.

"Inscriptions are for anyone interested in the Roman world and Roman culture, whether they regard themselves as literary scholars, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, religious scholars or work in a field that touches on the Roman world from c. 500 BCE to 500 CE and beyond. The goal of The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy is to show why inscriptions matter and to demonstrate to classicists and ancient historians, their graduate students, and advanced undergraduates, how to work with epigraphic sources"--