(Follow the
links for bibliographical references)
The study of the history of the ancient Greco-Roman world
is part of the study of history in general. History, in turn, is just one
branch of the study of human behavior, which is embedded in the study of all
forms of life on earth. In my work, I have been trying to take account of these
multiple contexts. As a result, my interests largely center on three thematic
and methodological issues.
First, a strong emphasis on the fundamentals of life in the past,
embodied by critical
determinants of well-being such as longevity, health,
nutritional status, economic opportunity, and reproductive success. I have
studied some of these factors in my earlier work on the organization of
labor in Roman farming, and more recently in my research on demographic
conditions in the ancient Mediterranean. Building on a series of
technical studies of mortality patterns, I have long been planning a general
handbook on ancient population history for Cambridge University Press.
Second, a cross-cultural
comparative perspective that puts Greco-Roman history in a
broader context. Only comparisons with other civilizations make it possible to
distinguish common features from culturally specific or unique characteristics
and developments, help us to identify variables that were critical to
particular historical outcomes, and allow us to assess the nature of ancient
Mediterranean societies within the wider context of pre-modern world history.
For these reasons, I seek to study key institutions cross-culturally, focusing
on the interrelated themes of economic
development, empire, and slavery.
Together with my Stanford colleagues Ian Morris and Richard Saller, I
co-edited the Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World.
This project was complemented by a companion volume on the Roman economy edited by
myself. Ian Morris and I were the editors of a volume on the dynamics of ancient empires that had grown out
of a series of conferences sponsored by Stanford’s Social Science History
Institute. Together with Peter Bang of the University of Copenhagen, I
completed a handbook of state formation in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean,
and I edited a general handbook of Roman studies jointly with my former Stanford colleague
Alessandro Barchiesi. In addition, I launched an international research
initiative promoting comparative study of imperial states in the ancient Mediterranean and
ancient China that has resulted in a pair of collaborative volumes bringing together
experts from different areas. This project was complemented by a year-long
research seminar and a workshop on what I have proposed to call the ‘First Great Divergence’ between eastern and western Eurasia
in the second half of the first millennium CE.
Since then, my interests have been expanding to encompass a wider range
of early empires. This has led to another project, a comprehensive world history of empires co-edited with Peter Bang and the
late Chris Bayly. In addition, I co-edited conference volumes on fiscal regimes in premodern states (with Andrew Monson) and the global history of slavery (with John
Bodel). In a more recent foray into world history, I explored the determinants of income and wealth inequality from prehistory
to the present. I then moved on to the problem of the ‘Great Divergence’ between the modern West and the rest of the
world, asking whether and in which ways this momentous process was rooted in
ancient and medieval history. I expect to return to this topic in future
publications. Meanwhile, I am exploring ways of globalizing
the study of ancient history and of
emancipating it from the constraints imposed by the outmoded tradition of
‘Classics.’
Finally, transdisciplinarity, again exemplified by my interest in historical demography, a field of
research which depends as much on the findings and models of the life sciences
as on more conventional historical data. I have examined the interdependence
of demography and disease in parts of the ancient Mediterranean. In
the future, I may expand on my earlier studies of historical evidence for
institutionalized nuclear-family incest. Interpretations of incest and incest
avoidance lie at the heart of competing theories of human nature, and must be
evaluated from biological as well as cultural angles. In this area, preliminary
forays into genetics and behavioral studies have allowed me to open a dialogue
with the scientific community. What we need is a more comprehensive study of brother-sister
and parent-child marriage in pre-modern societies that seeks to
improve our understanding of the limits of human behavioral plasticity.
I have been involved in collaborative interdisciplinary projects that
employ information technology to expand our understanding of the Roman world,
most notably geospatial modeling for the purpose of reconceptualizing the
physical properties and logistical constraints of the Roman empire. I am also
interested in the contribution of genetics to our understanding of ancient population movements and more generally
in the ways in which science expands our knowledge of ancient living conditions
by means of the analysis of ancient and modern DNA, osteological study, and
paleoclimatology. These interest have resulted in a collaborate volume that
highlights the contribution of science to our understanding of Roman
history. Last but not least, my research also extends into the field
of Buffy Studies.
In late 2005, Josh Ober and I created the ‘Princeton/Stanford
Working Papers in Classics’, the first-ever electronic repository of
working papers in this field anywhere in the world. This site, currently
archived, hosts over 100 papers by faculty and graduate students and received attention well beyond the Classics
community. In May 2012, Elijah Meeks and I launched the interactive website ‘ORBIS: The
Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World’, which
attracted over 350,000 visitors within the first two months. A revised version
was published two years later.
(For further information on these projects, see Work in progress and Collaborations.)