Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside

Cam Grey is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where his research covers the social and economic history of the Later Roman Empire. He is also a co-director of 'The Roman Peasant Project', an archaeological project located in southern Tuscany that amounts to the first systematic, interdisciplinary attempt to analyze the houses, farms and lived experiences of the Roman peasantry.

'In his absorbing new study … [Cam Grey] develops a supple and sophisticated theoretical framework within which to approach the sources that reveal late ancient peasant life. Grey's study is rich in important and compelling insights. Indeed, its great appeal is the fascinating and persuasive vision that it offers of peasants ably negotiating and even shaping a world that we are very much accustomed to view from the perspective of elite authors. It seeks to establish a new conceptual framework through which to approach the late ancient countryside; a framework which is both well-grounded in the sources and sympathetic to … the concerns and motivations of peasants, and which therefore helps us make good sense of the world that they inhabited. In this, it succeeds splendidly.' Jonathan P. Conant, Early Medieval Europe

• Introduction: studying rural communities in the Late Roman world; 1. Constituting communities: peasants, families, households; 2. What really matters: risk, reciprocity, and reputation; 3. Small politics: making decisions, managing tension, mediating conflict; 4. Power as a competitive exercise: potentates and communities; 5. Resistance, negotiation, and indifference: communities and potentates; 6. Creating communities: taxation and collective responsibility; 7. Unintended consequences: taxation, power, and communal conflict; Conclusions.