Elizabeth A. Murphy – författare

Economic inequality has received increasing attention by historical and archaeological scholars. Editors Elizabeth A. Murphy and Robert Stephan, along with eight leading figures in the field, consider how economic inequalities were structured during the period, and assess how economic inequalities affected the social experiences between and within different communities. Inequality in Ancient Rome outlines current trends and debates concerning the methods used to investigate ancient inequality and the epistemological underpinning driving scholarship. In particular, disagreement arises concerning the appropriateness of telling macro versus micro histories from the data, the utility of large-scale statistical models, and selecting variables to draw analogy and cross-cultural comparison with Roman evidence. Contributors to this volume also offer fresh conceptual frameworks, such as inequalities of entitlement, social closure, structural violence and vulnerability, to interpret the Roman evidence. These theories utilize important new case studies that rely on a range of archaeological datasets, such as house size, bioarchaeological health and wellness indices, and historical evidence, such as inscriptions, legal and political sources. The use of these datasets as proxy evidence for wealth indices is explored, critiqued and assessed in depth, offering an innovative investigative approach to the intersection of economic and social inequalities in the Roman world.

What was the social experience of work in the ancient world? In this study, Elizabeth Murphy approaches the topic through the lens offered by a particular set of workers, the potters and ceramicists in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Her research exploits the rich and growing dataset of workshops and production evidence from the Roman East and raises awareness of the unique features of this particular craft in this region over several centuries. Highlighting the multi-faceted working experience of professionals through a theoretically-informed framework, Murphy reconstructs the complex lives of people in the past, and demonstrates the importance of studying work and labor as central topics in social and cultural histories. Her research draws from the fields of archaeology, social history and anthropology, and applies current social theories --- communities of practice, technological choices, chaîne opératoire, cultural hybridity,  taskscapes - to interpret and offer new insights into the archaeological remains of workshops and ceramics.