Eli Weaverdyck

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Seminar für Alte Geschichte, Post-Doc

University of California, Berkeley, Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, Graduate Student

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Papers by Eli Weaverdyck

Nabataean Networks and Transimperial Trade in Southwest Asia, part 2: Aromatics and Agriculture: A Spatial Approach to Long-Distance Trade and the Local Economy of the Nabataeans

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange, 2023

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Nabataean Networks and Transimperial Trade in Southwest Asia part 1: Social, Political, and Economic Dynamics in a Desert Frontier

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange, 2023

Diodorus Siculus (Diod. Sic.) 19. 94. 4-5, preserving the account of the fourth-century historian... more Diodorus Siculus (Diod. Sic.) 19. 94. 4-5, preserving the account of the fourth-century historian Hieronymos of Kardia. 11 Apuleius (Florida 6. 1) describes India as lying "beyond the learned Egyptians and the superstitious Jews and the Nabataean merchants and the flowing-robed Arsakids and the poor-in-harvest Ituraeans and the rich-in-aromatics Arabians."

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Understanding the Central Place Functions of Roman Forts through Landscapes

Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World – Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Cologne/Bonn 2018, vol. 55: Single Contributions, sessions 6-8, 2023

The auxiliary forts that lined Rome’s northern frontiers contained a diverse population, craft pr... more The auxiliary forts that lined Rome’s northern frontiers contained a diverse population, craft production, and commercial functions, leading many to conclude that they acted as central places. If they did, the frontier would have offered a wealth of opportunities for local peasants to market their produce. Identifying such small-scale exchange is difficult due to the perishability of the goods and containers. I propose a new approach that relies on quantitative modeling of settlement landscapes, i.e. the spatial relationships between settlements and social and environmental features. By identifying the affordances that attracted and repelled ancient settlers we can begin to understand the economic conditions under which settlement decisions were made. Univariate analysis of the territories surrounding settlements elucidates agricultural strategies, but simple statistical methods are less helpful in understanding marketing because most peasants prioritize production for auto-consumption over commercial exchange. Therefore, I have developed a novel method of comparative, multivariate modeling that illuminates the influence of market places on rural settlement location while controlling for other environmental factors. By varying the composition of the market system, I am able to test the economic relationship between auxiliary forts and the surrounding countryside.

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Auxiliary Forts and Rural Economic Landscapes on the Northern Frontier

The Impact of the Roman Empire on Landscapes: Proceedings of the Fourteenth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Mainz, June 12-15, 2019), 2022

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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Modelling Bias and Environmental Preferences in Archaeological Spatial Analysis

Vegueta. Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia

Point pattern analysis (PPA) has gained momentum in archaeological research that models large-sca... more Point pattern analysis (PPA) has gained momentum in archaeological research that models large-scale distributions of sites and explanatory covariates. As such, there has been increased interest in the bias of archaeological distributions, which mostly have an impact due to modern land-use change. These interactions, however, have not yet been fully explored. In order to better understand archaeological point patterns as functions of explanatory covariates, we offer three different approaches: (i) environmental preference modelling of archaeological records in different chronological phases; (ii) a custom bias surface that represents the variability of the regional landscape; (iii) an R-package (rbias) allowing the generation of a fuzzified bias surface based on Open Street Map (OSM) data.

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7. The Roman Empire

De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Dec 2, 2019

The Roman Empire was one of the largest and longest lasting of all the empires in the ancient wor... more The Roman Empire was one of the largest and longest lasting of all the empires in the ancient world. 1 At its height, it controlled the entire coast of the Mediterranean and vast continental hinterlands, including most of western Europe and Great Britain, the Balkans, all of Asia Minor, the Near East as far as the Euphrates (and beyond, briefly), and northern Africa as far south as the Sahara. The Mediterranean, known to the Romans as mare nostrum ('our sea'), formed the core. The Mediterranean basin is characterized by extreme variability across both space and time. Geologically, the area is a large subduction zone between the African and European tectonic plates. This not only produces volcanic and seismic activity, it also means that the most commonly encountered bedrock is uplifted limestone, which is easily eroded by water. Much of the coastline is mountainous with deep river valleys. This rugged topography means that even broadly similar climatic conditions can produce drastically dissimilar microclimates within very short distances. In addition, strong interannual variability in precipitation means that local food shortages were an endemic feature of Mediterranean agriculture. In combination, this temporal and spatial variability meant that risk-buffering mechanisms including diversification, storage, and distribution of goods played an important role in ancient Mediterranean survival strategies. Connectivity has always characterized the Mediterranean. 2 While geography encouraged mobility, the empire accelerated that tendency, inducing the transfer of people, goods, and ideas on a scale never seen before. 3 This mobility, combined with increased demand and the efforts of the imperial government to mobilize specific products, led to the rise of broad regional specializations, particularly in staple foods and precious metals. 4 The results of this increased con- It has also been the subject of more scholarship than any other empire treated in this volume. The modern study of the Roman Empire is generally thought to have begun in the eighteenth century with works by the French political philosopher Montesquieu (1734) and the English historian Edward Gibbon (1776-1789). For an overview of the study of the Roman Empire in the twentieth century, see Potter 2006.  Horden and Purcell 2000, particularly 175-230. The environmental history of the ancient Mediterranean is entering new territory as more and better data and models become available. See Harris 2013; McCormick et al. 2012 for introductions.

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PREPRINT: Modelling bias and environmental preferences in archaeological spatial analysis Sesgo de modelado y preferencias ambientales en el análisis espacial arqueológico

by Michael Kempf and Eli Weaverdyck

Vegueta, 2023

Point pattern analysis (PPA) has gained momentum in archaeological research that models large sca... more Point pattern analysis (PPA) has gained momentum in archaeological research that models large scale distributions of sites and explanatory covariates. Further interest has been put on the bias of archaeological distributions, mostly impacting from modern land-use change. These interactions, however, are not yet fully explored. We present three different approaches to understand archaeological point patterns as functions of explanatory covariates: (i) environmental preference modelling of archaeological records at different chronological phases; (ii) a custom bias surface that represents the regional landscape variability; (iii) a R-package (rbias) that enables generating a fuzzified bias surface based on Open Street Map (OSM) data.

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Isolation or Integration? A Spatial-Analytic Approach to the Local Impact of the Roman Army on the Northern Frontier

Populace and Politics in Ancient Roman Cities

Rich Farm, Poor Farm: A Geographic Study of Urban-Rural Relations in Severan Pannonia

7. The Roman Empire

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies, Dec 2, 2019

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The Impact of the Roman Empire on Landscapes

The meeting and workshop of the fourteenth international network Impact of Empire took place at t... more The meeting and workshop of the fourteenth international network Impact of Empire took place at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz from 12-15 June 2019. It brought together some fifty scholars to discuss "The Impact of Empire on Roman Landscapes". The organisers, Marietta Horster and Laura Kopp, and the participants were warmly welcomed by the managing chair of the network, Olivier Hekster from Nijmegen. We would like to thank all speakers of the workshop for their stimulating presentations and critical comments with which they helped us all to become more focused and more sensitive to the many facets of the 'landscapes' subject. We are greatly indebted to them as well as to the many students and colleagues from Mainz and abroad present at the four-day workshop, who by their thought-provoking questions, their observations and commentaries contributed to its success. Many of the papers presented at that workshop in Mainz are included in this volume published in the IMEM-series by Brill. We wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for her/his comments that have improved many contributions and the overall coherence of the volume and we are thankful for Lien Foubert's (Nijmegen) and Giulia Moriconi's (Brill) constant support during the editing process. The workshop was generously funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and two suborganisations of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz: the ZIS (Zentrum für interkulturelle Studien) and the GICC (Gutenberg International Conference Center). We received support for the selection procedure of papers as well as for the organisation of the conference by Olivier Hekster (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) and Alexandra Busch (Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz). We are grateful for this endorsement, which helped to make the workshop a memorable and stimulating event.

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The Classical City on the Molyvoti Peninsula (Aegean Thrace): Landscape, Urban Development, and Economic Networks

by Nathan Arrington, Eli Weaverdyck, and Marina Tasaklaki

The Riverlands of Aegean Thrace: Production, Consumption and Exploitation of the Natural and Cultural Landscapes, 2022

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12.C Institutions and Economic Relations in the Roman Empire: Consumption, Supply, and Coordination

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

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3.A Economic Actors in the Hellenistic and Roman Empires: The Mediterranean and Southwest Asia

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

 This caused some tension when Roman citizenship was extended far beyond the borders of the city... more  This caused some tension when Roman citizenship was extended far beyond the borders of the city and its territory, prompting Cicero to develop his theory of dual fatherlands (De legibus 2. 5).  Ma 2003; Malkin 2011.  The debates about whether Republican Rome was itself a polis is a question that has occupied historians ever since, as Woolf (2020, 325) points out concerning the first century , without clear resolution.  Compare this pattern of urbanism and its centrality to identity-formation to that in South Asia

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7 Constituting Local and Imperial Landscapes

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

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8.A Material Evidence

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies, Dec 2, 2019

Note: This chapter has benefited from the comments of several specialists. I would like to thank ... more Note: This chapter has benefited from the comments of several specialists. I would like to thank Nicholas Hudson for his comments on section 4 (pottery), Hannah Lau for her comments on section 5.3 (isotopes), and Demetrios Brellas for his comments on section 6 (faunal remains). Any errors remain my own.

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8.A Tools of Economic Activity in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds: Empires and Coordination

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

 These arrangements are known from epigraphic evidence in North Africa, where imperial holdings... more  These arrangements are known from epigraphic evidence in North Africa, where imperial holdings were particularly extensive (Kehoe 1988).  Rathbone 1993, 84.  E.g., taxes connected to the the kat' ethnoi records, von Reden 2007, 104-107 for discussion and bibliography.  On which in general, Clarysse and Thompson 2006.  These include payment for the upkeep of the navy, a land transportation surcharge, and a harbor fee (Gabrielsen 2013, 72). On customs duties in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt generally, see Sijpesteijn 1987.

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Isolation or Integration? A Spatial Analytical Approach to the Local Impact of the Roman Army on the Northern Frontier

Author(s): Weaverdyck, Eli James Sheldon | Advisor(s): Norena, Carlos F. | Abstract: This dissert... more Author(s): Weaverdyck, Eli James Sheldon | Advisor(s): Norena, Carlos F. | Abstract: This dissertation analyzes changing rural settlement patterns in the Lower Danubian Plain from the Late Iron Age through Late Antiquity in order to elucidate the role played by garrison settlements in the economic strategies of peasants living near the Roman frontier. The military cordon on the northern frontier has been seen both as a stimulus to provincial economic development and as an oppressive burden preventing growth in its vicinity with no consensus forthcoming. I approach the question from the perspective of the rural producers, using the landscapes in which they chose to live as evidence for common goals and conditions. In order to isolate the role of garrison settlements from other features in the landscape, I employ a novel method of comparative multivariate logistic regression analysis. This allows me to test different hypothesized relationships against known settlement patterns while c...

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The Role of Forts in the Local Market System in the Lower Rhine: Towards a Method of Multiple Hypothesis Testing Through Comparative Modelling

Computational Social Sciences, 2019

This paper analyses rural settlement patterns in the Lower Rhine frontier zone to elucidate the r... more This paper analyses rural settlement patterns in the Lower Rhine frontier zone to elucidate the role of forts in the rural economy. Von Thunen’s model of rural marketing suggests that market centres attract intensive cultivation, making them identifiable through spatial analysis of rural settlements. Environmental factors that influenced production capacity, however, can also be expected to exert a strong influence on settlement location, so a multivariate method of spatial analysis is necessary. Using a process of comparative modelling with logistic regression analysis, I test the hypotheses that rural settlements responded to the location of market centres, both civilian and military. I use univariate analysis of settlement territories to identify influential local environmental factors and combine these into a logistic regression model. Then I add a market potential (MP) variable that quantifies the accessibility of marketing opportunities from any location within a market system...

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Nabataean Networks and Transimperial Trade in Southwest Asia, part 2: Aromatics and Agriculture: A Spatial Approach to Long-Distance Trade and the Local Economy of the Nabataeans

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange, 2023

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Nabataean Networks and Transimperial Trade in Southwest Asia part 1: Social, Political, and Economic Dynamics in a Desert Frontier

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange, 2023

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Understanding the Central Place Functions of Roman Forts through Landscapes

Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World – Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Cologne/Bonn 2018, vol. 55: Single Contributions, sessions 6-8, 2023

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Auxiliary Forts and Rural Economic Landscapes on the Northern Frontier

The Impact of the Roman Empire on Landscapes: Proceedings of the Fourteenth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Mainz, June 12-15, 2019), 2022

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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Modelling Bias and Environmental Preferences in Archaeological Spatial Analysis

Vegueta. Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia

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7. The Roman Empire

De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Dec 2, 2019

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PREPRINT: Modelling bias and environmental preferences in archaeological spatial analysis Sesgo de modelado y preferencias ambientales en el análisis espacial arqueológico

by Michael Kempf and Eli Weaverdyck

Vegueta, 2023

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Isolation or Integration? A Spatial-Analytic Approach to the Local Impact of the Roman Army on the Northern Frontier

Populace and Politics in Ancient Roman Cities

Rich Farm, Poor Farm: A Geographic Study of Urban-Rural Relations in Severan Pannonia

7. The Roman Empire

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies, Dec 2, 2019

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The Impact of the Roman Empire on Landscapes

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The Classical City on the Molyvoti Peninsula (Aegean Thrace): Landscape, Urban Development, and Economic Networks

by Nathan Arrington, Eli Weaverdyck, and Marina Tasaklaki

The Riverlands of Aegean Thrace: Production, Consumption and Exploitation of the Natural and Cultural Landscapes, 2022

Download

12.C Institutions and Economic Relations in the Roman Empire: Consumption, Supply, and Coordination

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

Download

3.A Economic Actors in the Hellenistic and Roman Empires: The Mediterranean and Southwest Asia

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

Download

7 Constituting Local and Imperial Landscapes

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

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8.A Material Evidence

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies, Dec 2, 2019

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8.A Tools of Economic Activity in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds: Empires and Coordination

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies

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Isolation or Integration? A Spatial Analytical Approach to the Local Impact of the Roman Army on the Northern Frontier

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The Role of Forts in the Local Market System in the Lower Rhine: Towards a Method of Multiple Hypothesis Testing Through Comparative Modelling

Computational Social Sciences, 2019

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EAA 2019 Forts and farms on the Roman frontier. A targeted application of site location analysis

Quantitative models that seek correlations between archaeological remains—traces of ancient behav... more Quantitative models that seek correlations between archaeological remains—traces of ancient behavior—and the environment have been attacked as de-humanizing and narrowly focused because they ignore influential factors that cannot be readily mapped and quantified, and can become environmentally deterministic. In fact, this critique helps to clarify the areas in which quantitative site-location modeling holds the greatest promise. Quantitative analysis aimed at addressing narrowly formulated questions about phenomena that are strongly constrained by geography can significantly advance our understanding of the ancient world. Taking an inductive approach that analyzes the changing correlations between archaeological remains and the environment in chronologically specific periods allows for an analysis of human-environment interaction that avoids environmental determinism. This paper describes a method of location analysis that investigates agricultural intensification on the Roman frontier and the potential role of military forts as market centers in the rural economy. Intensifying labor input in agriculture is constrained by the distance between settlements and fields, and the output of such a system is constrained by the physical character of the landscape; marketing practices that require frequent trips between the place of production and the place of exchange are heavily constrained by the distance between the two. Thus, both are susceptible to investigation through location analysis. The models presented here are not intended to be comprehensive accounts of all of the factors that influenced settlement location. Rather, they aim to contribute to specific debates about the economic impact of the Roman military in the frontier zone.

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Populace and politics in ancient Roman cities (video)

Populace and politics in ancient Roman cities.pptx

American citizens have a lot of options for communicating with political leaders. We can vote, wr... more American citizens have a lot of options for communicating with political leaders. We can vote, write letters, sign petitions, and participate in public demonstrations. Recently, Americans have been telling their leaders that they are angry with the status quo by supporting anti-establishment presidential candidates and forming protest movements like the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter. In Ancient Rome, ordinary people could also communicate with their leaders and they frequently did so, sometimes through voting but more often through mass demonstrations that took the form of marches, chants and sometimes riots. Unlike in modern America, however, limits on mass communication meant that these forms of collective action could only take place in cities, places where both political power and population were concentrated. This talk will explore the different ways in which urban populations took collective action to influence local and imperial governments across the Empire, from the Late Republican city of Rome to Late Antique Constantinople.

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The Impact of the Roman Empire on Landscapes. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Workshop of the International Network "Impact of Empire" (Mainz, June 12-15, 2019), Leiden, Boston 2021 (Impact of Empire 41), Preliminary Material and Introduction, I-XVIII; 1-17 (together with Marietta Horster)

by Nikolas Hächler, Rémi Auvertin, Francesco Bono, FERNANDO LOZANO, and Eli Weaverdyck

This volume presents the results of the fourteenth workshop of the international network 'Impact ... more This volume presents the results of the fourteenth workshop of the international network 'Impact of Empire'. It focuses on the ways in which Rome's dominance influenced, changed, and created landscapes, and examines in which ways (Roman) landscapes were narrated and semantically represented. To assess the impact of Rome on landscapes, some of the twenty contributions in this volume analyse functions and implications of newly created infrastructure. Others focus on the consequences of colonisation processes, settlement structures, regional divisions, and legal qualifications of land. Lastly, some contributions consider written and pictorial representations and their effects. In doing so, the volume offers new insights into the notion of ‘Roman landscapes’ and examines their significance for the functioning of the Roman empire.

All contributions are available online under: https://brill.com/view/title/55929

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Eli Weaverdyck

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