Single Contributions

Economic aspects permeate all areas of public and private life in ancient
societies, whether in urban development, religion, art, housing, or in death.
Research on ancient economies has long played a significant role in ancient history.
Increasingly in the last decades, awareness has grown in archaeology that the
material culture of ancient societies offers excellent opportunities for studying
the structure, performance, and dynamics of ancient economic systems and economic
processes. Therefore, the main objective of this congress was to understand economy
as a central element of classical societies and to analyse its interaction with
ecological, political, social, religious, and cultural backgrounds. The theme of the
congress was addressed to all disciplines that deal with Greco-Roman civilization
and their neighbouring cultures from the Aegean Bronze Age to the end of Late
Antiquity. In this collective volume, single contributions of sessions 2 and 3 are
dealing on the one hand with the investigation of natural environmental factors -
climate and landscape - as impacts on the ancient economy, and on the other hand
with the exploration of production system. Thematically, the spectrum ranges from
the contextualisation of ancient handicrafts, to questions about the production of,
for example, decorative metal objects, glass, portrait statues and bricks, to
ancient architecture and the associated construction system. The temporal and
topographical framework extends from Mycenaean and Archaic Greece, through Iron Age
Southern Italy and Hellenistic-Roman Sicily as well as Macedonia, to Imperial Spain
and Asia Minor.