About this Group
Building on a range of successful area and thematic studies in the past two decades, the ancient economies group is exploring the inter-related dynamics of social intentions and economic behaviour across Eurasia during the first millennia BCE to CE. Among the topics of analysis are resource extraction and exploitation (organic and inorganic), production, and exchange, and the institutional framework of production and business (coined silver; Vipasca tablets, Spain; Periplus Maris Eyrthraei in the Persian Gulf). Quantitative and qualitative analyses focus on urban and rural environments; and the interface between settled communities and nomadic pastoralists.