Invisible Labour in Antiquity
Visualizing Obscure Work in the Ancient Mediterannean and West Asia
edited by Nathanael Andrade and Rubina Raja
This edited volume consists of contributions by specialists on the economy of the ancient and late antique world and its socio-economic aspects.
Labour in Antiquity, ranging from commerce and trade to physical labour, slavery, and the activity of subalterns, has long been studied, and the notion that certain elements of labour are not immediately visible in source material is widely accepted. Even so, the concept of ‘invisible labour’, that is, labour hidden from the view of either ancient peoples or modern scholars, has, up to now, been very little studied. This volume aims to address the balance by examining how the quotidian behaviours and strategies of ‘invisible’ ancient people shaped economic life, and vice versa, and by exploring new ways to account for the invisible, both empirically and methodologically, through an analysis of environmental, social, and cultural factors. The scholars writing in this volume focus on different key trends. Some address the impact of practices determined by environmental or social factors, such as caravan trading, religious practice, transhumanism, and maritime commerce, on economies at a micro- and macro-level. Others examine the effect that daily routines of the invisible, including peasants, nomads, daily labourers, and vendors, had on local economies and the formation of broader socio-economic structures. Bridging classics, archaeology, history, and the natural sciences, the chapters gathered here offer important new insights into work that is often hardly visible in the evidence but that drove the economies of the Mediterranean, Europe, and Western Asia in antiquity.
- Edited by Rubina Raja
- Edited by Nathanael Andrade
Other Titles in this Series
Khirbet al-Khalde
Final Publications from the Khirbet al-Khalde Archaeological Project 2023
Volume 2
Similar Books
Caesar’s Visions and Impact on the Roman Empire
Revisiting the Archaeological and Historical Record of the 40s BC
Volume 2
Etruscan and Roman Hellenistic Anatomical ex votos
Reassessing Popular Religious Expressions in Central Italy
Volume 8
Friedlicher Handel oder umkämpfte Geschäfte?
Handel und Handelsrecht in der Vormoderne zwischen Krieg und Frieden
Global Gulf
Geo-Economic, Geo-Political, and Geo-Technological Transformation in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar
Late Antique villae in the Balkans (3rd–7th c. AD): Current Research Questions and Perspectives
HAEMUS Companion to the Late Antique Balkans 1
Volume 4
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Small Worlds and Relational Agencies: Local Societies in Early Medieval Iberia
Pequeños mundos y Agencias relacionales: Sociedades locales altomedievales en la Península Ibérica
Socio-économie du travail
La dégradation du travail au XXIe siècle ? Lectures contemporaines de Harry Braverman
Volume 17
Socio-économie du travail
Le sens du travail, concept scientifique ou instrument du capitalisme ? Volume 1
Volume 18
The Iron Age Pottery from Tell Atchana / Ancient Alalakh
A Typological and Functional Analysis
Volume 8
Writing in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
Inscription and Graffiti in a Multilingual and Multigraphic Perspective
Volume 45
Socio-économie du travail
Le sens du travail, concept scientifique ou instrument du capitalisme ? Volume 2
Volume 19
Atlante tematico di topografia antica 36-2026
Urbanistica e monumenti, porti, Roma. Ricerche sui monti Aurunci
Volume 36
Cerámica común romana y ciclo haliéutico
Análisis de los contextos de las cetariae de Iulia Traducta
Décarboner sans détruire les profits
Comment les entreprises peuvent allier performance économique et impact climatique
Volume 3
Der politische Streik im deutschen Arbeitskampfrecht
Dogmatische Entwicklungslinien von 1869 bis in die 1980er Jahre
Volume 393
