Inequality in Ancient Rome Methods, Models, and Debates

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.

Elizabeth A. Murphy is Associate Professor of Roman Archaeology at Florida State University. She currently directs the Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia Project, a diachronic landscape project of the Sulcis region.

Robert Stephan is Associate Professor of Practice in Classics and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the W.A. Franke Honors College at the University of Arizona. In 2025, he was awarded the Archaeological of America's prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.