Mobility and migration in Italy in the second century BC

P Erdkamp - People, land and politics, Leiden, 2008 - brill.com
People, land and politics, Leiden, 2008brill.com
The study of demography consists basically of three components: mortality, fertility, and
migration, but only the first two have received much attention in modern studies of the
ancient world. There may be good reasons for this: while ancient demography in general is
plagued by a scarcity of quantifiable source material, the shortage of evidence is more easily
circumvented with respect to mortality and fertility than with respect to migration. Biological
and ecological factors have a larger and more predictable role in the birth and death of …
The study of demography consists basically of three components: mortality, fertility, and migration, but only the first two have received much attention in modern studies of the ancient world. There may be good reasons for this: while ancient demography in general is plagued by a scarcity of quantifiable source material, the shortage of evidence is more easily circumvented with respect to mortality and fertility than with respect to migration. Biological and ecological factors have a larger and more predictable role in the birth and death of humans than in their mobility. Hence, selecting the appropriate ‘model life table’solves a sufficient number of the ancient demographer’s problems to allow him to continue investigation. No such tables exist for migration. The extent and nature of mobility in each society is determined by economic, political, social, and environmental circumstances that are so changeable and interwoven that it is impossible to create a model of migration in the way one can of births and deaths. Few studies have been published on mobility and migration in Antiquity. 1 Of course, publications on Roman history have in the past dealt with mobility in the sense that many subjects naturally involve the movement of people. However, these publications have not addressed mobility per se, but colonization, the ius migrandi, or the Romanization of conquered areas. This article aims to analyse the extent and diversity of mobility and migration among the freeborn population in Italy, limiting itself primarily to the second century BC, although evidence for other
1 An exception, dealing with Egypt, is Braunert (1964). Parkin (1992, 135 f.) acknowledges the importance of migration for ancient population studies, but sees no way to get around the lack of evidence. The brief section on migration in Scheidel (2001, 46 ff.) stresses mainly the problematic nature of the evidence. Frier (1999, 85–109) takes no notice of migration. Laurence (1999, 146 f.) devotes no more than one page to migration. One of the first full-scale studies of migration in the republican context is Broadhead (2002). Moatti (2006) announces a project on various aspects of mobility.
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