Maritime Archaeology And Ancient Trade

Maritime Archaeology And Ancient Trade

In Maritime Archaeology and Ancient Trade in the Mediterranean, Andrew Wilson argues that ancient maritime trade peaked in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. First, he identifies Parker's graph of known shipwrecks as inaccurate evidence on the trade intensity of the ancient maritime world. Next, Wilson details several technologies, specifically the bilge pump, and hydraulic cement, that enabled the expansion of trade during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Finally, Wilson concludes that it was Roman standardization of currency and language, not new technologies, that allowed trade to increase in the ancient world. When the Roman empire deteriorated, trade decreased, leading to the loss of harbors and shipping technologies.

In 1992, A.J. Parker published a study of known shipwrecks organized by their approximate century in which the ships sank. As a result, many archaeologists have attempted to equate this graph with fluctuations in ancient maritime trade, depending upon the assumptions that each period had an equal probability of ships wrecking, and that wrecks from all periods are equally visible to archaeologists. Wilson disagrees, claiming that these assumptions are inherently flawed, and therefore, the graph cannot be used to analyze ancient maritime trade. First, the risks of wrecking were dependent upon the trade routes, which, in turn, were dependent on what items were highly sought after (Wilson, 36). If products from nearby coastal cities were desired, then

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