Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire
Urbanism and the division of labour in the Roman Empire
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DOI：
10.1098/rsif.2017.0367
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发表时间：
2017-11-01
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Lobo, J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hanson, J. W.;Ortman, S. G.;Lobo, J.
人类集聚的标志之一是劳动分工的增加，但这种关系的确切性质在人类学家、社会学家、经济学家、历史学家和考古学家之间一直存在争议。在过去的十年中，研究当代城市系统的研究人员提出了一种新的解释，解释了定居点居民数量与其许多最重要特征之间的联系，这种解释基于定居点作为嵌入建筑环境中的社会网络的观点。这种方法的一个值得注意的方面是，它不是基于现代世界（如资本主义或工业化）的具体条件，这就提出了一个问题，即在当代城市系统中观察到的关系是否也可以在前现代城市甚至非城市系统中发现。在这里，我们提出了人口与住区功能多样性之间关系的一般模型，后者被视为劳动分工的指标。然后，我们探讨了这一模型在前现代背景下的适用性，重点关注罗马帝国的城市，使用对其居民数量、记录的专业协会数量和记录的铭文数量的估计来开发功能多样性指数。我们的研究结果与理论预期一致，进一步支持了当代和前现代背景下的城市系统反映了一套共同的生成过程的观点。
One of the hallmarks of human agglomeration is an increase in the division of labour, but the exact nature of this relationship has been debated among anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and historians and archaeologists. Over the last decade, researchers investigating contemporary urban systems have suggested a novel explanation for the links between the numbers of inhabitants in settlements and many of their most important characteristics, which is grounded in a view of settlements as social networks embedded in built environments. One of the remarkable aspects of this approach is that it is not based on the specific conditions of the modern world (such as capitalism or industrialization), which raises the issue of whether the relationships observed in contemporary urban systems can also be detected in pre-modern urban or even non-urban systems. Here, we present a general model for the relationship between the population and functional diversity of settlements, where the latter is viewed as an indicator of the division of labour. We then explore the applicability of this model to pre-modern contexts, focusing on cities in the Roman Empire, using estimates of their numbers of inhabitants, numbers of documented professional associations, and numbers of recorded inscriptions to develop an index of functional diversity. Our results are consistent with theoretical expectations, adding further support to the view that urban systems in both contemporary and pre-modern contexts reflect a common set of generative processes.