The Uncertain Past
Probability in Ancient History
Published on 1. December 2022
Book
Hardback
322 pages
978-1-009-10065-6 (ISBN)
Description
Historians constantly wrestle with uncertainty, never more so than when attempting quantification, yet the field has given little attention to the nature of uncertainty and strategies for managing it. This volume proposes a powerful new approach to uncertainty in ancient history, drawing on techniques widely used in the social and natural sciences. It shows how probability-based techniques used to manage uncertainty about the future or the present can be applied to uncertainty about the past. A substantial introduction explains the use of probability to represent uncertainty. The chapters that follow showcase how the technique can offer leverage on a wide range of problems in ancient history, from the incidence of expropriation in the Classical Greek world to the money supply of the Roman empire.
Reviews / Votes
'... the volume as a whole is to be commended, and I recommend it both to historians of the ancient Mediterranean ... as well as to economic and social historians from other areas ... The editors make a compelling and clear argument (directly and through their contributors) that probabilistic methods deserve further use, and are more accessible than one may initially think: I can't help but find myself agreeing.' Thomas LaverMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises; 80 Tables, black and white; 10 Maps; 60 Line drawings, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
712 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-10065-6 (9781009100656)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2022
Cambridge University Press
€111.99
Available for download
Persons
Content
1. Probabilistic modelling in ancient history Daniel Jew and Myles Lavan; Part I. Uncertainty: 2. Assessing the scale of property confiscation in the ancient Greek world Emily Mackil; 3. Senators and senatorial wealth at Pompeii: reconstructing the local wealth distribution Bart Danon; 4. The Roman coinage under the Antonines revisited: an economy of silver, not gold Gilles Bransbourg; Part II. Variability and Missing Data: 5. Children and their impact on family finances in Roman Egypt Paul V. Kelly; 6. The financial sustainability of grain funds: a model-based approach using Monte Carlo simulation N. Solonakis, A. Toure and M. Elhouderi; 7. New approaches to the urban population and urbanization rate of the Roman Empire, AD 1 to 200 J. W. Hanson; 8. Afterword Bart Danon, Daniel Jew and Myles Lavan.