Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy

Call For Papers: The Early Christianity and Ancient Economy program unit sponsors three research areas that explore the increasing, and timely, turn to the economic in the study of ancient social, cultural, and intellectual history. The first research area involves a study of all the major aspects of the economy in the ancient world, especially the Roman Empire. The second research area examines early Christianity from the first to the fifth centuries CE both in relationship to the ancient economy and in regard to its own economic aspects. The third research area focuses on issues of method and theory in the study of ancient economies. Both synchronic and diachronic studies are encouraged, as are contributions focused on specific issues (such as money, texts, authors, themes, and events). Paper proposals for all three research areas are welcomed, especially those that make use of papyri, inscriptions, and other realia. At least two sessions are planned for the Boston meeting. The first is an open session consisting of papers submitted in response to the call for papers in any of the three research areas. The second session will consist of papers exploring a particular issue of method and theory in the study of ancient economies: New Institutional Economics (NIE), the regnant paradigm for the study of the ancient economy, tends to focus on activities and policies related specifically to market activity. However, extra-mercantile transfers of currency, goods, and services (e.g., tribute, taxation, looting, banquets, patronage, & other forms of euergetism) must have amounted to a substantial proportion of the wealth in circulation in the imperial period, perhaps rivaling the scale of mercantile activity. This session aims to press historians not only to consider the significant role of the extra-mercantile economy but also to problematize the conceptual separation of mercantile from extra-mercantile exchanges—a separation with the potential to reduce “economics” to the market economy.

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