(Not) All Roads Lead to Rome : Interdisciplinary Approaches to Mobility in the Ancient World

This book considers mobility in Antiquity in its broadest sense from a multidisciplinary perspective. Although mobility is always present in studies of exchange and cultural diffusion, here it is discussed as a key feature of societies, inherent to their functioning and where cultural, social and economic processes meet.

(Not) All Roads Lead to Rome is the result of the highly engaging debate within the “Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History”, a yearly congress of young graduates and researchers held in April 2022 in the University of Barcelona. In this volume, the issue of mobility in Antiquity in its broadest sense is approached from a multidisciplinary perspective. One of the main objectives is, also, to give promising young scholars (postgraduates and PHD students) the opportunity to publish their early research on mobility and build a cohesive but thematically broad work. Although mobility is always present in studies of exchange and cultural diffusion, in this case it becomes the main subject of this collective research effort. We aim to encourage academic discussion around mobility as a key feature of societies, inherent to their functioning and where cultural, social and economic processes meet. The Mediterranean, and the Roman Empire by extension, is a dynamic area, and thus, it allows us to study mobility from many perspectives. In this volume, the movement of ideas, be they ideological or religious, is explored as it relates to underlying social and economic patterns. Likewise, the physical mobility of people across empires or within settlements is treated as a consequence of and a way to ease social relations. Social mobility too is discussed in the broader framework of socioeconomic dynamics, with case studies ranging from Egypt to Rome. Finally, the movement of goods (trade) is also part of this volume, as it was essential at bolstering interconnectivity in the Mediterranean. In that regard, archaeology holds the largest potential to provide new data regarding mobility of products, and thus long-distance contact and exchange.