The Economy of Laetanian Wine: A Conceptual Framework to Analyse an Intensive/Specialized Winegrowing Production System and Trade (First Century BC to Third Century AD)

Abstract

The Roman economy has been defined as an agrarian regime, where wheat was mainly cultivated combined with livestock farming and intensive cash crops such as wine and olive oil. Possibilities for economic growth in a winegrowing area such as the Laetanian region in Hispania Citerior depended upon changes in agrarian productivity but were subject to agro-ecological and agroeconomic endowments that could affect the settlement patterns, the fluctuations in population, the forms of production related to the vineyard crop capacities, the spread of new techniques of cultivation and processing and the adoption of new technological advances. The combination of these factors explains how comparative advantages arose from other winegrowing territories, achieved through intensification and specialization processes that generated an increase of winemaking production surplus capable of being traded in different overseas markets.

Comparative advantage, specialized viticulture, and the economic development of Gallia Narbonensis

“…15 E.g., Wilson 2002;Ruffing 2008;Wilson 2008;Hawkins 2016;Rice 2016a;Ruffing 2016;Stewart et al 2020. 16 For recent studies involving rural agricultural specialization, see de Haas 2017; Heinrich 2017; Pasquinucci and Menchelli 2017;Martín i Oliveras and Calvo 2019;Talloen and Poblome 2019;Groot 2020;Van Limbergen 2020. 17 Temin 2013 contains the most extensive discussion of the economic significance of regional specialization and comparative advantage, and Erdkamp 2015 highlights the importance of market integration for regional specialization.…”

Viticulture in the Laetanian Region (Spain) during the Roman Period: Predictive Modelling and Geomatic Analysis

“…The study area is bordered to the south and southeast by the Mediterranean Sea and has a flat coastal strip of varying width, which merges into a littoral mountain range towards the northwest. In the hinterland stretches the extensive Vallesian Plain situated between the Arnum River (today River Tordera) and the Baetulo River (today River Besós), and the smaller Barcelona's Plain situated between the latter and the Rubricatum River (today River Llobregat; [13]). These main rivers supplied fluvial sediments which were redistributed southwards by longshore marine currents and shaped the coastal and wetland plains of the present Maresme, Barcelonès and Baix Llobregat shires [14,15].…”

“…On the northwestern edge of this plain, the Flavian municipium of Egara is situated. To the south, the thin coastal fringe ends in the foothills of the Garraf massif [13].…”

“…In those times, the Iberian culture faced the presence of the Romans who had arrived at the Iberian Peninsula one century earlier during the 2nd Punic War which had an impact on its economic, social and cultural structure [14]. The Romanization process transformed the entire region including: (i) the founding of Roman settlements or the reshaping of existing ones, (ii) the building of a vast road network and ports, and (iii) the adoption of new agricultural exploitation forms, as investigated by several authors [13,[15][16][17]. The Roman economy was an agrarian regime that produced mainly cereal, wine and olive oil combined with livestock farming.…”

“…These amphorae were used as containers for nautical transport of the wine and its derivates, such as vinegar (acetum), spiced honey wine (mulsum), grape must syrups (defruntum, sapa, caroenum), etc. [13,17].…”