Technology and Culture

Recycling and Reuse in the Roman Economy Edited by Chloë N. Duckworth and Andrew Wilson. Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xxviii + 478.

Archaeologists spend careers finding meaning in what has been thrown away, forgotten, or left behind. Yet the field of discard studies is relatively new to Roman archaeology. This volume, the result of a conference conducted as part of the prolific Oxford Roman Economy Project, joins a small but growing collection of scholarship on the subject, focusing on the effects of recycling and reuse on the Roman economy. It will likely become an essential treatment of the topic, serving as both an overview of current scholarship and a spur for future research.

The book's key contributions can be grouped into three categories. First are the comprehensive summaries of evidence for recycling and reuse (the former term indicating the reduction of objects into raw materials, the latter encompassing other types of transformation). Ted Peña's opening chapter stands out for examining current understandings of how these processes were carried out over a wide range of materials. It further explores who was responsible and how they might have been organized. The chapter makes essential reading, whether standing on its own or placed alongside the contributions that follow. Shorter pieces on textiles and papyrus by John Peter Wild and Erja Salmenkivi, respectively, likewise provide fascinating looks at the afterlives of materials typically missing from the archaeological record.

The volume also puts to rest—one hopes definitely—the idea that recycling [End Page 606] and reuse were responses to crisis and particularly indicative of the late Roman period. Most chapters deal with earlier evidence, showing clearly that such practices were ordinary even when the empire was at its height. The authors who focus on Late Antiquity, furthermore, make convincing arguments for the complexity of waste management even in that period. Beth Munro's chapter on the systematic dismantling of Italian villas is especially valuable for demonstrating the organization and skill required for demolitions very likely carried out under the auspices of landowners.

Other strong chapters prioritize the individuals who populated waste management systems. Among these, the contribution by Chloë Duckworth (also one of the volume's editors) is noteworthy. Roman glass originated from a few production sites in the eastern Mediterranean, suggesting that recycling was a common part of manufacturing cycles. Literary and archaeological evidence alike support this idea. Nevertheless, chemical analyses seeking mixed production-site provenances as evidence for recycling find suspiciously low numbers of recycled vessels: for example, 25 percent in Patrick Degryse's study featured in this volume, or 50 percent in Duckworth's own, larger sample. As Duckworth points out, such analyses overlook instances in which ancient craftsmen recycled "like with like," sorting glass recyclate to make higher-quality products that did not combine provenance types. This process might have been widespread but remains invisible to current methodologies, providing a good reminder that even archaeological science cannot ignore the human actors who created the archaeological record.

Shortcomings are minor. Some of the subsections, most notably that on chemical analysis, read as slightly disjointed, although the editors do a better job than many in converting a conference into a unified publication. A few chapters are longer than their contents justify. Additionally, the book at times remains grounded in a distinctly modern perspective. The final chapter, which draws together those preceding by introducing potential future questions, is especially concerned with why Romans recycled: to the authors, such "thriftiness" appears at odds with the conspicuous consumption evident in the imperial economy. Their contrast between recycling and consumption, however, is inherently modern, based on the realities of the post-industrial world. While the authors are correct to call for contextualization and cultural specificity, we can be sure that recycling and reuse have been standard human behaviors until the very recent past. Rather than...